Today's Hotness: Henry Clay People, Get Up Kids, Ryan Adams

>> [Photo Credit: Scott Schultz] We downloaded a handful of tunes from Los Angeles indie rockers The Henry Clay People recently [probably via ExitFare] and every time one of said songs shuffles up we have to grab our IPod to identify who's rocking us. The quartet, fronted by the Siara brothers Joey and Andy, will release release next week its sophomore set For Cheap Or For Free on Aquarium Drunkard's Autumn Tone label. The record was recorded in a number of different studios around Los Angeles with folks including the very personable Dave Newton, he formerly of The Mighty Lemon Drops and he whose acquaintance we made while visiting The Hush Now's recording sessions in Charlestown, Mass. earlier this year. We see a lot of Pavement references made to The Henry Clay People's sound, but that doesn't quite get to the heart of it, as the latter act isn't nearly as cracked as the former. But The Henry Clay People are certainly very good, and apparently put on a dynamite and inebriated live show. So what's not to like? The act has a number of West Coast tour dates booked through next week, so if you are a left coaster, check out the list at The Henry Clay People MySpace dojo right here. Below are two tracks from the forthcoming set; "Working Part Time" was previously released as a single.

The Henry Clay People -- "Working Part Time" -- For Cheap Or For Free
The Henry Clay People -- "Something In The Water" -- For Cheap Or For Free
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[pre-order For Cheap Or For Free from Autumn Tone right here]

>> Here's something we did not know. Doghouse Records is reissuing The Get Up Kids' debut Four Minute Mile on vinyl. The set, which was originally released by the now defunct act in 1997, will be available on blue vinyl from December 9. This all according to a Pun Canoes item right here. We've got mixed feelings about the records the renowned Midwestern emo quintet released following Four Minute Mile. But in our humble opinion -- which we've offered previously here -- its caterwauling emo classic "The Last Place You Look" [live video here] is is one of the top jams of the late '90s, up there with all your "Misunderstood" and "Paranoid Android" and "You Talk Twice" and whatnot. You can pre-order The Get Up Kids reissue from Amazon.com right here for about 13 bucks.

>> We're no huge Ryan Adams fan, but we have loved all the big songs ("Let It Ride," "Come Pick Me Up," etc.) from the big records, as well as few choice Whiskeytown cuts. And so lately we've been listening to the new Adams jam "Cobwebs" a lot. It gives us goosebumps. Mr. Adams and his Cardinals performed the track as the web bonus to the Letterman show the other night, and we think this link will take you straight to the clip. Totally worth rocking it.

Today's Hotness: AC/DC, Benge, Up Up Down Down

>> When we were youths the arrival of MTV inside our teevees was pretty much the end-all, be-all. We watched so much MTV between the ages of 8 and 16 that it is surprising we did anything else. And one of our earliest memories of the network is the Friday Night Concert. Or maybe it was the Saturday Night Concert, because we recall on Friday it was the Friday Night Video Fights. Anyway, there were two exceptional concerts in those days that were played over and over again. A dazzling assault by AC/DC circa For Those About To Rock, We Salute You, and another great set by rocker Billy Squier. The first thing we did when we heard about MTV's new "Hulu for music videos" was check to see if either of those old concerts was there. And we're pretty sure the amazing live rendition of "Put The Finger On You" embedded above is taken from the performance that was aired as part of the MTV concert. Legendary hard rock quintet AC/DC, of course, just released its latest record Black Ice last week, and Billboard here broke the news last night that the new set will debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 today. Black Ice, which is being sold exclusively at Wal-Mart, scanned 784,000 copies in its first week. The band launched a tour to support the record in Wilkes-Barre, PA last night. We can't imagine any of the performances will come close the the awesome clip above.

>> According to this item at The Quietus, there is a new set from electronic music luminary Ben Edwards' Benge project. Twenty Systems features as many compositions, one for each year -- crafted with one synthesizer from the same year -- between 1968 and 1987. Its concept seems somewhat similar to Keith Fullerton Whitmans' Multiples, which featured titles including "Stereo Music for Acoustic Guitar, Buchla Music Box 100, Hewlett Packard Model 236 Oscillator, Electric Guitar and Computer - Part Two" and which we reviewed here for Junkmedia in 2005. Twenty Systems was released on Mr. Edwards' own Expanding Records. According to the Expanding web site, Twenty Systems "combines an audio CD of new music with a full colour 60-page book containing photos and diagrams of the electronic instruments used, along with a detailed history documenting the development of synthesisers between 1968 and 1988." The release has garnered props from electronic luminaries including Brian Eno and Scanner. Twenty Systems doesn't come cheap -- it's 15 pounds sterling from Smallfish.co.uk. Perhaps Forced Exposure will stock it sometime soon (along with the latest Oblong release, please). As we stated here at the beginning of the year, we are big fans of Benge's 2002 release Meme Tunes; the most recent Benge set prior to Twenty Systems was called I Am Nine and it was issued in 2004. Here is the wonderful dreamer "Eve's Escape Valve" from Meme Tunes.

Benge -- "Eve's Escape Valve" -- Meme Tunes
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[buy Benge music from Smallfish right here]

>> Despite announcing its break-up in July and playing its last show in August, awkwardly monikered post-emo superheroes Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start have announced it will play a short set -- as Pearl Jam -- Friday night as part of a Halloween party in New Jersey. The party is at the band's studio in Haddon Heights, and more details, including the rest of the bill, are posted here at DinerState.com. Now listen to "Melanie Flury," which will make you wish the band were reuniting as itself. Sigh.

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start -- "Melanie Flury" -- Girls Names EP
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[buy Up Up Down Down records from the band here]

Clicky Clicky 200: Jon Brion's "I Believe She's Lying"

[Photo Credit: Robert Gauthier/LA Times] Readers are likely familiar with L.A.-based Jon Brion because of his brilliant soundtrack work over the past decade, or his production work with big names like Fiona Apple and Spoon (Brion recorded "The Underdog" from the Texas quartet's brilliant Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga). The most interesting thing, to us anyway, about Jon Brion is that we had a couple opportunities to get on board with the formerly Boston-based songwriter and producer long before we picked up his solo set Meaningless at the short-lived Harvard Square location of Other Music about seven years ago. Whilst an undergrad in the early '90s, our compadre Mr. Obb emphatically recommended to our attention the work of Jellyfish, a combo that featured Mr. Brion along with whoa, wait a second, Jon Brion wasn't actually in Jellyfish, his future bandmate Jason Falkner was (Brion did, however, apparently play guitar on Jellyfish's Spilt Milk). OK, fast-forward to 1998 or so, and our co-worker Max recommended we check out The Grays, which featured Mssrs. Brion and Falkner. Even so, nothing from Jellyfish or The Grays fired our imagination.

However, we certainly found what we were looking for when we bought Meaningless. The set is packed with immaculately produced indie rock, and features clever and melodic pop numbers and ballads. The crown jewel is the up-tempo scramber "I Believe She Is Lying." According to Brion's liner notes, the lyrics were co-written with fellow Boston scenemaker Aimee Mann. Those circular words provide a sharp focal point for the tune, which rides a dizzying jungle breakbeat -- think Scooby Doo's legs spinning before he gets moving -- and brilliantly layers in vocoder backing vocals and harmonies over syncopated and arpeggiated guitars. The only other comment Brion offers in the liner notes is the short description "fear of commitment anthem." Which is sort of like calling Mount Rushmore an interesting hill. "I Believe She's Lying" is #90 on the Clicky Clicky 200, the countdown of our 200 most-listened-to favorites; read prior CC200 posts right here.

Jon Brion -- "I Believe She's Lying" -- Meaningless
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[buy Meaningless from CD Baby right here]

Jon Brion: Internets | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

Today's Hotness: The Video Nasties, The Answering Machine

>> We truly have no idea what is going on with The Video Nasties' new track, but we like it. The young, London-based quintet has just released a video -- embedded above -- for the song, "Have You Seen My Albatross?," which apparently is the lead track to a forthcoming EP; a full-length release is planned for next year. The opening of "Albatross" is raucous overdriven punk, and then there is a romantic confessional bridge that reminds us of the J. Geils Band's 80's chart pop. And then the song ends. Abruptly. It's kind of brilliant. The Video Nasties most recent set was Oct. 2007's Karl Blau EP. We weren't crazy about the less poppy direction of that material as compared to the band's earlier singles and demos. But something about the darkness and slight dementia of "Albatross" has us intrigued once again. Perhaps the two-year-old band can blaze a surprising trail away from the very good synth-pop sound of its early days. We still think that old stuff is really hard to beat, however. Here is an old, delightfully Yachts-reminiscent demo, "Plus One."

The Video Nasties -- "Plus One" -- Southern Demos
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[buy Video Nasties music from Banquet Records UK right here]

>> So The Answering Machine has launched this new blog to detail its recording efforts, which began last Monday at a rural studio in North Yorkshire in England. The blog has all manner of details about the Manchester quartet's planned debut record and the music that will be on it. The set is titled Another City, Another Sorry, or at least that is its working title. The band has been recording all the basic tracks live, and will finish with overdubs. The Answering Machine in its first week in the studio recorded basic tracks for "It's Over, It's Over," "Lightbulbs," "Cliffer," and "Time." Fans will recognize many of those titles: "It's Over, It's Over" was a b-side to the dynamite "Silent Hotels" single released in 2007, "Lightbulbs" was also a single from last year, and "Time" was a demo the Strokes-idolizing foursome recorded with input from Tony Hoffer earlier this year that is now streaming at its MySpace casa.

>> Another new Johnny Foreigner track has surfaced over at YouTube. The phenomenal noise pop trio recently performed the track "This Trapeze Ball Thought Out" for London-based music publication The Fly in its courtyard somewheres. The sound quality isn't great, so what little we can tell is the track seems a bit forumulaic, with Kelly starting off the vocal and Alexei joining in after a bit while teasing harmonics out of an acoustic guitar. Kelly later drops a somewhat funky bass lick in the mix, but for the most part the recording doesn't show off the tune well. That said, it is notable that new material continues to slowly seep out from the band as it prepares to enter the studio next year to record the follow-up to this year's fireball full-length Waited Up Til It Was Light. Readers will recall we found last month a different new tune, "Ghost The Festivals," buried in the middle of this live set performed for Channel M based out of Manchester, England. And we think we sent this awesome YouTube clip for a new song whose title we do not yet know out on our Twitter feed a week or so ago. Perhaps our new motto should be "clicky clicky music: we watch all the Johnny Foreigner YouTubes so you don't have to." Anyhoo, Mr. Berrow said here earlier this month that the act will begin recording new material in February, and the band is expected to spend a significant amount of time touring the U.S. early next year as well.

From The Admin Cubicle: At Least There's Twitter...

Aloha readers. We've been sick this week. As a result, there's been a whole lotta nothin' here. And we're not in New York right now seeing Johnny Foreigner. And we're not up at Tufts seeing Ringo Deathstarr. All of which is a drag. But throughout our illness we have been sending a lot of updates out to our Twitter feed, so if you are not a follower, perhaps you should get with that. We'll be back Monday with items about The Video Nasties and The Answering Machine. And in the meantime we may get some pictures in from Stengelero about tonight's Johnny Foreigner set at Fontana's in New York that we're missing. We'll see.

Todays Hotness: Fields, Johnny Foreigner, Calories

>> There is finally news about new releases from Fields. The now-London-based quartet, whose "Brittlesticks" is one of our favorite songs, will release a single Dec. 1 for the track "Are You Ready Yet?" The tune will also feature on the band's sophomore full length Hollow Mountains, which will be released in March 2009 ( at least in the UK, and by Warners, so far as we know). The set was produced by band fronter Nick Peill and mixed by the one and only Chris Zane, who you will recall worked on the Human Television track we raved about here as well as the most recent and forthcoming sets from New York-based dream pop heroes Asobi Seksu. Fields mounts a small tour of the UK beginning in mid-November and lasting through the end of the month. You can check out all of the tour dates at the band's MySpace casa right here. We last wrote about Fields here in July when we were slipped the new track "Worst Love;" at the time we reported the record was to be released before year end, but apparently it's been pushed back. No word on what the b-side to "Are You Ready Yet?" will be, but we can already offer you a download of a version of the track courtesy of band reps RadarMaker.

Fields -- "Are You Ready Yet?" -- Preview MP3
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[buy Fields records from Newbury Comics right here]

>> Here is awesome full-screen live video of Johnny Foreigner performing their single "Eyes Wide Terrified" at the New Slang club night in England last month. We sadly realized yesterday that due to work commitments we're not going to be able to make it down to see the band's Friday evening set at CMJ, as had been our plan. On the upside, that means we will be able to see Ringo Deathstarr at Tufts that night. But the video linked supra does a good job of instilling that feeling that we're really missing out. Oh well. Johnny Foreigner is likely touring the U.S. a great deal next year, so hopefully they'll do it up like Frightened Rabbit, who seem to play Boston five times a year despite being from Selkirk, Scotland.

>> Birmingham, England-based indie trio Calories, which sprung from the ashes of the late, lamented indie rockers Distophia earlier this year, reports (in our MySpace comments, no less) that it has completed recording a debut full-length and it is slated for release in February 2009. A scouring of Calories' MySpace turns up this blog post that states the band recorded 10 songs at Northampton, England's The Lodge Studios last June. Two tracks, "A Bear A Bison" and "To Encounter A Deer," are streaming at said MySpace, but there is no information available currently about a label. We wouldn't be all that surprised if Big Scary Monsters was attached to the project, but then again BSM can't put out *every* record now, can it? How about some kickass old Distophia? This file is tagged "Ten Inch," but we've always been suspicious that that is a bad tag. Great song though.

Distophia -- "Ten Inch" -- MySpace Download
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That Was The Show That Was: Frightened Rabbit | Middle East

For the first time out of several that we've seen the band perform, Frightened Rabbit Sunday night appeared, well, a little frightened. And band fronter Scott Hutchison seemed almost willing to concede the performance a failure from the onset. What the Selkirk, Scotland-based quartet didn't count on was the fact that the young crowd was ready to love anything it did, even the occasionally tentative or forced. All was forgiven by the grateful crowd even before Mr. Hutchison began offering apologies. Which brings us to an adage of ours that we'll explain later: they can't all be flaming gong nights.

At issue Sunday night was the fact that the foursome, according to Mr. Hutchison, had too much to drink in New York the prior evening and accidentally left a substantial amount of its stage gear there, including guitar pedals, MIDI pedals, cables and we think the organ the band has been using recently to perform our favorite FR song, "The Twist." Much of the equipment apparently belonged to newest member Andy Monaghan, who (incidentally or coincidentally) was very hard to hear in the house mix from our perch several bodies back from the opposite side of the stage.

So, yeah, "flaming gong nights." That's a reference to what in our opinion is the greatest live performance clip ever filmed, namely Van Halen's 1981 Oakland show that climaxed with this amazing version of "Unchained." During the finale, drummer Alex Van Halen figuratively takes the show to 11 by standing up, grabbing a torch and lighting a giant gong on fire. We'll say that again: he stands up, grabs a torch, and lights a giant gong on fire. Then he smashes the hell out of the gong, sits down and smashes his crash cymbals, and it's complete mayhem. That, in our opinion, is the apex of live musical performance. Of course not every show can be bananas like that, and that is OK.

So while Frightened Rabbit did exhibit last night signs of being off their game -- despite having cobbled together a sufficient amount of stage gear from touring mates Spinto Band and The Swims -- it is hard to flop with such exceptional material. And so fans called out praise between songs as the lads tuned; young co-eds dreamily gazed at Mr. Hutchison and sang along to his solo ballad "Poke;" tousle-haired young men gesticulated their teenage angst toward the low ceiling while chanting out "you're the shit and I'm knee-deep in it" along with their hero. Truly the Frightened Rabbit phenomenon continues to propagate unchecked, and last night's stymied performance did nothing to derail it. Drummer Grant Hutchison put an exclamation point on the evening -- and the band's apparent frustrations -- as he bashed out the exultant, obliterating tattoo that ends the sublime shouter "Square 9" and closed out the show. Grant did so with such ferocity that we half-worried as he lurched up from his kit that he was heading to the fans in the front row to continue administering beatings. Which, in a way, is pretty damn close to a flaming gong.

We posted the remainder of Frightened Rabbit's tour dates here in the foot of the review of the band's new live record Liver! Lung! FR!, which is being released by Fat Cat today; the band returns to Boston in January. Below we've posted our admittedly fuzzy memory of last night's set list, and under that are a couple live MP3s being offered here by the web site of Glaswegian nightclub The Mill, where Frightened Rabbit played Sept. 25.

The Modern Leper
Fast Blood
Old, Old Fashioned
I Feel Better
Good Arms Versus Bad Arms
Poke
My Backwards Walk
The Greys
Square 9

Frightened Rabbit -- "The Modern Leper" -- Live At The Mill, Glasgow, Scotland
Frightened Rabbit -- "I Feel Better" -- Live At The Mill, Glasgow, Scotland
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[buy Frightened Rabbit music from Newbury Comics here, EMusic here]

Frightened Rabbit: Internets | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

Selected Prior Frightened Rabbit coverage:
FR Live At TT The Bear's, July 2008
FR Live at the Middle East, March 2008
Review: Frightened Rabbit | The Midnight Organ Fight
FR Live at Great Scott, November 2007