YouTube Rodeo: Yuck's "Get Away"

Kinda hot, kinda weird describes both Yuck's new video and the terrific and rising London-based act itself. The clip embedded above is the lead track from the quintet's superlative self-titled debut, which was released by Fat Possum last month. The band has a surprisingly busy SXSW schedule next week, playing a grand total of nine appearances over the course of four days, March 16 through 19. Local fans not able to get to the annual Austin-based music confab next week will have two shots to see Yuck bring the rock next month at the tail end of a West-to-East U.S. tour. The band plays Boston's Paradise Rock Club April 28 [Ticketbastard] and Northampton, Mass.'s Pearl Street nightclub the following evening. We mention the Pearl Street gig specifically because Yuck shares the stage with the absolutely fantastic NYC UFOs that night, making it one of the strongest bills we see on the radar. If you can't get enough of that Yuck rock 'n' roll stuff, here's a Soundcloud embed of the jam, but we can tell you from personal experience the Fat Possum dudes are totally obliging and will absolutely make sure you get your money's worth. Buy Yuck from Fat Possum right here. It will make you happy.

Participate! The WFMU Marathon 2011

In junior high, I felt like a big shot when WHAV played my frequent after-school Beatles requests. In high school, it was Dr. Demento on the weekends (I'm gonna assume that "Shaving Cream and "Dead Puppies" are still in the "Funny 5"). I strained to tune in to WERS' metal mecca Nasty Habits (which ended its 20 year run a few years ago). I spent all of my time in college at our station, WXPL, and heared the burgeoning days of "alternative" rock on WFNX during that time. And dove deep into WMBR's Breakfast of Champions when finally moving in to the Boston area. Luckily, there was always a radio station to influence and/or re-direct my musical tastes.

Things turned ominous for radion in the 90's, though, as lobbyists nudged along the loosening of corporate ownership restrictions and radio became less and less local and less and less interesting.

'Course, this here truck series of tubes have changed the math on this considerably - and just in the nick of time, really. The internet can serve us virtually any radio station or radio-like internet-only stream in the world. It's a boon, but does come at a price, since a lot of people seem to throw their hands up at the constantly flowing glut of stuff (by that I mean blogs other than this one!) and end up relying heavily on self-curated web streams that just reinforce what they already like.

So what you need is a good and interesting curator. While I continue to love WMBR and also WZBC, much of my aural attention is drawn to Jersey City, New Jersey's WFMU, a fully independent, self-sufficient, and almost entirely volunteer bastion of the wonderful, the weird, the stunning, and, yeah, occasionally the unlistenable. But even that unlistenable stuff is still interesting and isn't it fantastic that there's an outlet for it somewhere?

I came for the comedy, and stayed for the music (and more of that comedy). Scharpling and Wurster's hilarious Rock, Rot, and Rule was one of those discs that got passed around in the late 90's among music dorks. As soon as the internet became capable of reliably streaming audio as the next decade played out, everyone who heard it eventually did the math and realized that the show where that bit originated was still going strong. The Best Show on WFMU (Tuesday nights 9-midnight) celebrated 10 years last fall and Jon Wurster's cast of characters (along with callers from all over the world) are still calling in and harassing Tom for our amusement.

It wasn't long before I expanded my listening to, well, pretty much everything else on the station. The Boston-area native-hosted Evan "Funk" Davies Show (Wednesdays 9-midnight), Joe Belock's Three Chord Monte (Thursdays noon-3 pm), Mr. Fine Wine's Downtown Soulville (Fridays 7-8 pm), and the Cherry Blossom Clinic with DJ Terre T (Saturdays 3-6 pm) are my go-to staples that I can listen to any time thanks to FMU's rather incredible practice of archiving every edition of every show apparently forever. But tuning into the station at anytime virtually guarantees that you'll hear something interesting, unusual, and frequently mind-blowing before long. If that weren't enough, there's their other 24-hour automated streams: Ichiban serves up constant rock and soul classics, avant-garde is on UbuWeb, and Do or DIY and Give The Drummer Some cover pretty much everything else.

All that costs money, so WFMU takes these two weeks every year to ask nicely for it. They make it so fun that it's really the only pledge drive in all of radio that you actually end up wanting to listen to. There's tons of amazing pledge premiums, and Tom Scharpling, in particular, has got a corker this year: a t-shirt, a poster, and the pièce de résistance: "Rated G.G.," a 7" single of G.G. Allin songs cleaned up for General Audiences by Ted Leo, Fucked Up, Ben Gibbard, Mountain Goats, and Ty Segall. Plus - these will be available as a digital download and will include even more stuff by Dump, Scharpling and Wurster, and apparently more. AND, according to the Twitter machine, if you pledge during The Best Show tonight, 9 pm - midnight, you'll be in the running to win an autographed copy of the Numero Group's stupendous Syl Johnson box set, among many other things.

Even if you hated the station, the pledge will be worth it for all that stuff alone. But it's impossible to hate it: it is a vital cultural icon and needs our help to make sure it is maintained. If you have $1 million dollars, please give it to them, but help 'em out with anything you can. WFMU proves - on a 24 hour/7 day a week basis - what radio can and should be. Keep it alive.

-Michael Piantigini

WFMU on Twitter:
WFMU: @WFMU
Tom Scharpling: @scharpling
Evan "Funk" Davies: @efd
DJ Terre T: @TerreCherry

Review: Buffalo Tom | Skins

Thankfully, we haven't had to wait as long for Skins (out tomorrow on the band's own imprint, Scrawny Records) as we did for Three Easy Pieces, the album Buffalo Tom returned with in 2007 after a nine-year semi-hiatus. Better still, the new set is a stronger album. Where Three Easy Pieces felt sort of self-conscious in trying to figure out what the band means in the new century, Skins finds the band on more confident footing.

Its sound is layered and textured, with pianos and acoustic guitars and mandolins alongside some big SG/Marshall power chords. It breathes. That much of it was recorded with Paul Q. Kolderie at Camp Street Studios, with whom and where the band last worked with on its watershed 1992 album, Let Me Come Over (Camp Street being in what used to be the legendary Fort Apache studios) is probably no coincidence.

It's real, just as Buffalo Tom always have been. They've always been a band that's wears its heart on its sleeve, but in ways we can all relate to and with a sound to match. It's as if the Stones, Van Morrison, and The Who weren't Ivory Tower rock stars, but rather guys that grew up on your block or that you went to school with.

Skins' foundation lies in tracks 3-5. I don't think I'm out of line suggesting that guitarist Bill Janovitz has a trademark chord progression style out of which he's somehow managed, with subtle variances, to wrangle a couple of the band's biggest songs, "Taillights Fade" and "I'm Allowed." Here, it yields "Down" and its infectious titular refrain, and it feels as timeless a Buffalo Tom track as this all suggests. "Don't Forget Me" doesn't even need its lyrics to make you run your whole life through your mind and Tanya Donnelly's harmonies seal the deal; its follow-up "Guilty Girls" should be the feel-good rocker hit of the summer.

Meanwhile, bassist Chris Colbourn's songs here are still disarmingly simple in structure, but there's a lot to unpack. Where he recalled Maria Callas on Three Easy Pieces (on "CC and Callas"), here, "Miss Barren Brooks" remembers silent film actress Louise Brooks. Yes, I had to Google that.

Skins all comes down to the album's central broken heart, "The Big Light," Janovitz's dedication to his beloved uncle (he related the devastating story on his blog in 2009). It's a soaring rush of a racing mind trying to process a tragedy. Two-chord songs have rarely been more powerful.

The album's solo demos -- included on a deluxe edition -- are a must. There's not necessarily many major revelations of lost verses and nixed middle eights -- their arrangements are more or less the same. But the spare sound gives the songs even more heft. They sound like they were recorded after a long night of pouring hearts into song. Those pure moments of creation. Special mention to Colbourn's demo of "The Hawks & The Sparrows," which is a charming mix of his cracking, ill-sounding voice over a background of playing children.

Buffalo Tom has always meant autumn and back-to-school and flannel and melancholy reminiscence and the mental steeling for a bleak New England winter. Skins is not so different, but the end-of-winter release puts it in a different perspective. It breathes with that cool breeze from the first pre-Spring open window. It's still a bit dark and dreary outside, but we're turning that calendar page.

They're on tour in Europe right now, but return for a hometown gig at the Paradise on April 8th and play 2 for New Hampshire Public Radio in Portsmouth just before that on April 2nd. More US dates follow.

Their full schedule:
March 7, 2011: Melkweg, Amsterdam, Holland
March 8, 2011: Luxor, Cologne, Germany
March 10, 2011: Dingwalls, London, England
March 11, 2011: Sound Control, Manchester, England
March 12, 2011: Oran Mor, Glasgow, Scotland

April 2, 2011: The Music Hall, Portsmouth, NH (2 shows)
April 8, 2011: The Paradise, Boston, MA
April 13, 2011: Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN
April 14, 2011: Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL
April 28, 2011: Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY
April 29, 2011: M Room, Philadelphia, PA
April 30, 2011: The Black Cat, Washington, D.C.

May 17, 2011: Slim's, San Francisco, CA
May 18, 2011: Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA
May 19, 2011: Doug Fir, Portland, OR
May 20, 2011: Chop Suey, Seattle, WA

-Michael Piantigini

BUFFALO TOM: Intertubes | Twitter | Facebook | MySpace | Fan Reference

BILL JANOVITZ: Blog | Intertubes | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

Footage: Young Adults' "Let Us Out"

Potty-mouthed ambient punk wunderkinds Young Adults' first official (to our knowledge) video, frankly, is too beautiful to really be their video. But seemingly like everything else the band has churned out in its very brief life span, somehow the result matches the trio's ambitions and (likely) exceeds every one else's expectations. Young Adults would like to be seen by you in the passive voice when the act headlines an SXSW show March 18 at the Easy Tiger Patio. The set time is 1AM, so the nit-pickers among you may be correct in assuming that really means March 19. Whatever. Go to the show in Austin and get your head blown off by these guys. Once you've recovered, assuming you recover, you can catch the trio back in the Commonwealth March 27 when it opens for the mighty Titus Andronicus at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Prague-based Amdiscs issued Young Adults' full-length debut Black Hole in late 2010, and you can stream or buy MP3s here; if you are lucky you might be able to buy the thing on vinyl right here.

Be Prepared: Eldridge Rodriguez | You Are Released | 22 March

Boston noise-rock stalwart Eldridge Rodriguez' fourth solo effort, separate and apart from his work with local titans The Beatings. This full-length was written during and around the sessions for The Beatings' superlative 2009 effort Late Season Kids, and as such You Are Released evidences what seems to have been an incredibly fertile songwriting period for Mr. Rodriguez. But while his songs on Late Season Kids sound contemporary, there is something in the production on You Are Released's more aggressive numbers that imbues the guitar squall with a throw-back flannel dysphoria. Highlights include the annunciatory thriller "The Big Windup" and the melodic, mid-tempo, slide guitar-slung "Fragile Things," during which Rodriguez deploys an uncharacteristic murmur over a pulsing mirage of guitars, confessing "Dear Lord I shot my mouth off again." Midriff Records will issue You Are Released March 22.

Selected Previous E.R. Coverage:
Review: E.R. | This Conspiracy Against Us
That Was The Show That Was: E.R. | PA's Lounge
That Was The Show That Was: E.R. | TT The Bear's

Rock Over Boston: The Low Anthem at Old South Church 3.5.2011

[The Low Anthem at Old South Church 3.5.2011. Photo by Michael Piantigini.]

Review: The Baseball Project: Volume 2: High and Inside

As long as there's been records, there's been novelty records. Having grown up on my share of Dr. Demento, I guess I have a bit of a soft spot for 'em.

And that's what we have here, performed by a supergroup of sorts: In 2008, The Dream Syndicate's Steve Wynn put together the Baseball Project with like-minded hardball fan Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5. McCaughey sidelines with R.E.M. and recruited Peter Buck to play bass, while Wynn recruited his wife, Linda Pitmon of Zuzu's Petals and dozens of other records in your collection to drum. Together they've managed to crank out not one, but now two, full albums of songs about the legends, the characters, and the legendary characters that make baseball so much fun to follow in the first place.

Second albums of this sort are usually problematic - premises overstay their welcome and songs become even more contrived and forced - but Volume 2... easily bests it's predecessor. It just has better songs, and a better performances by the band, probably aided by the month or so they spent on the road in 2009.

Sure, they hang a couple over the plate, but hit a few home runs of their own along the way: Wynn's opener about Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, "1976," has a catchy chorus and chiming 12 string, "Ichiro Goes To The Moon" is a driving McCaughey rocker, and "Here Lies Carl Mays," a ballad about the only pitcher in the history of baseball to kill a player with a pitch (in 1920), is an affecting heartbreaker.

There are plenty of guest stars, some more noticeable than others. The Hold Steady's Craig Finn offers Twins booster-ism and makes "Don't Call Them Twinkies" sound like a Hold Steady outtake.

My only regret about the album is it's high Red Sox content would have played better before our pre-World Series win attitude adjustment. Roger Clemens made us angrier, and the tragedies of Tony Conigliaro and Bill Buckner weighed so much more heavily on the Red Sox fan's deeply bruised psyche, before 2004. We're mature enough to handle it all now. I think.

-Michael Piantigini

The Baseball Project: intertubes | MySpace