They Threw Me Off The Hay Truck About Noon

There was a free Titles show at Cafe Nine last night, last-minute so you probably missed it. It was a birthday bash for Ryan Gorman (Glue Machine, Iron Hand). Glue Machine played-- their riffs started to sink in with me a little better than they did the first time I saw them. Think Black Flag, side-two-and-afterwards ("Nothing Left Inside") with a little bit of Flipper (I thought they were playing "Sex Bomb" as their third song, but they weren't). They're still working on it. Some guy who I'm guessing doesn't own "Jealous Again" got up on stage to tell jokes. Titles played about seven or eight songs. Adrian from Titles had a short in his set-up, got shocked right away through his microphone, and sang his back-ups away from the mic after that. "Fuck It" got changed-up to a more languid pace, sounding folky. Brad's phrasing for "Pillowcase" became almost soul, or something. "Who To Hold" rocked. I didn't feel like working and only took a couple of pictures. That's it.


Titles -

"Going Down To Die"
(Danzig cover)

I Was Out To Rob Your Grave

Saturday night's Titles record release show at Cafe Nine was a pretty big deal, seeing how the guy who made the awesome "We Have No Hands" and "Fuck It" videos was right up front taping it, and judging by all of the media heavies that were in attendance: John from CT Indie, that guy from the Courant, presumably someone from the Advocate (though I didn't actually spot anyone, I'm just guessing), and a host of others that I'm sure I wouldn't recognize... no doubt there'll be a ton of words slung around about this show, which sorta has me reluctant to add my own noise to the fray. I mean, really, I read the write-up in the Hartford paper this morning and the only thing that was missing was the hash marks and the time-of-day notations that I'm sure were visible in the margins while the guy was taking notes. That, and a list of synonyms for "layered" and "understated". Do you really expect me to stick my head out of the bunker with that kind of ammo whizzing around? Fuuuuuck me.

This actually wasn't even my favorite Titles set from this year-- I thought the one when they opened for Vetiver and Happy Birthday was better, a little bit more off-the-cuff and winging it-- but this one had one big thing in its favor, which was they got to play for a heck of a lot longer and mix things up a little. Everybody had a full hour to soak up Titles, which is a fortunate thing, no doubt. There was even a little bit of comedy relief (besides Brad's on-stage jokes, which, you know, the practice is really paying off), as John Miller's drum kit kept sliding forward, which Matt Thomas (M.T. Bearington) tried to solve at first with a cinder block, then finally with a 40-lb set of barbell weights that he "just happened to have in the trunk of the car." If that's not Youth Crew enough for you-- on the same stage where Crippled Youth played just six months earlier, no less-- then I don't know what your problem is.

Dirt Bell's predecessor, Up With The Sun, was my favorite CT record of '08, and one wag is already calling Dirt Bell "the best Connecticut release ever"; no doubt you'll be seeing this one on plenty of best-of lists at the end of the year, also. One thing you won't find as often on the new record is what has been my favorite sort of Titles song, which is the slow burn that builds to a massive guitar pile-up (Up With The Sun's "Piano Girl" is probably the best example of that); the one track on Dirt Bell that I think comes the closest, "Who to Hold", actually has more of a Bobby Darin/'50s crooner type feel to it, which the band plays up with the use of handclaps and some oddball backing vocals. The ingenuity of this record can be better found in something like "Pillowcase", an amazingly gorgeous song about a guy digging up his ex-girlfriend (I'm guessing) so he can carry her around all day in a pillowcase.

I think it says a lot for a still-growing label like Safety Meeting when they can put out a local release that's getting this kind of attention already, and the packaging for the album definitely follows through on its end; besides the regular CD, one hundred numbered copies were pressed on vinyl, with silver/grey artwork hand-silkscreened onto black jackets, plus a CD (with minimal artwork) included with the LP version. The tracks I'm posting here aren't from the CD, of course, but are my own vinyl rips. "Pillowcase" has been available as a free download as part of the Tweefort "Home and Abroad" compilation for a few months now, and "Fuck It" has been out as a video since last October, so I don't think I'm giving away too much of the store by including these three songs here.


Titles -

"Pillowcase"

"Who to Hold"

"Fuck It"

Wait, I Don't Know

It felt weird leaving the house before 7:00 last night for a show in New Haven, but The Space is an all-ages spot so it actually matters if you get there before 8 o'clock. Even though The Space has been around for 7 years or so I'd never been there before, so I took some time to walk around the place, trying to stay out of other people's way (one girl pointed to a chair I was standing next to and said "Are you sitting here?", to which I replied "No, I'm standing over here").

Titles went on first, and since they hadn't played in about six months they eased through a really short set of all new songs, during which Brad (the singer) tried to stretch things out a bit by telling really dry stories in-between each song while the rest of the guys in the band laughed at him ("go on, you're doing a great job"). If you're thinking this sounds like my kind of entertainment, you're probably right. "Up With The Sun" was my favorite Ct. release of '08, and the next Titles album ("Dirt Bell") is already sounding like it's going to have even more great material; "Bottom of the Lake" and "Who to Hold", the last two songs of last night's set, were particularly stunning. A Titles song won't always have a rousing chorus, or a telegraphed crescendo, or even seem like a fully finished idea some of the time-- in fact, their slower songs seem to be getting even shorter-- but there always seem to be a point in their best songs where I start to marvel at what's going on, and then go back and try to figure out how it arrived at that point in the first place.




I like the King Tuff record alright, and the Happy Birthday song ("Girls FM") on the Sub Pop web site that everyone seems to have heard also, but two songs into his set last night and I started wandering off-- it was just ridiculously dumb. I was actually on the stairs on my way out the door, only the next song sounded friggin' great (I think it was "I Wanna Stay"), so I went back in. This time I stood at the back of the room, where the sound was fuller, and that seemed to solve the problem for a while. A part of me is willing to go to the mat for anything that resembles Rasperries-styled '70s pop-rock in a world full of Passion Pits, but not at the expense of putting up with someone else's lazy bullshit. Eventually I wandered off back to the stairs, and wouldn't you know the band started sounding great again, so I guess the whole point was that Happy Birthday sound really nice if there's stairs around.


Titles -

"Piano Girl"

Happy Birthday -

"Girls FM"

(these files are now listen-only)

Fuck It I'm Gone

Let's Try And Cheat Our Death

Bands play at the Daffodil Festival in Meriden every year, though they're usually just your standard local cover bands, plus every so often someone like The Reducers would sneak in. This year, though, a handful of credible indie bands played, including a few Safety Meeting bands who were given their own stage on Sunday (yup, that's today).

I know it's hard to tell by some of these photos-- which seem to depict the usual bleak New England winter scenery instead of anything resembling spring-- but it was actually 90 friggin' degrees today. The heat took enough out of me where I decided to skip the Box Elders show in Wallingford tonight, which I know I'll end up regretting later. Cherry St. kinda sucks, though, and anyway, I'll get another chance to catch up on my Medication fix (who're opening for Box Elders, along with Estrogen Highs) at the Crappy Dracula show next weekend.

I know I've said it before, but it would be hard for me to imagine a band like The Mountain Movers existing if Wilco hadn't been around first, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. They've added Crooked Hook's Joe Maddalena on guitar, which is great for the little psych freak-outs that populate most Mountain Movers songs. Their set seemed to be all at the same tempo from beginning to end, but "When The Sun Is White" sounded loud and glorious, and Dan Greene's unique singing style (which usually hits me like he's in the wrong key) was actually sort of cool this time. Plus his bone-dry stage patter was completely funny, even if it went over the heads of most of the people there.




Titles' "Up With The Sun" CD made it onto my Fake Best-Of list for 2008, and months later it still hasn't slid back at all with me yet. Sometimes there's nothing better than the warm sound of someone hitting guitar strings, and that's what Titles are all about to me-- plus, they write great songs. Seeing them today really underscored my impression that they're pretty much the best straight-up indie rock band (not lo-fi, not garage-- taking all of that out) that Connecticut has right now.

Titles -

"Coal Mine"

The Mountain Movers -

"Let's Open Up The Chest"

(these files are now listen-only)

Let's Be Defeatist Forever

I'm almost a year into this blog and I still haven't written about anything from Safety Meeting yet, which isn't from a total lack of effort on my part-- I've seen a few Safety Meeting bands (though none in '08, now that I think about it) and I've bought a bunch of Safety Meeting releases over the past few years. I haven't completely fallen asleep here, even if it looks like it.

In order to catch up, I'm going to (rather quickly) go through a few releases from what is probably the most high-profile indie rock label in Ct. right now. Don't let it seem from what I've selected here that the Safety Meeting roster is only made up of hipster-type indie rock stuff; with bands like Crooked Hook, The Vultures, and Humanoid, they know how to bring the heavy rock, also.




It's hard for me to imagine bands like The Mountain Movers existing if it wasn't for Wilco. That's not to say that The Mountain Movers sound exactly like Wilco or anything, just that they operate within a similar landscape, which is sorta laconic, stretched-out indie rock. "Let's Open Up The Chest" marks one of Safety Meeting's first releases since becoming a vinyl-only label, and no doubt this LP is a great package, with a full-color sleeve (painted by The Mountain Movers' Dan Greene), a nice heavy vinyl record alongside a CD-R, and a limited pressing of 300 that's supposed to be hand-numbered; my copy doesn't have a number on it, so I guess I'll never know. This is one of those albums that works awfully well once you've listened to the whole thing; I definitely didn't "get it" when all I had was a few songs on my mp3 player, so if the song below interests you at all, you should probably fire off an order for this thing.




The Mountain Movers -

"When The Sun Is White"

(this file is now listen-only)





This made my half-assed "best of 2008" list-- it's that friggin' good. If I had to draw a quick comparison I'd probably say that Titles sound like a more guitar-driven Nada Surf, but that just makes them sound like shit so forget I even mentioned it. I'd never seen Titles before I bought this (and still haven't), so I was amazed at how great this CD becomes the deeper you get into it; every song has something going for it. Titles are now three songs into their "Covers Project" (one new cover song per month, posted on their web site www.listentotitles.com), which so far they've covered Mazzy Star, Queen, and Danzig. Pretty rad, if you ask me.




Titles -

"Who's Disguise"

(this file is now listen-only)





When I bought this 7" picture disc at a show in '07, no way did I expect that you'd still be able to buy copies a year and a half later-- only a few hundred of these beauties were made and they should've sold out really quick. Yet you can still order this for $7, and it's definitely a nice thing to have. "Wait, I Don't Know" is one of my favorite Titles songs, though this one isn't a vinyl rip; it's a 224 kbps file that I got a while ago from the Safety Meeting web site. I still haven't actually played this pic disc yet, only taking it out of the sleeve once to take this picture of it.

Titles -

"Wait, I Don't Know"

(this file is now listen-only)





Weigh Down grew out Leaves of Lothlorien as well as Seagrave, an emo band from Wolcott whose 1998 four-song demo tape I still have (numbered 9/25!). I also still have a couple of earlier CDs back when they were somewhat more rock-oriented and called "The Weigh Down", having since dropped the "The" from their name. I was leaning towards posting "Bend Any Way You Can", one of the harder tracks from "Welcome To The Family Zoo", but I kept going back to "Michu Bean" because it's so irresistibly catchy and peppy. And I don't normally like peppy (hyper, maybe, but not peppy), but here's your freaking peppy anyway.




Weigh Down -

"Michu Bean (howdoyoudoit)"

(this file is now listen-only)