Southeast Engine is Back

How do I write about Southeast Engine without being hugely biased? This band has embodied the feeling and the idea of living in Appalachia for the past 5 years for me – ever since I moved down to Athens, Ohio for college. They were the first concert I saw, and continued as one of my favorite bands through my entire Appalachian experience. They defined Athens. They defined the feeling of being home there. Their shows were common, and albums were released reliably. I remember the anticipation for a new album. Sitting in Cincinnati with my boyfriend at the time, he played me “Psychoanalysis.” We sat there with out mouths opened, positively high on the excitement we had for anything new and Southeast Engine.

I had a radio show. I interviewed local musicians. About three weeks into my show, I decided I needed to have Southeast Engine on the show. I hung up posters on every street corner in town, announcing that “Athens favorite rock band” would be on the radio. I was so star struck when I met them, I almost laugh at my own naiveté. Ok, I do laugh. It will silly. I was ridiculous. In the next four years, I saw them over and over again, realized they were real human beings, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously. I became friends with Adam Torres, my favorite band member… who is no longer with them. I found out he convinced them to let him in the band because they needed a keyboard player. He didn’t play keyboard. Once he was in, he played guitar. It makes me smirk.

My friends and I would go see Southeast Engine at the old Front Room, in the old Baker Center. That was before the school remade a new Front Room into a sterile box of coffee addiction. The old room was dark and dingy and the crowd sang along to half the show. It felt raw and alive, and it was a completely new experience. If you listen to Southeast Engine’s old material, it has a much more punk feel to it. It’s not polished, and the storytelling is not quite there yet. They were young. It is still some of my favorite.

Since then, the band has evolved. Its albums tell stories, and a theme unites them. You hear a lot more of the folk influence of Appalachia in them. And no album feels more Appalachian than Canary.

Here's my try at reviewing it........

This Athens, Ohio-based band takes us back in time for their latest release, recalling both the story and musical likeness of the Great Depression era. They stay true to what they know, though, steeping the songs in the kind of Appalachian folk that screams out with the occasional electric guitar, but mostly glimmers with organ and acoustic pickings.

Canary is a concept album that takes us along for a ride with a family stuck in a mining town with the worst kind of economic tragedy. Trombone and trumpet float atop “Cold Front Blues,” about snow’s devastating effects on a town dependent on natural resources, and ragged guitar solos rip through “1933 (Great Depression),” a track that captures a sense of hope despite hard times. Lines like “When church lets out her face is the one I see/ her dark blue eyes of mystery/are making me devout” build the multidimensional characters in Southeast Engine’s narrative. These are the sort of love songs that people stopped writing in the age of bling and Bieber.

We learn that the main character’s mother has died in “Red Lake Shore,” which starts with a faraway vocal echo. It builds with Leo Deluca’s shuffling drumbeat, and the spot-on vocal harmonies of frontman Adam Remnant, and his brother and bandmate Jesse. Billy Matheny cuts into “At Least We Have Each Other” with a hotter-than-the-Devil flame of organ, adding an old-timey feel to the chiming piano that accompanies it.

Through the album, it’s easy to develop a relationship with the family whose life Southeast Engine details. The theme rings out as especially meaningful today, with Appalachia still dealing with environmental disasters like mountaintop removal mining that wreak havoc on its communities. This is an album that finally seems to capture the feeling that Southeast Engine has been working toward since they formed in 1999. They’re writing about what they know, and the music resultantly falls right into place.

A Letter to Sub Pop Records

Dear Sub Pop,

I love you dearly. You send me wonderful records every now and then, and you send them by mail! Do you even know how excited I am to receive records in the mail? It is my favorite kind of mail.

In exchange for your kindness, I do try to listen to everything you send and read all the press releases that come along for the ride. I do enjoy a musician's story, even when you puff them up to be something probably a little bit greater than they really are. But I like positive music journalism, so reading impassioned things about new music is encouraging.

However, I think you should get your act together on this Twilight Singers press release. I cannot read words strung together when every single sentence has one adverb: best.

I get it. You like this guy's new record. You even think it's better than the rest of his records. And, by golly, it might be the most impressive thing the man has done in his life.

But GET A GRIP. You're pretty much making it sound like this man invented the English language. Like this guy was the first person to make it sound like a guitar is attacking the air with its soundwaves. Like this guy invented all musical instruments and then taught all humankind how to use them. Like this guy is the only one capable of making a song worth listening to.

For all I know (and I don't know), Greg Dulli is a musical genius. Maybe he invented a genre. Maybe he climbed to the top of the pyramids with his legs tied together while the peaceful protesters of Cairo threw stones at him. Maybe he got stuck in between two mountains, cut his arm off, proceeded to compose a symphony with one arm, and then carried the remaining 1,800 sufferers of the Guinea Worm to Canada on his back to get them some better health care.

But for god's sake, TONE IT DOWN. I'm pretty sure the man is not god.

Much love, and sincere admiration for your record label,

Danielle

Papercuts - Fading Parade

I saw Papercuts once. The opened for Vetiver at a dive bar. I went with a boy I liked. I was bored out of my mind. The only thing I remember was too much fuzz (reverb, not alcoholz). I might have fallen asleep during their set, was I not standing for its duration.

I thought to myself, "Papercuts are way more boring than I thought! I will never care about them again!" And then they never occupied my thoughts again.

Until this week. Fading Parade, their latest (and forth) album, arrived in my little mail box. It was shoved in there, the envelope barely fitting. I took it out, I smirked, and I shook my head in disbelief. Sometimes the things you ignore come back to you in the most opportune times.

I popped the album into my car on the way to work. I was in awe. This stuff was way beautiful. It's Beach Housey. It's woozy in a "i slept in til noon and ate a dozen pancakes with my favorite person in the world" kind of way. It feels full and kinda bedhead and puffed out.

This Jason Robert Quever guy writes all the songs and plays all the instruments, and then he has some guys help him with his live show. I don't know how he went from pretty boring to superpretty and dreamy (in a good way), but he MASTERED it on this album.

The second song on the album is called "Do What You Will." The album is good from start to end, but I can't help but go back to this song. It doesn't really remind me of any specific music. Maybe a little bit of a 60's surf vibe, a little 00's lo-fi sleeper sound, a little chillwave? It's not that original, but it also doesn't sound like anything else I've heard lately.

This isn't going to be some mind-blowing album. It's not Mumford and Sons. It's not Tallest Man on Earth. It's just quietly sneaking into your brain, overtaking your thoughts, making your life a living dream. And a really good dream, at that.

Enjoy.

Papercuts - Do What You Will

Ohhhh my lord. Just checked Sub Pop. He's on tour with Beach House. Ladies and gentlemen, if you live in a cooler city than me, you MUST go and be wooed.

Brown Recluse - Impressions of a City Morning

Anyone who emulates the Zombies and sounds this good doing it is fine by me.
Brown Recluse "Impressions of a City Morning" by Slumberland Records

It's Friday night, I just got off work, and I'm making Funfetti cookies with this song on repeat. Am I lame in a new city, or just damn awesome?

The Dodos - No Color

The Dodos have found their Avatar. Visiter, their 2007 sophomore release, may have been their Titanic, putting them on the charts. But two albums later, they are back with an opus that is so vividly three-dimensional, you don’t need glasses (or headphones). The San Francisco duo’s strength has always centered on a syncopated drumbeat that ropes its way into the body and around the heart. It sneaks into hidden pockets of their songs, shocking layers of guitar to life. Whereas Visiter has a more hollow, bare-boned core, and their 2009 follow-up, Time to Die, seems calming in comparison, No Color fleshes out the feral, tribal percussion with layers of guitar. The gaps and holes in the songs are gone, yet the ear can still catch every nuance without feeling extra clutter.

More than ever, the tone of the new record is menacing. Meric Long’s acoustic finger picking is coated with jarring bursts of electric fuzz. Simple vocal melodies are at the core of the best songs on No Color. “When Will You Go” is striking in its melancholy beauty. Logan Kroeber weaves a thumping backdrop to the verses, allowing them room to breathe, and aggressively thrashes forward between them. Long imitates Rodrigo y Gabriela’s dexterous guitar playing on “Don’t Stop” and “Companions,” fingers flying across the strings like a flickering fire.

With every measure, The Dodos contradict the album’s title. No Color has a bright vibrancy, a sense of movement rare in non-dance music. “Sleep” is the ultimate anthem for insomniacs, seemingly conveying the simultaneous frustrations and excitement of being awake long after everyone else. You get the idea these guys thrive on late-night ideas, channeling creative forces at odd hours. Rather than envisioning blue aliens, though, Long and Kroeber have found living, breathing incarnations of their musical compositions. And it’s an otherworldly pleasure.

I'M SORRY.

but when did the Dodos become Gabriela y Rodrigo?!

listening to an advance copy of No Color, and i seem to have fallen in love with the ridiculously quick guitar picking. the tribal drumming madness is a given, but THIS?! good, folks. good.

Zero Plans, Multiply Nostalgia by 7

There was a time I used to sit underneath my lofted bunk bed in a skinny dorm room in the corner of the second floor of a quaint building in Athens, Ohio. I mostly tried to adjust. It was the beginning of college... my roommate was spending time with her girlfriend, and I was usually alone. I had friends, but it was the beginning of this new journey for me, and on weeknights, I had to get some work done. I would sit there, a giant desktop computer that the school lent to freshmen taking up most of my space. The printer, which sat beside it, took up the rest of the desk. I used it as my coffee table. I would sit two water bottles next to one another on the printer, and the occasional cookie I had stolen from the dining hall.

I was never really a group studier. I spent most of those nights alone.

Music was my company, as it is today. Friday night, past midnight, I find myself once again in a new city with few friends.

Zero 7. I don't remember how I first heard of them, but I spent a lot of time with them those first couple years of college. Later, I would find Pitchfork, and read scathing reviews that belittle their work. It was a long time ago that I cared to do this, and I can't remember much except that they called Zero 7 lazy and boring. Point taken. I disagree. I was disappointed in that assessment.

You see, this was, to me, the perfect accompaniment for a lonely night. Slightly uplifting, contemplative... the music seems to hint that they are about to stumble upon something... it's an exploration of some sort.

"Somersault," I thought (and still do) was one of the sweetest love songs. Maybe it's a little cheesy, but I don't care. This is coming from a girl whose favorite love songs include the cheesiest - Stars' "My Favourite Book" and The Cardigans' "For What It's Worth." (I think I'm just focusing on female-fronted love songs at the moment, but you get the point.)

When I feel the unknown
You feel like home, you feel like home

You put my feet back on the ground
Did you know you brought me around
You were sweet and you were sound
You saved me

I mean, come on.

I remember getting a 4 track EP that previewed their 2006 album, The Garden. I was in a music meeting for ACRN, and I grabbed it before anyone else could. Sia sings "Throw it All Away." This song still gets me carried away.


I accidentally stumbled upon it today, and it was sort of a hidden blessing. Life repeats itself, and here I am, trying to sort things out again.

So I sit, at a white desk, in a cold room that smells vaguely of smoke, where the echoes of the baby that lives in the apartment downstairs sometimes travels up through the floor. I sit, with a small laptop, and bottle of water on the desk next to me, alongside a container of hummus and bag of crackers. I wonder what I'm going to do this weekend. I think about the work ahead of me. And somehow, I know it's all going to be ok.