past articles

25 September 06

Doveman: So They Come Barbed With Insomnia For A Birth Mother

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Johnnie Cluney Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) Thomas Bartlett doesn’t write ballads. To know this is just to possess the logical wherewithal to understand that no one, man or woman is seduced by a well-concealed switchblade or a frothy, rabid growling. One might share a beer after the exchange of such sentiments, but on no occasion will one be quick to lie in close and press warmth to warmth with another after such a thing has occurred. One would be crazy to do so. Somebody would get hurt is how the trite and familiar warning might go. It’s a long-winded way of getting back to the beginning and making it perfectly clear that Doveman, the musical project that Bartlett fronts out of New York City is not wimpy or coy with any of the words you think you may or may not hear on its debut full-length “The Acrobat.” They do not write ballads for ballads are usually fuzzy and these songs are barbed. It’s best to approach his songs the way a beekeeper or a snake charmer would – with the utmost care and respect. Find yourself all the protection in the world. In this case, the pain is mightier than the sword. Bartlett has been stung and wronged and saddened and when any of those three things happen, he turns those shitty experiences into songs that sound like they were taken from the soundtrack to Makeout City, volumes one, two and three. They have that overall feel of bed sheets getting pulled directly out of the dryer and placed up to chilly cheekbones, but it’s mostly a decoy, a way to distract the mind from something inevitably less comforting. Bartlett writes some of his lyrics, it seems, with dual purpose, lacing them with poison or just constructing them with an invisible liner that lures the ear in and then takes a nibble before it’s suspected a thing. You think Damien Rice and Antony and the Johnsons, but then you’re nailed with a blackened heart, naively fooled into falling for that old joke about Bangkok (What’s the capital of Thailand? Don’t know? The punchline gets pretty literal and the disruption in the belly feels about the way the original feelings do that Bartlett goes after).more...

17 September 06

Bound Stems: What You'd Get If You Remixed The Great Depression With A Choose Your Own Adventure Book Enthrallingly, But Incorrectly Paginated

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Johnnie Cluney Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) Bound Stems chief songwriter Bobby Gallivan was a high school history teacher for two and a half years before taking what amounts to a sabbatical in order to sow his wild rock and roll oats with his dear old friends, most of whom he’s known since they ran three-man weaves together playing high school basketball. Most of the songs on “Appreciation Night,” the band’s debut full-length album give off the sensation that they were reared before then and afterwards. They are preoccupied with the examination of all things anthropocentric, in particular cases. Taken, with a wonderfully insightful, college educated mind, the lives of these songs seem to be coming from a period of days that would now appear to have a brandy-colored tint to them if in fact they were to be viewed on photographic papers. They’re looks into childhood—having progressed many years past it – but they also have handles on present-day trials. These are memories as actual or hypothetical as they’d like to be. They’re stories for the times when the crickets talk and you need something heavy, shadowy and yet airy to answer back with. Gallivan, when he’s absolutely forced into doing it – being the practicing history teacher that he formerly was, would compare his band to post-Revolutionary War America, when the country “didn’t know what the fuck” it was doing. He says that the time between the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and ratification of the Constitution is exceptionally apt to describe the band’s current situation, where everything is in limbo and the leaps of faith are coming by the dozens.more...

11 September 06

The High Strung: A Tattered Atlas For A Co-Pilot And A Friend In Uncle Bob

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Johnnie Cluney//Photos by Jesse Codling Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) Forget all that you know about the other hardest working bands in show business. They are simply the others. They are those who, upon the send-off for another half-a-year tour, would wish a skeptical, “Bon Voyage,” to Michiganites The High Strung and secretly think in the backs of their minds that what was being undertaken was will-breaking high comedy, sure to destruct a band of strong men. But they are all lazy calves in equal comparison. The High Strung wear the cuff links. Singer/guitarist Josh Malerman, bassist Chad Stocker and drummer Derek Berk may one day usurp all of the power of the cockroach and take the place as the life form that is believed to be resilient through all instances. They keep coming back, to the dive bars and the libraries, year after year. They bend their bodies into their van – decorated with the colors and stripes of something the Baltimore Orioles would have trademarked and marketed back when Rick Dempsey was the clown prince of the rain delay. They are the chamberlains of the sovereign kingdom where working one’s ass off is a form of nobility and the basis for the heaviest and most decorative coat of arms. Their tours, over the last four years have been endless, the mile markers blurred into one vertical sign that says, “Infinity, minus one.” These three have maxed out a durable touring truck, putting over 250,000 miles on it and put just under 200,000 on their current vehicle. The aforementioned truck was left ceremoniously at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. At 2:30 a.m., on the band’s way to New York, they caravanned with the new van in-tow and drove the truck up the front steps of the museum, where Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sweater hangs, and parked it, abandoning it in hopes that it was at its ideal final resting point. They made a plaque that they put in a coffee can full of cement so it would have the look of a display, making it clear that “this was a rock and roll vehicle.”more...

3 September 06

Bonnie Prince Billy: So Unquestionably Human That He's Inhuman, Thereby Making Him Mystical And Perfect For Every One Of Our Funeral Services

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration and photos by Johnnie Cluney Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) A point is reached, in considering Will Oldham, when splitting his personality, his sun-kissed/heaven-bred music and his spirit as it is rightly or wrongly perceived to be, off into their different abbreviations and counter descriptions feels like filthy, filthy slander. He cannot and should not be taken asunder or reduced into words, though he does incredible things with them on his own time. He can’t be recognized as anything but a direct connection to the polar ice caps, the toasting campfire, the whistling wind, the lofting plumes of smoke from a chimney, the expanse of the sky, your loved ones, his loved ones, the dead, the living, the burn of the tropics and the hum of a silence. Of course, you’re thinking, ‘Why stop there?’ There are an unlimited number of answers to a question phrased, “What is Will Oldham to you?” When you stay away from asking, “Who is Will Oldham?” you avoid running into definite answers and facts that have a fleet of reasoning behind them—things that have to be agreed upon, for there can be no dispute, just nodding and shrugs. But asking what he is invites an exercise that can actually spare us of derivative, categorical referencing and cold, hardness. Oldham, also known as Bonnie Prince Billy, from all rational indications, can be assumed to be at least 90-percent mystique and 10-percent reality. It’s a daring move to take a position claiming that the greater portion of a man is so unquestionably human he’s inhuman, thereby making him mystical. Of all American songwriters born in the last 50 years, Oldham poses himself as the exception to the most rules and is a denizen of a world that few others even know about, a place where the wilds are tamed – or at least observed naturally – and brought from behind the curtain, still shaking and damp, not used to the exposure. Out into the open air, the rawness of the emotions that Oldham brings to the forefront of his songs, is breathtaking.more...