past articles

29 March 07

The Kingdom: Ruling The Roost Without Any Flowery Tomfoolery, Just Spit And Vinegar

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) Charles Westmoreland is a restauranteer. The Kingdom lead singer knows food – good food — and he knows presentation. He knows that parsley, while serving no working purpose except for the antiquated breath enhancing operative, is a staple on most dishes, simply for its aesthetic qualities. With his day and almost every night job, he must cater to tastes. He must give people what they want — what they’re hungry for, otherwise, the tables stay empty. He knows that presentation and the little flairs add up to satisfied customers with big, full, and warm bellies that will have memories and bring back their masters for encores. Done right, the showmanship and the look of a particular main course or side dish enhances the flavor of the meal and it goes down as the eyes willfully close, the chin goes up and as the fork or spoon is slowly pulled from the happy mouth, the tongue gliding across the lips with complete satisfaction. The going is good. The body and the mind are sated for the time being – partially because of the actual taste (oftentimes it’s a deception, these artificial tastes) and partially because we saw the deliciousness dressed up for the ball in its finest gown. Westmoreland’s band doesn’t use the smokes and the mirrors that others might. They don’t really use the parsley to any kind of effect for garnish isn’t needed. The Kingdom makes up the difference with dramatic feverishness that trims all of the fat off of its songs and makes them into streamlined pockets of flare gun light and full-throated offerings of impatience. There would be no place for the garnish in songs that hate longevity.more...

25 March 07

Owen: Of All Things...It's The Sadness We Find Beauty In

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) Mike Kinsella just celebrated his 29th birthday at the beginning of this month (March 4th to be exact), gaining for himself one more year of wisdom and experience to work from. Even before it’s written, it’s unfair, yes, and absolutely impossible to circumvent that sneaking suspicion that the pulp the man behind Owen squeezes out of those years is mostly the gloomy, pessimistic portions of them. And even with no scientific backing, isn’t it reasonable to assume that no matter how good your life is, when a year is weighed in terms of triumphs and tragedies (or some sort of middle area between the two) that the negatives in numbers or just the drudgeries that we are navigate through are at least twice as prevailing? This isn’t to suggest that the triumphs can’t and don’t always color the reminiscence of our times, but there are more of the disappointments that most of us let on. Kinsella makes sure that those negatives are duly noted in the minutes of our lives, or at least his life – one that should be seen as a good one: newly married and doing what he wants with his life in making music, meaningful music. At a tender age that hasn’t even gotten to a point where the gag cards from Spencer Gifts – all the over the hill, old fart references, Dr. Death arriving for a visit – come into play, Kinsella and his brother Tim have had a hand in numerous outfits that need no introduction and which paved the way for some many others that came after – American Football, Cap’n‘Jazz and Joan of Arc to name a few.more...

22 March 07

These United States: Let The Lusting Never Stop, Just Get Brighter And More Abundant  

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) The problem with thinking about lust is that modernity – or the sometimes despicable society that has come from modern times, one that chastises for, yet encourages snaky photographers to claim exclusive panty-less crotch shots of young celebrity Missuses for purely exploitative purposes – is that it’s so easily misread. Thoughts immediately shoot straight for the perverse, as if whatever you’re thinking about lusting for wouldn’t want to be thought of that way if it had its druthers. But for once – and Washington D.C. group These United States facilitates this – it would be pleasing to just think about lust and then go out and do it without it being about putting your lips or pelvis onto something. Lust can be intelligent and it can be just what it’s supposed to be – that overwhelming craving that lights lamps and cranks motors, preoccupying all waking moments with a sugar high. These United States’s president, Jesse Elliott, dives into the idea of lust the same way Iggy Pop sang and sings about it. It’s not about breasts and ass, but about all of life – the great people, the intoxicating ideas, the days that rattle your own personal sanctity and cause the skin to goose up all over every single inch – and it can be found anywhere you can get to. This lust is sustainable and, oh what a bottler could do with it were it solvable and touchable, it happens – you know it does – every time that starburst explodes somewhere inside and sends a flashing of red water through your body, head-to-toe as if the pinball’s going berserk knocking uncontrollably off of all the electric bumpers.more...

18 March 07

The Ponys: A Thousand Late Nights Will Weigh A Man Down

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!) The one thing better than unburdening oneself of all the fucked up interactions with fucked up people on tragic nights, that go on like endless loops, is overburdening oneself with those same things, welcoming more and more and more of the tempestuous drama that comes forth in the blinkered light. There’s more trouble in the air when the headlights are on and when Hades is more in congress than any other time. All rise for the honorable Ponys, who spin feeling miserable into a victorious swatch of turbulence, a new life that could be enviable for the right people. There’s sin in them there nights. There’s disappointment and depression in the same nights. The Ponys, through three records, have marked their existence with those pockets of life when the dregs and the drags become overwhelming and you’ve got to shovel yourself out of the muck with huge, industrial-sized scoops. People get annoying and nights – even more than days – have brutal endings, where hopefulness and wishful thinking get shot down as if targeted by sniper fire. All aspirations meet their ends one way or the other when the clock tolls late. More bad things than good happen after midnight and it’s within that span that Ponys lead singer Jered Gummere must find the bulk of his inspiration, rolling around in the superfluous disasters that aren’t always courted, but always seem to be lurking around the corner and always seem to find host subjects to wreck. The Chicago-based Ponys are gothic in attitude, if not in look.more...