Mrs. Dude's at-work playlist 3/27 and 28

March 27:
Modest Mouse: The Moon and Antarctica

March 28:
Mike Doughty: Golden Delicious
Regina Spektor: Begin to hope

Mike Doughty at The Gargoyle--3/27 **revised**

I was reading the paper yesterday evening and saw that Mike Doughty was going to be playing later that evening at The Gargoyle later that evening. The show was a reasonable $15 and I was desperate to see Doughty in concert. So, in a very un-Mrs. Dudelike turn of events, I decided to go.

I'm glad I did.

The Gargoyle was an awesome, though poorly ventilated, venue. It was small enough to be intimate but big enough to give everyone room to push toward the stage. But, after dancing for an hour, my legs hurt from the tile floor.

Doughty seemed genuinely into the crowd, putting out an awesome vibe. He could've copped an attitude since The Gargoyle is a student-run venue on a University campus and there were maybe 200 people there. Instead, he seemed genuinely interested in putting on a killer show. He had an ease on stage and mastered the art of between-song banter. For me, this was the best part of the show and Doughty interacted with an energy and interest like I've never seen before. A close second might be Steve Poltz.

Doughty played songs from all of his solo albums, hitting his Haughty Melodic stuff pretty hard. But he also played songs from his Soul Coughing days. Highlights for me were the songs:

Soft serve
Busting up a Starbucks
I hear the bells
Ft. Hood
I wrote a song about your car
Tremendous brunettes

and a rousing version of Firetruck at the audience's insistence.

I was amused at how many people weren't singing along until he got to "I hear the bells," at which point they broke into song. I attributed this to the fact that a large portion of the audience was college-aged (which makes sense, as The Gargoyle is a student-run club and the show was free for Washington University students) and probably knew the song from it's appearance in a pivotal scene in the television show Veronica Mars. The age of the audience also led to me overhearing a college-aged girl say "I can't believe there are so many people here who are my parents' age."

Man...I felt old.

Opening for Doughty was funky fresh rock band The Panderers. A band on Doughty's label, Snack Bar, the Panderers were a mix of alt-country and neo-soul and reminded me a lot of Better Than Ezra, Steve Poltz, and Doughty himself. Catchy and fun, the music was fabulous and the drummer, bass player, and keyboardist returned to the stage to back Doughty. They only have an EPs-worth of material, so their set was short but each song was carefully crafted and performed with energy.

We were provided with a bizarre treat before The Panderers came on. The drummer, bass player, and keyboardist for both The Panderers and Mike Doughty's backing band came out dressed in funny hats and fake facial hair. They played wordless prog-ish music, including a song where the bassist read from a Euclidean Geometry book. The audience wasn't sure if the performance was a joke or for real, but the music was good, so I wasn't sure it mattered.

Overall, the evening was well worth the money I paid.

P.S.--Go read Alex's review of the show. He was nice enough to show me some link love so I want to return the favor. Also? He had a lot of the same views on the evening that I did.

Mrs. Dude's at-work playlist--3/26

Mike Doughty: Haughty Melodic (I didn't make it all the way through the album yesterday, so it was what popped up when I turned on my iPod)

Glen Phillips: Mr. Lemons

Kay Hanley: Cherry Marmalade

Just 'cause

"Slain by the words I lack/My world is bursting sappy music"
--Madeline and Nine by Mike Doughty

Mrs. Dude's at-work playlist--3/25

Counting Crows: Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings
Dixie Chicks: Taking the Long Way
Mike Doughty: Haughty Melodic

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings by Counting Crows

There's a song by the band Fall Out Boy called "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends" that includes the couplet:

"Strike us like matches, cause everyone deserves the flames
We only do it for the scars and stories, not the fame"

In the end, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings seems to be about Adam Duritz's attempt to find himself and his "real friends" amid the "sham friends" that come with his Rock and Roll lifestyle.

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a two-disc concept album. One disc, Saturday Nights, is full of plugged in rock, crunch guitars, and sin soaked melodies. Sunday Mornings, on the other hand, is an introspective-feeling album full of the regrets that come with a hangover and the realization that you've woken up alone.

One is supposed to listen to both albums back-to-back, I've read, to feel the full effect of the album.

I bought my copy on iTunes, so the transition from Saturday Night to Sunday Morning seemed all the starker. My mind was still trying to recover from the amped up, driving melody of "Cowboys" when the haunting song "Washington Square" demanded my full attention.

Most of my favorite songs came from the Saturday Nights portion of the album. "Sundays" was dance-able with a big hook. "Cowboys" reeked of a desperation and need that I haven't seen from Counting Crows since...well, ever.

The lone standout on the Sunday Mornings album, for me, was "When I dream of Michaelangelo." It starts with the line "I don't like you, but you wanna be my friend" and doesn't stop until the last chord. Duritz and co. evoke images brought forth in Recovering the Satellites' song "Angels of the Silence" with the line "I dream of Michaelangelo when I'm lying in my bed." It's copied word-for-word from the earlier track. It's an interesting play on their part and, strangely, it works.

Overall, it was an ambitious album. If I could take Saturday Night and leave Sunday Morning, I would. The band seems to be at it's best when it's rocking, and the stripped down tracks just don't work for me.

Mrs. Dude's at-work playlist--3/24/08

Tegan and Sara: The con
Tegan and Sara: So jealous
R.E.M.: Life's rich pageant
Our Lady Peace: Happiness is not a fish that you can catch

Slanted and Enchanted by Pavement

I've only known the band Pavement from their single "Cut your hair." Well, that and the cover they did of "No more kings" on the album School House Rock Rocks!. So when the iTunes store had Pavement's first album, Slanted and Enchanted, on sale I was kind of sad. I wanted the one with "Cut your hair" on it!

But, I knew that there was a Pavement void in my album collection that needed to be filled, so I went ahead and bought Slanted and Enchanted.

I've been listening to it pretty much non-stop for almost a week, it's that good.

According to the Wikipedia entry for the album, Slanted and Enchanted was pretty influential in the 1990s rock scene. I can see how this is true and realize, in retrospect that, as a self-proclaimed flannel-head, it isn't an album I can afford to be without.

Slanted and Enchanted is full of witty lyrics, crunchy guitars, and a lo-fi sound that makes it charming. It is everything that slacker rock was supposed to be and it's done really, really well.

In my opinion, a good album should be so tightly put together that you feel like it's effortless even though you know that it took a lot of work to make it happen. As a listener, though, you shouldn't be able to see the cracks. This album is like that and, thus, I recommend it.

Spook Country by William Gibson

One of the reasons that I love reading Gibson's work is that he creates worlds that I don't entirely understand but he presents them to me in ways that totally make sense.

I fell in love with Gibson's writing in my undergraduate Postmodern American Fiction class. I read Idoru and it was, I'm pretty certain, the only book in that class that I finished. On my own time, I devoured the rest of his writing and have squealed with delight every time that he puts out a new book.

Amazon.com's page on Spook Country points out that as time has caught up with Gibson's version of the future, he has taken to writing about the here-and-now. This is something that had been rolling around in my brain, but not something I'd pieced together into an actual theory. It was nice to have my hunch validated.

Spook Country serves as a sequel of sorts to Gibson's previous novel, Pattern Recognition, in that one of the main characters shows up.Hubertus Bigend, founder of Big Ant, makes an appearance in this novel as the publisher of a yet-to-be-founded magazine.

Gibson attempts, in this novel, to weave together three separate narratives. Sometimes this device works, bringing the characters in each story closer together and then pulling them apart again. I think it's a fascinating narrative technique, but one that can fall apart quite easily. The problem with having three stories and three story's worth of characters is that no one really gets fleshed out into a "real" character. Gibson is guilty of this, but I can't help but think this is on purpose. I kept thinking that Gibson wants you to see these characters' outlines, but never really see them completely.

Overall, I thought that Gibson gave his audience a good (and suspenseful) story about what it means to live in our modern world with it's push and pull from reality to virtuality and back again.

It's not Gibson's best work, especially as a companion to Pattern Recognition, but it does offer some interesting ideas and it stuck with me long after I finished it.

Brighter than Creation's Dark by Drive-By Truckers

I loved A blessing and a curse, DBT's previous album. I listened to it obsessively for a while and was quite self-congratulatory about being into the whole "alt country" thing.

The album was strong, both musically and lyrically, and I ended up feeling like no matter how many times I listened to the album, I'd always find something new. And really, isn't what makes and album good it's ability to reveal something new about itself each time you listen to it?

Understandably, I dragged my feet when it came time to listen to DBT's newest album, Brighter Than Creation's Dark. I worried about how the band would recover from Jason Isbell's departure. I worried about how having Shonna Tucker singing more songs would affect the balance of the album. Mostly, though, I worried that I wouldn't like it.

And, on first listen, I didn't.

It started out rocky for me, when I started listening to it. Where was my "Feb. 14?" Where was my strong guitar? Instead, I get "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife," haunting in it's lyrics and much lighter than what I expected from an opening track.

I had to fight my urge to turn the album off and give DBT the respect of listening to the entire thing before passing judgment.

I'm glad I did.

The album, though not as good as their previous work, was memorable and haunting. Much darker than their last album, Brighter than Creation's Dark was painted with a musical palate of black, dark grey, and deep purple.

This isn't to say that there isn't some rock on the album. There are songs with hard edges and crunchy guitar chords. But they are mixed with lighter, wispy, more ephemeral songs. Ultimately a good mix, I think.

Sleep through the static by Jack Johnson

I've noticed that I've been blogging a lot about music lately. I think it's because I am currently in a phase where I'm reading many more magazines than books. I'll try to remedy that and be more varied in my favorite things.

Anyway...

Jack Johnson has been an acquired taste for me. I never really liked his laid-back surfer-style of music. His songs always seemed a little "sleepy" and directionless for my taste. I need strong, lyrically-driven music, and Johnson always seemed like he was just along for the ride so-to-speak and going where the music took him.

The Dude enjoys his music, though, so little by little Johnson has worn me down.

Sleep through the Static takes Johnson in a different direction. It features songs that have electric guitar and which are politically minded, both new ventures for Johnson. He also recorded this album on the mainland in a Green studio.

There are a lot of critics who thought that Sleep through the Static wasn't a radical enough departure for Johnson, but I think it's actually what I liked most about the album. Johnson has a great voice that doesn't deserve to get buried under layers of crunchy guitar. And, ultimately, that doesn't seem to be what Johnson is "about" anyway. But the move from goofy songs like "Bubble toes" to more darker, more mindful songs like "Sleep through the Static" show his ability to mature as a musician without leaving his history behind.