As My Morning Jacket is set to kick off their five-night, full album residency tonight at New York’s cavernous Terminal 5, we wanted to remind everyone to head in early
Call it a sign of the times, but rumors that The Cars will reunite began to surface earlier this week after the seminal pop-rock band posted this picture to their
This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.
To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.
Let’s check out numbers 15 through 11 and see what made the cut…
15) Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Key Tracks: Hey, Chains Chains Chains, Doomsday
Sounds Like: Part marching band, Part Dylan-esque folk-rock
Skinny: Perkins sophomore effort is more of a complete representation of what he and his band In Dearland sound like. The combo’s “antique music” can best be summed up as equal parts ramshackle folk and Sousa marching band, making it virtually impossible at times to keep you from from tapping your feet along to songs like Hey, I Heard Your Voice In The Dresden and Doomsday with Perkins’ vivid lyrics as the guide.
READ ON for the next four albums in our week long countdown…
Words: Jonathan ” Kos” Kosakow
Video & Photos: Curtis Stiles
In August of 2007, a blue station wagon pulled up to the Rockwood Music Hall on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After checking to make sure they were legally parked, Jeff Prystowsky and Ben Knox Miller unloaded their own gear and carted it to the small stage. Rockwood, though comfortable and with pristine sound, only holds a handful of people, so it’s not spacious enough to host any large band – or even a small one with a large following. On that night, the room was hardly at capacity, but the two members who comprised The Low Anthem were able to grab hold the ears of every listener in the small, dimly lit brick room. And, based on the post-show conversation, I was not the only one who felt they had a music-making future ahead of them.
I saw them again two years later at The Bell House in Brooklyn, in August of 2009, opening for Surprise Me Mr. Davis featuring Marco Benevento (a welcome addition to the bill). As Miller told me, Surprise Me Mr. Davis was the first band to ask The Low Anthem to tour with them, so it was a comfortable match-up for both (and it made for a nice encore as they joined forces on a couple of tunes). The video below is a gospel standard the trio played that night, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around…
Though I had seen the Anthem multiple times between these two shows, it was interesting and inspiring to watch the group, now a trio including Jocie Adams, gain popularity while also growing musically.
READ ON for more from the Noise Report…
Originally, the purpose for The Midnight Rambles at Levon Helm’s Woodstock home-recording studio – otherwise referred to as The Barn – was to serve as a way for the legendary drummer of The Band to recoup money from his mounting medical bills after battling and overcoming throat cancer. Helm’s iconic and unmistakable voice was down to barely a raspy whisper after radiation treatments which forced him into resting his vocal chords.
While he had to rely on his capable band to provide the vocals, Helm was able to return to his signature perch behind his drum kit for what must have provided a cathartic release till he was ultimately able to sing again. Over the years the legend of the Rambles have grown, with everyone from Elvis Costello to Dr. John to Donald Fagen to former bandmate Garth Hudson showing up and sitting in with Levon.
When an invite was extended to head upstate to take in a night at The Barn, as a monster fan of The Band I was salivating at the opportunity to see Levon in such an intimate and undeniably unique setting. Since I couldn’t make it out to Indio for Festival 8, a Halloween Midnight Ramble was the next logical choice. Pulling into the sleepy town of Woodstock in the late afternoon on an overcast and rainy late fall day, we were greeted to a full-on Halloween parade by the locals in the streets of the small downtown area that helped to set the tone and atmosphere for the rest of the evening.
READ ON for more of Jeff’s All Hallow’s Eve experience…
With legendary rockers Aerosmith forced to cancel the remainder of their summer tour due to the severe injuries that lead singer Steven Tyler suffered after a fall from the stage
With the first six months of 2009 beginning to feel like a distant memory, figured it was time to continue with a tradition we started last year around this time, by taking a look at my favorite albums from the first half of the year with a little something we’ve dubbed Top 6 Of The First 6.
Maybe I’m getting old, but this list is dominated by mainly roots and Americana-tinged albums, so for those of you expecting Animal Collective somewhere here you may be sorely disappoint. So let’s get at it…
6. Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band – Outer South
Outer South may technically be Conor Oberst’s second “solo” release in as many years, but it would be hard to call this record a true solo effort. While Oberst’s prolific songwriting tendencies may rival that of Mr. Mandy Moore, his latest effort with the Mystic Valley Band is a collaborative affair, with band members contributing and singing their own songs often making you forget you’re listening to a record that has the wordy, singer-songwriter’s name attached to it. The album itself is chocked full of breezy, ’70s influenced country and folk-rock, mixed with the aughts indie-sensibility making it hard to avoid giving them the tag of an updated version of the Traveling Wilburys.
READ ON for the rest of Jeff’s Top 6 Of The First 6…
[youtube]_dBVzKSZNCQ[/youtube] Elvis Perkins In Dearland – Chains, Chains, Chains
A little over a year ago, I introduced you to the musical stylings and the rather sad story of Elvis Perkins – whose somber debut Ash Wednesday was one of
As has become par for the course in recent years, reunion-mania is sweeping the music world. The latest group that to join the fold is ’70s glam-rockers Mott The Hoople
