Cataldo has a new album out and it’s streaming for free on his website. I’ve had a religious conversion to the “music reviews are really pointless” school of thought so I’m not going to review it other than to say IT’S SOOOOO GOOD. GO RIGHT NOW AND LISTEN TO IT, FOOL. Also, I may or may not be in the choir of random, slightly drunk people at the end of the last song. It was 2am and my BFF from high school and I were in a house in Olympia with multiple pictures of naked Burt Reynolds on the walls. Sometimes these things happen and you end up on a truly quality album.
Son Lux Interview Tuesday May 6, 2008
You may remember the album review I wrote about Son Lux’s debut album a few months back. Well, as soon as I heard that album I knew it would be perfect for a project I was doing for my 20th Century Music class about the intersection of classical and modern independent music. I emailed him and he graciously agreed to answer some questions on the subject. I’m hoping to upload the whole project (it’s like a fake podcast, except way nerdier) but I need to fix some stuff first. The full interview is after the jump. (more…)
Andrew Bird Blogging for the NYT Thursday April 10, 2008
This is kind of old news, but Andrew Bird has been writing posts along with some other singer-songwritery type people for a New York Times blog called Measure for Measure which is about the process of songwriting. His posts are as eloquent as you would expect them to be and offer fascinating insight into his mind. A favorite quote from his most recent one:
Live shows are adrenaline-fueled and spontaneous: if you want to capture that then you should put out a live show recording. But the kind of record you want to listen to over and over again in your bedroom or car is something else — a carefully carved piece of sound.
In the second post there is a snippet of the new song which is fabulous even in its unfinished state.
Partial Bumbershoot Lineup Announced Wednesday April 9, 2008
Bumbershoot sent out an email with a partial lineup this morning:
Beck, Stone Temple Pilots, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Ingrid Michaelson, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Jakob Dylan, !!!, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Saul Williams, Joe Bonamassa, M. Ward, The Walkmen, Asylum St. Spankers, Dan Deacon, MIDIval PunditZ, Blitzen Trapper, Bedouin Soundclash, Tim Finn, Dale Watson, John Vanderslice, Final Fantasy, The Fall of Troy, Orgone, Forro in the Dark, Ryan Bingham, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, Arthur & Yu, Darondo and Nino Moschella, Pacifika
FInal Fantasy and John Vanderslice alone will be worth the price of admission, I’m sure.
Son Lux Friday March 14, 2008
KUPS is involved in a deal with the Volcano (the Tacoma version of The Stranger, or The Source* if you live in Bend) in which one of our music directors writes an album review each week in exchange for free advertising. This week was my first time writing one and I had no idea what to write about. The stuff that went up on rotation this week wasn’t too compelling or has been written up by everyone and their mom already (She and Him…god they’re everywhere) so I frantically started listening to every CD we got in the mail, and what do you know, the latest Anticon release pulled through for me. I’m not going to lie, part of the reason I picked it is because the cover art is so dang pretty, but the music is fabulous as well. The cover art was created with a computer program which uses audio inputs to create visual images. They put in music from the album and that is what it made. Pretty cool.
Here’s a track off the album
[mp3] Son Lux-Break
And here’s a really sweet video for that song
My full review after the jump. Here’s the link to it on the Volcano site so you can brag to all your friends (or smug fellow teachers as the case may be) that you know someone who has been published in the free weekly paper of the suicide capital of America.
*incidentally I recently learned that there is also a very prominent hip-hop magazine called The Source. The irony of this is not lost on me, or I suspect anyone who has ever set foot in Bend
Celebratory First Birthday Mix Saturday February 16, 2008
I realized yesterday that today is the 1st brithday of this here blog, which is insane, I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for an entire year. In celebration I made a little mix for you all. In order to make this mix I searched the words “one” and “birthday” in my itunes. Yeah, I know…I never claimed to be good at theme mixes. Special thanks to my BFF Jill for allowing her face to be used as cover art and extra-special thanks to all of you for reading this and sticking with me for the past 365 days.
The next year will hopefully be even more awesome here at CotAS, of course there will be more great music, and I’m going to work on getting more band interview-type content going. But most exciting and most set in stone is that I have finally finagled someone who knows how to bend the internet to his will into helping me redesign CotAS and get it off of wordpress.com and onto a more practical server. That means no more looking at this incredibly ill-conceived layout and easier music hosting. Awesome. Thanks Kevin, you’re pretty much my hero.
Anyway, enough award-speech rhetoric. Without further ado, the Commodities of the Abstract Sort Celebratory Birthday Mix:
1. The Beatles-Birthday
2. The New Pornographers-The New Face of Zero and One
3. Casper and the Cookies-Yer Birthday
4. Oh No! Oh My!-Oh Be One
5. Page France-Young One
6. Cataldo-One Year of Solitude
7. Gonzalez-One Note at a Time
8. Le Loup-Canto I
9. Andrew Bird-The Happy Birthday Song
[Zip] The Commodities of the Abstract Sort Celebratory Birthday Mix
Free Mobius Band EP Thursday February 14, 2008
Mobius band has made a valentine’s day love songs cover EP which they are giving away as a free download here. It was recorded at a band member’s house in Massachusettes and features songs originally performed by The National, Bob Dylan, and Daft Punk among others. I’m not a huge fan of covers, but Mobius Band is pretty great and so is free stuff, so you can’t really go wrong.
Album Review: Headlights Some Racing, Some Stopping Wednesday February 13, 2008
I can’t tell you how excited I was to see this album sitting on the shelf last week at the station after a thoroughly frustrating day full of broken computers and broken dreams of seeing Barrack Obama. I’ve been waiting (not so) patiently for this album since I got Headlights’ first album Kill Them With Kindness last spring and proceeded to listen to nothing else for weeks on end.
This one is different however, it’s not as unabashedly happy, it evokes fewer images of puppies running through fields of daises while being chased by blonde children. Or, in more eloquent record-label language it “purposefully lack[s] much of the spacey atmospherics that define the band’s earlier work.” Right. I think what they mean is this is more of a solid pop album with standard pop instrumentation: drums, guitar, bass, people singing. Unlike KTWK there are no string quartets, very little piano and accordion, and more boy vocals. While I like this album and think it’s better than some of the other stuff I’ve listened to recently, it doesn’t have the intrigue or (I suspect) staying power of KTWK. Anyone can make a standard pop album with drums, guitar, bass, and people singing and that’s not terribly exciting. What made Headlights exciting to me in the first place is that they were taking the standard pop album and making it exponentially more interesting by using weird instruments and, to use the world’s corniest phrase, “making it their own.” Some Racing, Some Stopping has its moments though, “Cherry Tulips” is most reminiscent of KTWK with dual vocals and organ, the title track is a beautiful and sparse arrangement with only Rhodes piano, a click-track, tambourine, and Erin Fein’s faraway-sounding vocals. The final song is my favorite, it’s a waltz and brings in the accordion and glockenspiel more prevalent in KTWK. It is also the perfect concluding song, the slow tempo and soft ending let you down nice and easy. Even though this is not the best album of all time Headlights are still one of the best live bands of all time and I strongly suggest seeing them on their upcoming tour.
[mp3] Headlights-Cherry Tulips
New Cataldo Songs! Tuesday February 12, 2008
Cataldo has posted 4 songs from his new album up on his myspace. I had heard all of these songs live and thought they were fabulous, but I was not prepared for how truly amazing the recorded versions are. There is piano! And cello! And trumpet! And back-up singers! And they were mixed by Tucker Martine, who has worked with The Decemberists, Laura Veirs, and Sufjan Stevens! Awesome! Now that I’ve used up my lifetime allotment of exclamation points I will be going.
Commodities of the Abstract Sort 
