Firestarter
Timber Timbre’s “Demon Host,” from Timber Timbre, in three sentences:
1) The church steeple will spear the fiercest of internal spirits.
2) A man and his guitar gently weep, until a piano and a chorus lift them up.
3) “Oh Lord, I must of heard you knock me out of bed,” begins the conversion, “As the flames licked my head/ And my lungs filled up black/ In that tiny little shack.”
“Demon Host”
The blues
Septuagenarian ol’ dirty bastard Andre Williams spent a recovery session writing Sweets, a short-story and poetry collection whose title story recalls The Wire. I talked with the man about fiction, women, and respect.
Soothsaying
Yeasayer’s “Ambling Alp,” from Odd Blood, in three sentences:
1) Futurism through a rearview mirror.
2) Vulnerable falsettos, pitch-shifted bass notes that sound like cell-phone blips, and clangs of electropop in the key of reggae.
3) “You must stick up for yourself, son/Never mind what anybody else done” is the new refrain for the picked-on kid.
“Ambling Alp”
Jesus' son
Alan Graham, co-founder of the homeless-advocacy nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes, has been hosting Street Retreats in Austin since 2003. The idea is to live like a homeless person for the weekend, while coming closer to God. Here’s my account.
Listen up
These are the ten albums I came across last year that I had in heaviest rotation. 1 Mother Nature. 2 Calculus. 3 American dream. 4 Skate or die. 5 Lovelorn. 6 Passive-aggressive. 7 One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. 8 Paganism. 9 Southern gothic. 10 Death.
I done felt your pain
Hear ye, hear ye! Another Great Depression is upon us. Let Fat Man and Little Boy ease your struggles with their Old, Weird America songs. If last night’s show at Whip In was any indication, this Atomic Duo knows a thing or two about turning heartache into humor.
I swear, my last name really is Prophet
It took San Francisco slacker Chuck Prophet nine albums and a slew of collaborations to score the acclaim he deserves. His breakout, the killer ¡Let Freedom Ring!, was recorded at a $7-a-day studio in Mexico City during the height of the swine flu epidemic. Prophet rang in the New Year with cuts from that album last Saturday at the Continental Club, among them this one about a mostly silent assassin:
“Sonny Liston’s Blues”
King of Pain
Vic Chesnutt’s “Flirted With You All My Life,” from At the Cut, in three sentences:
1) This is glorious death through rightful eyes.
2) Majesty is upon us in the confluence of strings, hi-hat rat-a-tats, and deliberate bass notes floated over with electric guitar.
3) When Chesnutt sings, “Ohhhhhh … death,” Blind Willie Johnson groans “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” from his grave.
“Flirted With You All My Life”
Zuko and Sandy got nothing on Bruce and Kelly
Married country musicians Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison host an annual holiday show, and one of their mainstay songs is “Okie Christmas.” It’s Bruce’s hilarious, singalong account of dropping “Jesus”-bombs at Kelly’s family’s house during Christmas. Did I mention it’s hilarious? Listen to it below, then read about it here.
“Okie Christmas”
Waiting to exhale
There were enough awkwardness-as-comedy moments at Daniel Johnston’s St. David’s gig to fill a Don Rickles guest spot on Letterman. My faves: threatening to end the show only 2o minutes into it and the joke about suicide.
