Surf and Stoners at January's End

The new release sections turn to desolation row in January.

But the sky has brightened with a new offerings and no further need to throw money at overrated chaff like Grinderman. These two couldn't be less alike, yet even in the dead of winter, this pair of bands shows both chops and growth since their previous long-players.

Surf Rides New Waves
Three months after getting a live debut of the tracks on Lucky, it dribbled onto the Internets a few weeks early.

The trio has not let up with its highly melodic indie pop. The arrangements feel more organic here than on The Weight is a Gift, with some strings and piano intermingled to surprisingly strong effect on "Beautiful Beat." The jangly "Here Goes Something" is a new direction for the band, which seems much less reliant on distorted guitars as in the past.

"See These Bones" is an opener almost on par with Blizzard of 77" from Let Go, slowly building and never shucking off its delicate rhythms. The album's final three songs pull the album to a higher level - "Ice on the Wing," "Fox" and bittersweet closer "Film Did Not Go Round," a simple song brimming with emotion.

Lucky doesn't represent a major sonic leap, but shows Nada Surf freshening its sound and avoiding the stagnancy that would mire lesser bands.


Smoke on the Mountain
These Canadians rightfully earn all the quips about bongs that litter the reviews their sophomore slab of Black Sabbath stitched to Pink Floyd and sprinkled with The Velvet Underground. The sutures are less obvious on In the Future.

By adding the tender voice of percussionist Amber Webber more prominently into the mix, it goes beyond the dimensions of stoner rock, although the debt to Tony Iommi runs deep on "Stormy High" and "Tyrants." Only the bland, largely acoustic "Stay Free" falls flat. Webber's lead vocal turns on "Queens Will Play" and "Night Walks" help Black Mountain rise above its gloomy sword-and-sorcery imagery.

I can't leave out "Bright Lights," the 16-minute climax. Sixteen minutes? Thoughts of self-indulgence are running rampant. But Black Mountain navigate it well, turning out a jam that never stales or slips into live Phish monotony.

The deluxe version comes with the 3-song Future Sounds, flush with another 15 minutes of music perfectly in line with the full-length. The sparse Indian vibe of "Thirteen Wall" changes up the atmosphere, and it's hard to deny the sludgy yet joyous "Bastards of Light."

Black Mountain might be stuck in 1974, but they make the most of their surroundings.

Here's To Halfway

Everything about Saturday and Sunday hinged on a "halfway" theme. I met the Sisters Stacey in Louisville, almost a midpoint on the journey between Columbus and Nashvegas. The real halfway falls around some lone truckstop between Louisville and Cincinnati. As for Louisville ... it's a surprisingly cool town, growing more interesting on every visit.

I could drink Luna de Miel, the mead produced by the Bluegrass Brewing Company, and nothing else for the rest of my life. I was almost giddy strolling down Fourth Street past the Louisville Palace box office, with signs on every window proclaiming "Robert Plant and Alison Krauss sold out." While fine-tuning my Texas report on Friday, I took a break to get my pair - Louisville had Tom Waits seats for me when Akron failed, so I'll happily go back in three months.

More on Louisville .... the riverfront Downtown is spectacular. Every year Louisville hosts "Abbey Road on the River," billed as the world's largest Beatles festival. What connection it holds to the Fab Four is unclear - since they couldn't even managed a Pete Best appearance, I'm guessing none. As for the city's other May event, I expect you're familiar with it.

The second Halfway was our purpose in going there - the Halfway to Forecastle Festival, a full evening of music marking (get this) six months until Louisville's Comfest with national acts and corporation sponsors, the Forecastle Festival.
Band of Horses couldn't have sounded better, even though it took six people to reproduce a sound the trip I expected from the album. Great Civil War beards didn't hurt either.

Their opener, Cass McCombs, made me yearn for something sharp to stop up my ears. Lame music, torturous lyrics and a multinstrumentalist relegated to backing up a talentless frontman. Cass, I hope there's a day job with your name on it. Originally I was down on Catfish Haven, who played earlier in the evening - then Cass McCombs played. Catfish Haven'ts catchy jams were slowed by the stoned-out lead singer's f--k-filled weak banter and helped by his undecipherable Joe Cocker wail.

We only caught two songs from the soul sisters belting out above their Pink Floyd-esque backers, and they left us wishing for the full set.

The midpoint was actually a bit better than back home, if only for sparing me from the rigid 3-day schedule for seeing everyone I want to see. It was brief, relaxing yet friendly in a foreign way (Kentucky gets a bad rap from Ohioans).

So if you ever hear me say anything about meeting halfway, you'll know where I'll be.

We long for his absence

Whatever happened to that Melville guy? He never calls, he never posts, he never even checks out that weekly serving the affluent suburbs of Columbus anymore ...

Deadline weeks will do that, especially when Texas' giant uninsured problem stares me down and offers only a super-villain chuckle

I've got music coming up --- new (Black Mountain, Calexico tour EPs to whisk me from the Tennessee tundra to a thriving desert) and live (Band of Horses in Louisville, Stars, possibly Plant/Krauss if Louisville holds the same promise it did for Tom Waits).

I've got cold, cold nights and phantom pains for my northern friends facing even lower thermometers. I've got even more travels ahead, with a second escape from Music City plotted for mid-February.

So while I'm sweating another 10,000 words about a state that could care less about healthcare (apparently someone once tied it to taking away firearms and that scarred them),

Did playing The Joker kill Heath Ledger? Discuss ...

In the meantime, I leave you with this.

Caller to Md. governor's office gets sex line instead
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 3:54 AM

Associated Press
CALVERT, Md.—A Cecil County man who phoned the governor's office with an opinion about the mortgage foreclosure debate realized he wasn't talking to a secretary when the woman who answered greeted him with a "Hi, sexy."

Pete Pritchard of Calvert discovered the number for the governor's office is misprinted in the latest edition of the Armstrong Telephone Co. phone book. The printed number connects with a phone sex service.

The previous edition had the same mistake. Pritchard wonders if he's the first person in two years that ever called the governor's office by using that directory.

An Armstrong executive said the directory information comes from a third party source not controlled by the company. He said the error will be addressed in a message included with February bills.

A decade ago, one of my PoliSci professors discovered that senate.com does not lead a surfer to the porno site, not the halls of the Capitol Building. It was one of the more memorable presentations I saw while working on my minor.

The morale is, there's a fine line between every government and its red light districts.

Jeff Fisher is stalking me

I walked up the hill for lunch at Cheeseburger Charley's - lousy name, great lean burgers - and behind me heard a man with a scratchy, familiar voice clinging to his cell phone. When I turned, the sharp-lensed sunglasses and gray-streaked goatee gave him away as the Tennessee Titans head coach.

Our previous encounter let me a little gunshy about saying anything to him. So I stuck with my thoughts about being taller than him, ordered my salmon burger and took occasional stock of his actions in the restaurant.

It wasn't entirely surprising to see him - he works down the street at the Titans training facility.

But all instinctual urges to say, "Are you meeting Pacman here?" fled quickly. I had no cash, so making it rain was impossible. The gaze in his eyes during his workout session made sure of that.

Nashville's unwritten rule about celebrity apparently extends to its football coach - not a single person hassled him, though two guys waiting for their burgers obviously noticed. You can imagine the reaction if The Sweatervest strolled into the OSU campus Wendy's on High Street, or the attention fans would heap on Romeo Crennel if he strapped on the feedbag in public.

Fisher has just returned from an announcement about a new offensive coordinator, and was dressed sharply. Evidently, he has no use for hoodies with torn sleeves from the Bill Belichick's Dirtbag fashion line.

Running into Coach Fisher is becoming a habit. I'm still waiting for my first Jack White encounter.

Maybe with the Raconteurs in town laying down their sophomore album, I'll stumble upon the right watering hole. I just can't picture Jack White at Cheeseburger Charley's. But I'll keep walking up the hill in case he shows.

Doldrums

Running with a 21-pound jug of cat litter in one hand is a good way to rouse dormant muscles. I had to constantly switch hands so each arm received some strain, but it doesn't take much distance for litter to stress my digits.

Such is life during January in Nashville. When getting to the gym isn't possible, the 1.6-mile roundtrip to Kroger will suffice. Even when it's snowing - I attribute that to my regular late-night trips across the frozen tundra of Clintonville to the Graceland Kroger.

For 30 glorious minutes snow vanished upon contract with pavement. I jogged to the store, and heat held over for the return trip. Then as the night dragged on, it shifted to rain only degrees warmer than sleet.

The week's forecast sums up my feelings toward January: Dreary. Motivation for anything is fleeting. Just leaving the house for laundry Thursday sapped excessive energy. Updating the blog as regularly as before? Ha.

The spirit is unwilling, so the flesh grows weaker.

Fire Sermon Sunday at the Nashville Public Library

Take a beautiful building, stockpile it with books, panhandlers, lesser prophets and the homeless wisemen evicted from the closed park across the street.

Nashville's downtown library easily outdoes the Carnegie-funded temple on South Grant Avenue. It's lush.

But its patrons are something else. The one who accosted me stepped straight from the Old Testament, the agent of a vengeful god. He sat down at my table, face stuck in his book and the stench of 1,000 ashtrays assaulting my nose. After a few minutes of laptop time, the fellow across the table, dropped his book and launched into his sermon.

He possessed an unhealthy fixation the number of the beast, the dimensions of Noah's Ark, how we're all Canaanites - this threadbare prophet connected a series of crazy dots. Because American, Mexican and other nationality terms end in "can" it's a symbol we're all Canaanites (I decided I not to ask about the Chinese, Spanish or Iraqis). Apparently when Canned Heat sang "Goin' Up the Country," they too were talking about Hell. The founders of New Canaan, Connecticut would have been better off going with New Sodom (these last two are my application of his theories. He got so fired up with his brimstone that a librarian ordered him to keep it down.

He scowled, more or less told me I too was hellbound and walked away after slamming his chair against the table. I sighed, then five minutes later, he walked backed because he forgot his gunnysack and started the rant where it ended. Again, this disgruntled holy man stormed off, and every urge to spit "Have a nice day" dwindled inside me - if I spoke, he might recite more chapters from this angry gospel he conjured.

Perhaps he gave me up as a lost cause and wanted to enlighten more patrons.

Or perhaps even prophets need their smoke breaks.

Flying at Weird Angles: Three More From 2007

Just when I think I've closed the books on new reviews, 2008's January releases inspire another look. This trio won't easily fit categories, so only their eclecticism unites them.


These Animals Kill Fascists
Known for his experiments across genres, Ry Cooder cross-pollinates Woody Guthrie with Wind of the Willows, chronicling the Great Depression travels of Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse and Reverend Tom Toad.

If you felt Herbert Hoover deserved four more years, My Name is Buddy isn't for you. The other Hoover, FBI founder J. Edgar, fares even worse -- "J. Edgar" recounts a farm pig with an appetite too enormous for his world.

Cooder doesn't just ape the dust bowl ballads - Buddy has a diverse sonic palette, and somehow the songs manage to bridge the strife of the Depression and the early 21st Century. Beyond the era it invokes, it's hard to pin down the songs to a style - the title track is rough blues and "Footprints in the Snow" has an unexpected Tex-Mex leaning. "One Cat, One Vote, One Beer" is one odd stretch of spoken word, but

Ending on the helplessly hopeful "There's a Bridge Side Somewhere," Cooder casts a needed light on an era not as far removed from modern prosperity as we'd like to think. Just don't tell your pets, or they might pack their bags for California.

Contrarian Album Of The Year
Nick Cave needs to get laid. Instead of trying some new tactics with the fairer sex, he formed Grinderman with frequent collaborator Warren Ellis and a few of the Bad Seeds.
Grinderman earned love/hate reviews, plus high spots on the year-end lists of critics known for purposely contradicting everyone else. That along should have warned me.
For all the glory they heaped upon "No Pussy Blues", the rambling lyrics are more clunky prose poem than blues dirge. A few tracks work well - "Depth Charge Ethel," "(I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free" - but Cave should definitely stick to the piano and unplug the guitar. Grinderman grates far more than it grooves.

Nothing Limited Here
With a Wes Anderson film, sometimes the soundtrack is the greater treasure. The director eschews the easy track list - indie rock bands and other music "inspired" by the film - to create an album of obscurities strong enough to stand alone. For the travel trip across India, he drops a surprisingly cohesive bundle of music from Indian films, mining their soundtracks like Tarantino horded Ennio Morricone snippets for Kill Bill.

On the rock side, Anderson doesn't dig so deeply into his collection, plucking three Kinks tunes from the same album - at least all three are winners, with "This Time Tomorrow" destined for multiple listens. "Play With Fire" is among the best early-period Stones tunes and flows well with the Indian film music stack around it.

By not leaning so heavily on classic rock, Anderson built another delicately crafted soundtrack, this one rooted in the land explored by his characters.

Football refugees

No one in Nashville was talking about it beyond SEC boasting, but as a wave of dejected Ohio State fans flocked back to Columbus, I couldn't help but feel a little empathy.

An old friend -- we'll call him MB, because some readers be familiar with Montgomery Burns, and he's not a bit like him --- and two Downtown acquaintances called from the Interstate demanding good barbecue. I resisted saying, "Why didn't you stop in Memphis then?" and ran down a meager list of places, none of which I wanted to represent Music City cuisine.

But a little cinder block building surrounded by a halo of sweet smoke popped in. Mary's sits in Nashville's traditional African-American neighborhood, but no cares when you're ordering ribs and meats drenched in its lip-numbingly hot sauces. I found my friends at a table with ribs, sides and sauces piled high.

We kept talk of Monday to a minimum. Those in attendance knew what us watching at home saw -- a team completely out of character when challenged, unable to adapt or keep an eye on the clock with the fourth quarter to go (two touchdowns with 9 minutes left is hardly insurmountable, but not when you saunter to the line of scrimmage as if Youngstown State is on defense).

I didn't need to mention that I'd never heard a national champion's fans chant the name of their conference instead of their school (can you imagine OSU fans screaming "Big Ten! Big Ten!" if they won? I thought not).

They saw only colors of the Buckeyes and LSU Tigers while in the Big Easy. It's good to hear something positive from New Orleans, even if it never stretched beyond the French Quarter and the Superdome.

That counted as the shortest visit with anyone passing through Nashville -- roughly a half-hour.

As always, I'll take it.

They Only Come Out at Dusk

Until the terrain flattened at Tennessee's northern border, the drive never swerved from its uneventful course. From Weber Road in Clintonville down, the battleship shades draped clear to all horizons.

Thirty seconds into Nashville, everyone on the road went berserk. Accelerators leaned hard against the floor. They flashed every rotten urge of American motorists for the next 35 miles.

I can't speed anymore, at least not at those rates. There's always someone faster; on the Atlanta-Nashville route, every roadworthy junker will fly past drivers at 80 mph or below.

In the end, there's little point to it. No matter how doggedly you chase the horizon, it's not meant to be caught.

Just don't tell the Twilight Jerks. Truckers, rednecks in pickup trucks with ceiling-mounted TVs, yuppies oblivious to the outside world in suburban assault vehicles - for once, the entirety of America fell into one stereotype. Except me, daring to putter along at 70 mph, of course.

What possessed this sudden, irrational burst of traffic? The speed limit stuck at 70 since the interstate left Louisville, and nothing else change upon entry into the Volunteer State.

Was there a full moon lurking somewhere behind that burly sheet of clouds? Were roads clogged with vampire-fearing Americans, petrified that the notorious blood-drinkers of Middle Tennessee were ready to feast?

I'm guessing that all the speeding stemmed from the unfinished Sunday journeys that work have to be completed under cover of dark.

Once I left the stream of lead feet for West Nashville, I narrowly skipped around a loaded black garbage bag squatting in the fast lane. As I pulled away from the lane for my exit, a sedan accompanied by an awful noise took off - in the driver's haste, he drove over the bag, where it hitched onto the low undercarriage.

I hope the bag reached Memphis with minimal chafing.

Less effective with every hit

Maybe I'll start restricting my Columbus visits to Comfest. You see everyone you want to see in one place.

This weekend I ran out of time before I even arrived.

Trying to race from visit to visit grows stale after just the second try. After shuttling around Central Ohio in November, I pulled hard on the reins this weekend. If I didn't see you, it's simple - I was there for a wedding, and all the overdue errands from November had to be completed this time.

There was no stopping into SNP. Maybe in the summer, but only six weeks after the last visit, it was too soon. All I do is pick apart the way new ownership is tearing down what little liberties the place offered. The newsroom of recent years has nearly completed its migration to Delaware County for better pay. Only a handful of holdouts remain, and by the next trip north, I expect a few more to split this crazy scene.

Then again, it was not so simple for everyone:

If you chose snowboarding over our friend's wedding - for which you already RSVP'ed - I didn't call because I was too busy shaking my head in disappointment.

If you never returned multiple calls, you shouldn't be surprised when no guest column arrived Monday morning.

If you were moving to Madison County, I didn't call. As we've discussed, you would have been too busy.

There were some surprise stops. I visited the old barbershop for first time in seven months. But not before David O. snapped a few shots of Grizzly Melville (coming soon, I hope).

Going back to a place steeped in personal history has lost a little luster - at least until Comfest, when I can just say, "I'm 60 feet back from the Offramp Stage, 100 feet to the rear of the beer lines" and net everyone at once.