A big thank you to everyone that came out for our backyard bbq at SXSW. Once again it was the highlight of the festival. Thanks to all the bands and everyone who helped make it all happen. Song by Toad was in attendance and came back with the great video diary above.

By Jon Stone | @jwstone

Bright Eyes, like a post-postmodern Mary Poppins, has promised to stay a little longer – but only until the wind changes: one last album, one final tour. And judging from the show Wednesday evening at Foellinger Auditorium on the University of Illinois campus, they intend to make a memorable exit – not unlike floating away on an umbrella. My engagement with Bright Eyes  over the years has been one of passive admiring rather than full fledged fan-hood so the pangs of departing sorrow aren’t very strong for me. Nevertheless, the Bright Eyes persona of the very talented Conor Oberst will be missed if only for its place alongside other moment-defining/now-deceased bands – the closest analog being Jack White and the White Stripes. We can be comforted, I suppose, by the assurance that the artists behind these bands are putting to bed their projects in hopes of ensuring the continuance of a strong, coherent body of work rather than dragging them raw along the asphalt mile after mile and year after year. For both Oberst and White, one avenue in which we can look forward to the continuance of their work as curators and label-heads.

Case in point: The Mynabirds, who are signed to Oberst’s label Saddle Creek and released one of my favorite records last year, are a great example of that continuance. Drawing from the rich tradition of 60s rhythm and blues, the Mynabirds are revivalists in the best senses of that word.  Laura Burhenn, lead singer and songwriter of the group has crafted a group of songs for the band’s debut What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood that feel both old and new – a wrangler of Dusty Springfield’s legacy in a similar vein as Fiona Apple (and I have no problem with that). It bodes well for Obest’s post-Bright Eyes career that I was more excited about the band on his label than I was about his.

The Mynabirds opened the show with a delightful set that didn’t deviate far from the record – an observation that is both praise and my only real critique of their set. As I mention, I love the record and a weak live representation of the songs is something that could have easily slowed momentum for the band. No worries there, though. Burhenn and her five bandmates showed their merit on the piano/keyboards-based songs with cello and brass embellishments as well as lovely two and three-part harmonies. Standouts included the soulful “What We Gained in the Fire” and “The Numbers Don’t Lie.”  On the other hand, the performance felt safe – I didn’t notice any new songs in the set and very little artistic deviation or embellishment. I would have liked more.  And I guess, technically, I got it. When Oberst and band took stage, Burhenn was with them – in a different dress, but with same great voice lending her harmonies to the majority of the Bright Eyes set.

Much has been written about Oberst as Bright Eyes – about the course of his career, the huge expectations that followed his initial entry into the music scene at the beginning of the last decade and the various ways that Oberst has met or not met those expectations over the years. A record like this year’s The People’s Key and a show like the one Wednesday night is evidence that despite public expectations, that career has been highly successful. Bright Eyes, the Bob-Dylan-meets-Bobcat-Golthwait folk singer that teenagers fell in love with in the early aughts was just barely represented in Wednesday’s performance. Some might use that as a point of criticism against the highly-produced, light-show performance we see on this tour, but I see it as a kind of natural evolution vis-à-vis bands who have held similar adolescent-agony mope spaces and then struggled (and succeeded) to push their way into new iterations (The Cure, for example, for whom Bright Eyes share more than just this one similarity).

Taken as a rock band, a genre space that Bright Eyes has moved in and out of over the years, the group of musicians who played Wednesday were excellent. I’m a big fan of Mike Mogis who plays guitar and pedal steel in the band, and the others, a crew that included (in addition to Mogis and Burhenn) two drummers, a multi-instrumentalist (Nate Walcott), and bassist, pushed the songs from the new record as well as a smattering of old tunes into new and interesting sonic spaces. I really like The People’s Key (minus the obnoxious quasi-spiritualist voice-over stuff) and, for me, those songs were the stand outs. Tunes like “Shell Games” and “Jejune Stars” got a sonic boost in the live environment. The band also played “Bowl of Oranges,” which, according to my more bonified BE fan/companion was a big deal. My favorite moment of the night was a duet performance of “Lua” from 2005′s I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning. Walcott accompanied Oberst with beautiful trumpet embellishments giving the song a depth not present on the record. It was perhaps the only time during the twenty-four song set that there was a real emotional connection between Oberst and the audience.  For a guy who’s made a career out of heart-on-his-sleeve emotion, emotional detachment from an unflinchingly devoted audience might be one more good reason to move on to the next thing.

Setlist: Firewall / Take It Easy (Love Nothing) / Haile Selassie / Four Winds / Bowl of Oranges / No One Would Riot For Less / Trees Get Wheeled Away / Shell Games / Approximate Sunlight / Arc of Tim / Triple Spiral / Nothing Gets Crossed Out / Something Vague / Hot Knives / Beginner’s Mind / Cartoon Blues / Jejune Stars / Poison Oak / The Calendar Hung Itself / Lua

Encore: Gold Mine Gutted / Lover I Don’t Have to Love / Road to Joy / One for You. One for Me.

(Sad Songs & Waltzes is a recurring feature on Muzzle of Bees, where artists share their favorite sad songs. Previous contributors include Megafaun, Delta Spirit, Damien Jurado, Conrad Plymouth, Frontier Ruckus, Strand of Oaks, and Roadside Graves.)

The Loom are in Austin for SXSW playing a number of shows including our Backyard BBQ on Friday, March 18th. I got in touch with John Fanning en route to Austin for his contributions to our Sad Songs & Waltzes feature.

Matt Bauer – “Don’t Let Me Out” (Listen)
This is actually one of Matt’s more uplifting songs, but the sense of nostalgia that he captures here is just so perfect that it’s actually kind of heart-wrenching. When he sings in his amazing voice, “Girls jumping off the new river bridge, the water rushes up to them, and their hair floats up to heaven, and it’s so pretty, well I can’t take it,” I know exactly what he means, and my mind is filled with memories of jumping off the highway bridge in Massachusetts where I grew up, and for a brief second with that irreplaceable feeling of joy that’s only found in the carelessness and recklessness of youth.

Smog – “Palimpsest” (Listen)
Possibly the most stark and concise articulation of alienation I’ve ever heard: “Why is everybody looking at me like there’s something fundamentally wrong – like I’m a southern bird, that’s stayed north too long?”

The Wailing Wall – “Speak Not Its Name” (Listen)
This might not be one of the saddest songs I know, but it’s certainly one of the most haunting. We recently went on a wonderful tour with this great band, and every night we would all join them on percussion for this song at the end of their set. Without a doubt one of the most cathartic and memorable musical experiences I’ve ever had.

Modest Mouse – “Baby Blue Sedan” (Listen)
A friend and I who had shared some pretty carefree and formative years together found ourselves at a party shortly after we’d moved to New York, sort of standing together drunkenly staring at the stereo when this song came on. Suddenly filled with an uncontrollable amount of nostalgia for those times, she and I both stood there dumbstruck, half mumbling along to the song and half incoherently reminiscing. Though we probably looked ridiculous, we were both very moved.

Mr. Sister – “Spring is for Lovers” (Listen)
The title of this song, like much of the music that Amelia Emmet makes with Mr. Sister, an incredible band from Boston, is deceptively beautiful; the chorus goes “fill my ears, fill my ears, fill my ears with water.” It’s both serene and chilling.

by Jon Stone | @jwstone — photo: Kyle Matteson | @solace

It’s hard to think of the Middle Brother show in Chicago last Saturday night as just a “show.” It was more than a show. It was a spectacle, a barn-burner — an extravaganza. This is not hyperbole, folks. The Metro hosted an honest-to-goodness, four-hour Concert Spectacular. The three bands, Deer Tick, Dawes, and Middle Brother, also seem like mere place-holders on a bill that instead featured an explosion of musical collaboration far exceeding the boundaries of what we imagine the word “band” to entail. Rarely was a band on stage without an extra member here or a special cover there. The show was, in a word, epic. Oh, and two more words: Jonny Corndawg.

Rather than diminishing the evening with lack-luster play-by-play, let me instead offer a more-or-less chronological highlights reel:

• Forget the “folk-rock” label, Deer Tick is a heavy, if extremely versatile, band. Their set was LOUD… and then soft. Apply this same genre-busting observation to all three bands and their sets. Each move from folk to soul to country and back to rock, and in the case of Deer Tick, far into heavy territory.
• After hearing about Deer Tick’s upcoming SXSW Nirvana set, it was hard not to see McCauley as a kind of  re-embodiment of Kurt. His hair – his voice – his Fender Jag. If you’re in Austin on Saturday, don’t miss that. Report back, please.
• Along those lines, Matt Vasquez joined Deer Tick mid-set and played a perfect cover of In Utero’s “Scentless Apprentice.”
• They also covered Springsteen’s “Racing in the Streets,” Vasquez at the helm.
• Deer Tick has a secret weapon in keyboard/sax man Rob Crowell. The dude can wail.
• Dawes is clearly the next big thing. This is a palpable reality now instead of just a likely prediction. They killed with songs off both North Hills and new songs off of a yet-unnamed forthcoming record.
• Near the end of their set, Dawes introduced Jonny Corndawg who proceeded to dance (or, more aptly, boot-scoot) his way into the pockets of the whole crowd. You kind of have to see this guy to believe him. As my buddy said, “Corndawg brought the heart and Goldsmith brought the heartbreak” – a perfect foil, it turned out.
• If Corndawg brought heart, and Goldsmith brought heartbreak, McCauley brought the booze.
• Dawes closed with “When My Time Comes” with Vasquez, McCauley and Corndawg helping out each taking verses. We could have all gone home happy after a set closer like that – the entire room was singing along at the top of their lungs – but alas, at nearly midnight, we still had yet to experience Middle Brother as Middle Brother.
• By the time the headliners officially hit the stage, the night had already been ridiculous – but things then shifted into a full-on hootenanny mode. Instruments were passed around, band members came and went, “Me, Me, Me” and “Middle Brother” became anthems to the chaos and friendship of the moment.
• Middle Brother, if I’m not mistaken, played every song on their record.
• After heavy doses of McCauley and Goldsmith, Vasquez’s songs were visceral.  The smooth-on-the-record waltz “Theater” became this huge, haunted thing on stage. Matt screamed and then screamed some more and oh how we swooned. Same thing on “Someday.”
• Goldsmith continued to bring it with “Thanks for Nothing” and the solo “Wilderness” but my favorite song on the record “Blood and Guts” became something entirely different.  The song started softly and built in crescendo until the bridge came and left me emotionally devastated: “I just wanna get my fist through some glass! I just wanna get your arm in a cast!” Man. I’m still reeling more than 48 hours later.
• Soon after, the heavy mood was displaced when someone dropped a fart bomb. Jonny Corndawg happily claimed it.
• The show closed at nearly 1am with a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me.” I know this song has been played frequently during Deer Tick’s set, but bringing it to Middle Brother gave everyone in all three bands one more excuse to come on stage and sing a verse/play a solo. It couldn’t have been a better song to go out on. Yeah? Yeah.

A night like Saturday seems a rare privilege. Seeing musicians in this context clearly reveling in the opportunity to let loose a bit and share a musical moment with friends was something not soon to be forgotten. Goldsmith, Vasquez and McCauley are on the verge of something big and I think the Middle Brother album and tour will be remembered by them in the same way it will be by us: A galvanizing moment among friends before the floodgates of life and fame sweep everyone in disparate directions toward the blessings and curses of success.

Discuss: Were you at the Chicago or Madison show? Any additional thoughts?

I saw TV On The Radio last night in Austin. The band tore through a collection of old and new. “Starring at the Sun” received the biggest reaction throughout the night. It’s good to have the band playing live dates again. I caught their last show pre-hiatus in San Francisco a few years ago. The band’s new album, Nine Types of Light, arrives on April 12th. Listen/download a new track from said record below:

MP3: TV On The Radio – “Caffeinated Consciousness”

James Blake made his US debut at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night. Brooklyn Vegan has the scoop and there’s video here and here.

The Dodos new album, No Color, is out today. It’s available in digital form for only $2.99 at Amazon today.

The Strokes are streaming their new album, Angles, on their website.

You can now stream/download the Wye Oak concert from the Black Cat in Washington, DC thanks to NPR.

Testa Rosa have new songs available as free downloads.