Tune In Saturdays: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

For some reason, I just can't get enough funk and soul as of late. The only problem with that shift in taste is the lack of current stuff to actually get out and see live, until Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings rolled through Dallas last Sunday. Seriously cool stuff. Their albums are all recorded on 60's equipment to keep that authentic motown feel, but even their live shows retain that old school slant and strut. I've never seen so many white people dancing so horribly in one place before. Good stuff. The Dap Kings can also been seen hiding crack from Amy Winehouse as her backing band and as a recording partner for Mark Ronson.

From Pitchfork:

Among the biggest keys to the Dap-Kings' success is that Jones is a fantastic singer, a masterful soul vocalist in the best tradition of Etta James, Bettye Lavette, and Irma Thomas. She can wail when she needs to, has access to a gentle falsetto when the song requires it, and has impeccable control, with a full-throated tone that grabs your attention. Jones isn't a fresh-faced youngster imitating her heroes, either-- she was at it in the 70s, singing backup on funk and disco records while seeking her own big break, but moved to gospel in the 80s when her style fell out of favor. In between her early career and her revival in the mid-90s, she worked as a prison guard and also did armored vehicle security work, and she brings the same tough, no-nonsense approach those jobs require to her music.

The band, and lead composer Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) in particular, has a firm understanding of the material they're channeling. This is not pastiche-- it's soul music that came along about thirty-five years late. The production is so spot-on it's like a time warp, and drummer Homer Steinweiss inhabits his decades-old beats so thoroughly he makes them feel fresh again. You get the sense of musicians in a room together, and the horns blend in the air of the studio before ever reaching the mixing board. This music is a throwback for sure, but it's so uncontrived that it doesn't come off like one.

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Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Tell Me (mp3)
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights (video)

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Live in Dallas (video)

Tune In Saturdays: Richard Hawley

It's not often you find a British-born country pop crooner, but here it is with Richard Hawley, former guitarist for the greatness of Pulp. Hawley's crooner styling, reminiscent of a Bacarach meets Orbison with a dash of Neil Diamond, provides a fantastic force in front of a beautfiullly orchestrated gem. Hawley obviously has some trouble figuring out what exactly he wants to be, but really, they're all good choices so why not just play them all.

From the BBC:

Lady’s Bridge sees the scope broadening further from Coles Corner, into an album that sees the average tempo lift a notch. Anyone expecting a radical new dance direction will be disappointed. He has seen that the wheel is doing fine for now and intends to leave it that way. While Hawley’s sweetly dark, yet doomed romantic voice - not lightly is it compared to Scott Walker, Roy Orbison and Jim Reeves - intones tales of past love, wanderlust and heartbreak. Oh, and in the swelling swoonery of lead single “Tonight The Streets Are Ours”, ASBOs. On the magnificent “Lady Solitude”, Hawley evokes a hard worn northern Leonard Cohen, and blooms on the bruised romance of opener “Valentine”, while the gentle skiffling “I’m Looking For Someone To Find Me” lifts the spirits immeasurably.

Overall, Lady’s Bridge is an utterly lovely, timeless album that Hawley can be proud of, and deserves to further his cause in becoming a proper national treasure. Don’t let him get robbed again.

Richard Hawley - I'm Looking for Someone to Find Me (mp3)
Richard Hawley - Serious (video)

Tune In Saturdays: Evangelicals

Well, it's official. There are at least two good things to come out of Oklahoma. No, it's not tornadoes and trailer parks. It's the Flaming Lips and a Norman, Oklahoma band they quite obviously influenced, the Evangelicals. While it's hard to be quite as weird as the lips, or as weird as they used to be anyway, the Evangelicals are full of oddity-infused psych-pop, some nice melodies and a grungy backbone. Good stuff.

From Stereogum:

"This is a great album, a big, sprawling, mess of a trip through the band's unhinged and unruly musical vocabulary. It's a strain of pop, no mistake there; but as made by kids from Oklahoma weaned on the Lips and Scooby Doo re-runs, on 8-bit pastimes and '80s bands (U2, the Smiths, even the Cure circa "Just Like Heaven" come through virtuosic singer-guitarist Josh Jones's home blend). Now take that mess of modifiers and run it through a kaleidoscope, and you've got the mighty first cut:"

Evangelicals - Skeleton Man (mp3)
Evangelicals - Another Day (video)

Tune In Saturdays: Moonrats

This week we've got LA by way of Seattle band, the Moonrats, led by Nathan Thelen, the former guitarist for Pretty Girls Make Graves. The band sounds somewhat how you'd expect, a very Seattle-y, tightly-crafted emo-ish, poppy-ish, grungy-ish fun band to listen to. I know, I know, lot's of ishes, but that's how it goes, I guess.

From their management's website:

"Featuring vocal performances by all three members, this early document reveals a multi-layered sonic depth that, for all its murky haze, reveals a vastness and breadth of vision emerging over a horizon much broader than what most bands will see in a lifetime. In this light it becomes clear that unlike many of their peers who sound like they’ve been spending every waking hour shopping for tight pants and grooming their ironic hipster moustaches, Moon Rats have been staying up late crafting music with substance."

How's that for a bout of puffery? Good stuff, though.

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Moonrats - FLM (mp3)
Moonrats - Sweet Thing (mp3)

Tune In Saturdays: Vampire Weekend

Somewhere around February, I smell a new little crunchy indie-pop revival coming. It'll be sort of like the whole Strokes/Vines/Franz Ferdinand thing, but better, and led by NY's Vampire Weekend.

From PreFix:

Current New York City darlings Vampire Weekend are indeed worthy of note. Their starched collar, Paul Simon on safari routine is a sip of cool lemonade in the city'''s muggy ''"serious indie''" air. But why does the initial pace of this song make me deathly afraid of a blog-fueled ska revival?  Probably because these guys are so smooth. I could see Ezra Koenig'''s Britt Daniel croon and infectious ''"Hey!''" shouting paving the way for a horrific relapse into wallet chains and dangerous elbow dances if this skanking impulse is left unchecked. You know people would fall for it.

Vampire Weekend are too consistently likable for this to be more than a passing concern. A cool organ breeze and a shifting drum beat save the day, prohibiting too much snark from being slung at their New York Times featured, digitally distributed exclusively by Other Music, Columbia University, golden boy asses. So a little snark, but the class warfare anti-Strokes kind that has very little to do with the music itself.

Vampire Weekend - Walcott (mp3)

Vampire Weekend - Mansard Roof (video)

Tune In Saturdays: Hey Hey My My

Like their predecessors, french fries, french toast, the eiffel tower, long cigarettes and the twisted mustache, we've got another reason to love france. Hey Hey My My, the Paris duo with an obvious affinity for Neil Young lyrics, is a totally infectious pop gem in the same folksy vain as Liam Finn. It's one of those bands that took about 30 seconds of listening before I punched the 'buy now' button.

From Other Music:

At times Hey Hey My My remind us of a band like Doves, with acoustic guitars bolstered by simple, powerful rhythm tracks that are so subtly assembled it's tough to tell what is live and what is looped, resulting in laidback, groove-oriented folk-rock that also draws on American indie influences.

Hey Hey My My - Merryland (mp3)
Hey Hey My My - I Need Some Time (video)

http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf

Tune In Saturdays: Ghosthustler

It's hard to get tired of good local DFW music as of late. As you may have noticed around here, my good local band cup overfloweth. Yes, overfloweth. Denton, TX boys Ghosthustler actually broke on the national scene before playing a single show. After a few blogs and college radio stations picked up the song Parking Lot Nights (mp3) with the support of an awesome music video, their star has been rising quickly. Any fan of Nintendo and the 80's will fall in love with the video directed by Peter Ohs, host of fantastic music blog, the Anchor Center. They might remind you of another ghostly TX band and tune in alumni, Ghostland Observatory.

From the Dallas Observer:

"Ghosthustler is a band from Denton. The oldest member, Grey St. Germain Gideon, is 24; the youngest, Alan Palomo, is 19. Shane English and Noah Jackson round out the young crew. They met when Palomo, who is what you might call the Primary Ghosthustler, matriculated last year at the University of North Texas as a radio-television-video-film major. Ghosthustler does not have a publicist, a Web site, a label or even a record. What they do have is attitude, luck, the Internet, one hell of a video and one hell of a song. From all this they have garnered more buzz than a bee hightailing it to the pollen. And the story around Ghosthustler is more than just about a good song. It's about the culmination of a number of pop traditions, and how the future of music—via software, Internet communication and, oddly, looking to the past—is now."

Ghosthustler - Busy Busy Busy (mp3)
Ghosthustler - Parking Lot Nights (video)

Tune In Saturdays: Eccentric Soul

Over the past couple weeks, I've gotten a total education on what early Miami soul was truly like. I'll groove to some Motown, but this full on ass-shakin' album of unreleased and largely unknown tracks from the late 60's is truly genius. Not so glitzy, not so cliche, just down and dirty, gritty soul. Grab these two albums from Numero, Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label, and the even better addendum, Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts of Deep City.

From Dusty Groove America:

An essential chapter of Miami soul -- even if most of the work is appearing here for the first time ever! The set is a magnificent companion to Numero's Deep City collection of pre-TK Miami soul -- but it's put together in such a way that it's almost a beautiful introduction to the south Florida sound on its own -- served up in a batch of rare, unreleased tracks! The music is every bit as wonderful as you'd expect -- Miami soul recorded at a time before cliches had started to hit that scene -- and when the best artists down south were strongly resonating ideas from Memphis and Muscle Shoals with other elements borrowed from northern groups both funky and mellow.

The Rollers -  Knocking on the Wrong Door (mp3)
Frank Williams & the Rocketeers - Show Me What You Got (mp3)
Lynn Williams - Don't Be Surprised (mp3)

Numero. Buy. Buy from other music.

a hat tip to Gorilla vs. Bear for the find.

UPDATE*
Here's a video of Band of Horses covering Am I a Good Man (mp3) by Them Two (on the deep city label).

Tune In Saturdays: Peter Von Poehl

Looks like our friends over at Bella Union have hit on another singer-songwriter, crooner type. This time it's Peter Von Poehl, swedish by origin, now residing in Berlin, and with a website written in French because of some random spins on a French radio station that turned him into an instant smash. It's minimalist in nature, sounds a bit like Air in their quieter moments,  and has a tinge of tune in alumni Lonely, Dear. Fantastic stuff.

From Drowned in Sound:

Going To Where The Tea Trees Are won’t give you an energy boost, but it might just smooth away the worry lines. In Peter von Poehl’s world, everything feels under control, measured and purposeful. There is plenty of room to breathe. How you react to this record is, therefore, rather dependent on your mood, because such restraint is deeply frustrating and alien when life is slipping out of your grasp and you want to smash things with hammers. It’s too twee; too perfect.

But if you let it, if you let go, this album will blow away the cobwebs like a spring breeze, taking you far away from grimy streets and council tax bills.

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Peter Von Poehl - Going Where the Tea-Trees Are (video)

Peter Von Poehl - The Story of the Impossible (video)

Tune In Saturdays: The 1900s

Straight from the internet buzz bin, here's the 1900s, a sort of Austin-sounding septet from the land of Armano, deep dish pizza and Ditka. It's a mish-mash of fairly straight forward pianos and strings, sounding like a cross between a folksy Spoon and tune-in Alums Camera Obscura.

From Pitchfork:

A collection of what? Ceramic chickens? Snowglobes of the 50 states? Souvenirs of their victims? Twee-pop on vinyl? The 1900s-- who shouldn't be confused with the 1990s or MC 900 Foot Jesus-- most likely have the latter: The Chicago septet apparently sprung fully-formed from the womb of the local psych-pop scene, releasing an EP before playing their first show and then getting signed on the basis of that show. "Everybody's Got a Collection", an outtake from their upcoming full-length, Cold & Kind, is a swirling synthesis of graceful strings, folk-pop guitars, tinkling pianos, and cooed backing harmonies. Underneath that candy shell, however, is a bittersweet chocolate center: "Let's not pretend that I'll drop everything for you," Edward Anderson sings, not as a coldhearted kiss-off but as a statement of supremely realistic expectations.

No videos yet, but hopefully we'll see one soon.

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The 1900s  - Everybody's Got a Collection (mp3)
The 1900s - When I Say Go (mp3)