Bright Eyes, Sometimes a crescendo.

Before I start, 2 things. First i know that this is not the most faithful definition of crescendo. Second this post is a month or so late, but whatever, I still want to write it. My house lost internet access for a few days before and after the concert I mentioned way back in my last post. Anyways, this post will be highlighting songs by Bright Eyes with a rising action.

A stylistic theme that runs through many of Bright Eyes' songs is a rising action culminating in the emotional apex, often followed by a steep decline. For a writer as emotional as he, this is a useful tactic for highlighting the main point of the song. Since all of it is emotional, the meat of the song needs to be differentiated.

Yuck [Updated]

[Update: As time went by since I wrote this post, two songs by "Yuck" which I did not review began to stand out to me, so I am updating this to include those two songs]

Yuck is a band I first heard of while listening to sports talk radio show of all places. The host put on their song "Get Away" as a transition into commercial break. It just goes to show you never know when or where you'll be introduced to a new band. Yuck formed in 2009, but didn't released their first album until February, 2011. They join the countless number of artists whose debut albums are eponymous, seriously there are a ton. To name a few there is Vampire Weekend's Vampire Weekend, Weezer's Weezer, and Nirvana's Nirvana. I was too lazy to go through and count, but there must be over two hundred eponymous albums on the full list. Two of the band members, Daniel Blumberg and Max Bloom, played in Cajun Dance Party before joining Yuck. If you asked me to describe their sound in terms of other band's, I would say they sound like a mix of Smashing Pumpkins, Dinosaur Jr, and some Oasis mixed in for some British flavor. The mixture creates quite a unique sound that is both hard enough to satisfy fans of rock but thought out and raw enough for indie fans.

Explosions in the Sky

Bonnaroo

Explosions in the Sky is a post-rock band formed in Austin, Texas in 1999. Like many artists classified as "post-rock," E.I.T.S relies mostly on instrumentals. The band consists of three electric-guitarists and a drummer, who carry the band through many eight-plus minute odysseys. The songs are structured like a film might be, the song begins slowly but build up to a climax that usually occurs with about two minutes left in the song. I'll admit that I am unfamiliar with most bands who consider themselves post-rock, and my discovery of this band did not come in an ordinary fashion.

Bright Eyes. Sometimes uplifting.

Bright Eyes is the name of the band headlined my Connor Oberst (lead vocals and guitar mostly, occasionally bass and piano), accompanied by Mike Morgis and Nate Walcott (many instruments) and frequently joined by whoever they feel like at the time. Connor is a prolific artist and cranks out about 1 album per year and a half, as well as contributing to many collaborations, putting out solo projects, and other ventures. The tone of his songs vary greatly, but his overall outlook seems to be that life is sad, but worth it; tragic, but funny; and lovely, but lonely. Connor's songs can take you to the darkest depths of human emotion. He has songs about being alone, depression, drugs, death, and suicide. He also has songs that speak to a great hopefulness of trying to live happily in the face of existence's futility. Some songs are just plain happy too. Others still are hard to categorize. This post will focus on some of my favorite happy songs of his.

the Mountain Goats

To preface:
This is the first in a planned series of four posts, which may be reduced as my procrastination sees fit. They are being written with the intention of promoting a show so that one of my friends will go with me. Not only is the main attraction one of my favorite bands, but the opening act is also in the top 20. (Bright Eyes with the Mountain Goats opening to stop teasing you.) So without further ado:

Pomplamoose

Pomplamoose is my first review on what I would call a "YouTube Band."

You may know them as "the annoying couple from the Toyota commercials," as my friend Steve (Not from this blog) described them. They had a few national commercials around Christmas singing traditional carols in their own special way. (FYI, I didn't much like the commercials.) Incidentally, Steve from the blog describes them as "that girl that stares at you with dead eyes." And while she may stare at the camera with the look of a nervous girl giving her first handjob, the music is very enjoyable and creative. (Don't listen to him Nataly, you can stare at me with those dead eyes any day.)

A typical Pomplamoose song will feature Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn performing a song, each playing multiple instruments and singing both lead and back-up vocals. Nataly will often sing the lyrics multiple times for an awesomely harmonious effect. An interesting thing about Pomplamoose is that in the music video you see footage of the instrumentation spliced together on screen, and so you are able to see how they were able to obtain the finished product through hundreds of tiny shots. Things that you probably rarely think about are shown in minute detail. Something as simple as clapping that coincides with the rhythm clearly takes a great deal of time for two people working on such a small budget. Many shots of individual claps are dispersed throughout the video. Though he tries his little heart out, it is pretty clear that Jack isn't proficient enough on the drums to play most songs the whole way through. They get through this with many individual shots of a cymbal crash or snare smash, and fill it in with low budget moves such as drumming their fists on a desk.


There are two general types of Pomplamoose songs: covers and originals; I'll review some covers first.

Jackson Square

A while back, I wrote a post on some of my favorite modern Canadian bands (Located Here). I briefly explored the music of several artists and posted some of their most successful songs. Now, I would like to expand on one band in particular, Arkells. I don't like generalizing bands' sound by classifying them into genres, but if I had to I would describe them as "pop-punk." That doesn't really help you to grasp their sound though, does it? Forget I said it then.

Let's dive into their only album released so far, Jackson Square, which debuted in 2008.

State of the Blog Address

Hello all,

As you have surely noticed by now, we have not been updating the blog as much as we would like in the past few months. It seems like just yesterday that an alive and well Music Box was posting daily. For all intensive purposes, the blog was dead for much of March, April, and May. With the summer season here, we, the writers, find ourselves with free time and a renewed desire to share our musical tastes and experiences.

I would like to announce that we are proudly resurrecting the Music Box from the dark depths of forgotten blogs. We hope to take advantage of the diverse and numerous concerts and shows scheduled this summer in Buffalo and the surrounding area.

Thank you for your patience and continued support of the Music Box through this once dismal but now exciting time.

-Peter

The perfect version.

I tend to discover music on the internet; so I have a constant dilemma. Namely, there are lots of versions of most songs, and a lot of them suck. This is especially true if the artist isn't well known, or the song isn't yet released; however, this can still be a problem with more well known songs.

A song which I have been listening to a lot lately is "You Don't Know Me" by Ben Folds (w Regina Spektor), from the album Way to Normal. Someone posted it on facebook. I loved it upon first listen, and bookmarked the page, and for a while I just listened to that version. I'm pretty sure it was this one:



After listening to that version about 400 times just by loading the youtube video, I decided to download it. And since I really like Ben Folds, I decided to do something I rarely do: pay for it. I was sad to find out that the version I downloaded from iTunes was slightly different. Maybe it was just the settings on my iPod, but the version I have seems to have less bass and Ben's vocals are weaker. So I tried to find a downloadable version more to my liking. In my search I quickly found that there is a version with a music video created by Tim and Eric linked here:

Living Guitar Legend: Trey Anastasio

While speaking with others about whom, in one's opinion, is the greatest guitarist of all time, names such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and B.B. King will often come to mind. It is difficult to bring in many modern guitarists into this conversation, save a select few, including Trey Anastasio, best known for his work in one of my favorite bands, Phish. This would be a bold statement trying to put Anastasio in the same conversation as the names mentioned above, but it is not only me that thinks he belongs up there. Rolling Stone magazine would agree, by including him on their top 100 guitarist of all time at number 73. I would like to focus on some of his side projects that he took part in, due to the fact that at a later time I wish to author a separate post on Phish. Just because this is a post about Trey Anastasio, I do find it necessary to include at least one Phish song.

The Canadians Are Coming!

Have you ever had a sudden realization? This post will explain my realization that many of my favorite artists are surprisingly Canadian.

One of the things I enjoy doing in conjunction with listening to a band's music is researching their biography, as to achieve a greater understanding for the band's beginnings and influences. I often find myself undertaking this research while listening to bands whose music I have owned for some time, yet know little about. Today, I found myself listening to Broken Social Scene, a band whose music I have been enjoying for a few months now. While quickly reading their Wikipedia page, (yes I know, wikipedia is frowned upon in academia, but it's so damn convenient!) I discovered that they were based in Toronto, Canada. It then hit me, a good percentage of the bands I listen to are either based or born in America's Northern neighbor, Canada, of course. I thought to myself, "Wow, Justin Beiber, Nickelback, Celine Dion...Canada just keeps producing!" That of course, was sarcasm, and you should read on if you believe that those artists are all that Canadian music has to offer.

Why?

To clarify before the post formally begins, and to avoid a "who's on first?" type of moment, "Why?" (spelled with a question mark) is the name of the band this post concerns.

Why? is a folk/alternative rock band with a splash of hip-hop thrown in at times. They are on the Anticon label, known for alternative hip-hop, but becoming increasingly indie/rock. Why?'s albums are very thematically driven, and their lyrics are more concerned with imagery and emotion than substantive meaning.

Elephant Eyelash (2005) is their first album worth mentioning. Death, disease, decay, and elephants are common motifs. Yeah, I don't understand the specific relevance of elephants, but they are all over this album.

Their most popular song according to the youtubes is "Gemini (Birthday Song)". It starts off strong, but in my opinion kind of burns out with the third verse at the tempo change. The song is sad, and though it's meaning isn't quite evident, it makes me think of someone losing a loved one at a young age to premature death. The lyrics are a recounting of their time together while the singer tries to stay strong. Elephant reference: "and all our body hair pricked up // an elephant eyelash"

The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me

The Hold Steady are a bar band. There's no shame in admitting it. They often reference themselves as one in their lyrics: "She said it's good to see you back in a bar band, baby/ I said it's great to see you're still in the bars." Their lead singer, Craig Finn, looks like a guy who could've been a substitute teacher at your high school or a member of your bowling league.

Craig Finn, Lead Singer of the Hold Steady

The band tours incessantly and frequently chooses to blast their no-holds barred rock in smaller venues with a bar atmosphere. Perhaps it's these modest, everyman circumstances and a lack of pretensions surrounding this band that have made them beacons of hope to the indie rock community as well as being one of my favorite groups.

A Story of Suburban Life By Arcade Fire

Released in late summer of 2010, this third album by Arcade Fire has proved to be their most commercially successful and arguably most complete work. It is a concept album dealing with the childhoods of band members Win Butler, William Butler, and Regine Chassagne, all of whom were raised in suburban Houston and Montreal respectively. In the regular stylings of Arcade Fire, the album has a dark and apocalyptic tone to it. The album was written in a way where the band members seemed to look back on their childhoods on comment on their own experiences. If one examines the lyrics, they can easily relate to the topics dealt with in the songs. For me, many of the songs strike a chord in me as I feel I can easily relate to many of the issues and experiences that are lyrically discussed. I will now divulge my own interpretations of the most important songs on the album, discussing their significance to me personally and to the album as a whole.

Smooth Acoustics: Colin Hay

Not too long ago I stumbled upon an artist that sounded pretty good on an episode of one of my favorite shows, Scrubs. I was curious as to who it was, but did not catch it in the credits and forgot to search the episode online to see who the artist was. A few weeks later, I was watching Scrubs again, and another song by this artist came on, and this time, almost right after the episode, I looked up the artist.

After figuring out that the artists name was Colin Hay, and the song that I liked was Beautiful World, I started looking up some of his songs on the YouTube. I discovered a whole library of his work with each song sounding great.