Laura Veirs coming to Mercury Lounge February 15th with 'July Flame'

I like 4th of July, it's a nice break from work in the middle of the summer, if you're like me and don't take many vacations because you don't know how to.

Not that 4th of July necessarily has anything to do with singer/songwriter (I really hate that term) Laura Veirs' new record, July Flame. It could be about a fling that happened in July. Or Fire Island. Or you know, a fruit (thanks Wikipedia for crashing my jokes).

This is a really nice record, and it's gentle and sage-like and folksy at parts without being "haunting" or overcooked. It's very accessible which speaks to me because even though I like a lot of different kinds of music accessibility is always something I look for and not shy away from (not that I don't listen to difficult music, you know, to keep my credibility). The album is thoughtful in the instrumentation and variety of sounds produced. It feels like a person who takes the time to think about things and rather than actively deciding something, he or she gives whatever she's working on a little time and things just fall into place.

The vocals are like the lightest wave, moving slowly but as they get closer, it hits you with a bit more power than you were expecting. It's a nice feeling. By the time you're at the punchier "Summer Is A Champion" you know you've found your new Sunday afternoon walking iPod music.

You can check out more about the concert here which also has a link to buy tickets. How convenient. It's also only 12 bucks. How convenient again.

Traditional, Gentle Country from Williamsburg

I was catching up with a lovely couple, Jimmy Sullivan (no not the dude from awful Avenged Sevenfold) and Mary Bragg, Jimmy a very congenial fellow, and Mary a bright, smiling star, the other night at the Yelp Inaugural Ball. It's rare that you find two hospitable Southerners in Williamsburg, but they've been making music together for years now and I was fortunate enough to chat with them about it and some recent gigs like their January 7th gig at The Bitter End and upcoming headliner at Living Room on February 12th.

More recently their collaborations turned into Mary's 2007 album, Sugar. You can find several tracks on Mary's MySpace page currently. Full of older, well worn Americana/country songs, Mary's voice has a real lift and air to it, a pristine quality that is at the forefront of a subdued, lean production. A wonderful cut, "Let Me", really has a nice build from a gentle spareness to a softly rumbling finish. There are changes of pace, like the whaling guitar and Jimmy's funkified, bopping basslines in a song like "Sweet Skin".


The state of pop country has always been thriving no doubt; it's efforts from people like Jimmy and Mary that help round out things with a less less over the top, excessiveness and a real focus on arranging effective songs.

You can check out Mary on the MySpace link above or her official site where you can purchase both her CDs. You can also download Sugar on Amazon here. For more on Living Room in the Lower East Side, go here.

The Motorcycle Industry - I Frickin' Love These Guys

Cover art for the new album, Electric Education. Buy it on iTunes here.


V neck t shirt? Check. Flannel? Check. Cardigan? Check? Black-framed glasses? Check. Sports watch? Check-wait a second it better be a Thundercats watch...

"Fake friends will get you nowhere".

That part of the stanza in "Jesse" (not really a stanza, but let's just use that term to sound like a smart bitch) reminds me of that great part in Empire State Games' "Trivial Pursuit" where he goes, "why do you surrender your thoughts and emotions for limited surface acceptance".

You know how I love Oxford Collapse. These guys, so named The Motorcycle Industry, are like a less loud version of them. I think the one of the greatest things to describe a band is youthful, and not like your teen pop youthful, but much more brash, as if they're in the moment but not to be cute, but to say, "this is my hilarious self-awareness at this particular time and anything's game". It's a fun, snotty, awkward, punk-ish way of being when you're smarter than 16 but not settled down at 25. I love Brooklyn in this scrappy way as well. And that's where these guys call home.

MI's cuts basically are a lyrical adventure; there's a soft spot for me because I too went to the goddamn NYU bookstore as they lament on "Everything Sounds Better With". Singing with a drunk laziness (read: off key sometimes) but with a sly, abrasive, self-deprecating wit, John Langan sloshes through songs with a combination of vocal stylings from the Pogues, The Anniversary, Piebald, and a little bit of Say Anything. It's like a situation where you are drunk among friends making silly zingers and there's a sober acquaintance who just doesn't understand that some people actually get funnier the more drunk they get. I love the stream of consciousness in the stories spun, going from description to oh-SNAP judgements and back again without any rest. Because no matter, it's down to earth; calling other people out on their shit in very personal (and yet, almost objectively), specific instances is a great invitation to the listener to come into their world and see how they see in a fun way. The details are alluring in that way that they come so fast that you really are engaged to keep up with the thought process.

The music swings from Tosser's/Pixies type rumblings like "Blue Ribbon" to great little accents like the keyboard in "The Lost Weekend" breakdown, and the four piece seems to feel content and knows a thing or two about melody and mixing up between acoustic-heavy songs and adding doses of crunch here and there. Michael Weiss's mid-tempo guitar hooks and Ben Caruba's sometimes light, sometimes drudgy bass lay into the songs in a nice go-around-the-circle sort of way, like "here's my stuff, now it's his turn, and let's put it together now". Ryan Barnes rounds out the band with some Dave Grohl-in-Nirvana-Unplugged drumming; reasonable volume, rolling fills, a bit fluffy.

It's fist pumping with a clear conscience.

These guys are picking up some good shows as of late, including next Thursday, the 15th, at the Alphabet Lounge on Ave. C. Check out this flyer, with Ryan's chest hair prominently shown. Nice sunglasses indoors at night. Oh sophomore year NYU.


Be sure to check them out at Mercury Lounge as well on Feb. 1st; they are headlining the show and should show up sober around 10pm. I probably won't be. Won't be sober.

Other shows upcoming:
Feb. 18th - Bar 9 (where the bartenders can be slow during happy hour, but the jukebox is great).
Feb. 27th - The Delancey (where male go-go dancers will dance to their music)

Check out The Motorcycle Industry on MySpace, where they have a little vlog as well as 575 friends.

Marvelous Toy - Out of the West and into your ears

I sometimes enjoy lo-fi sounds paired with big sonic tastes and lots of instruments thrown together; a band like Saturday Looks Good To Me comes to mind, with their idea that in the golden days of music, well, we recorded and felt the instrumentation more. Then you have bands that really push it onward and upward with a kind of "the bigger the better" mentality I feel, with Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire.

Marvelous Toy hails from different parts of Los Angeles, bringing together a few different sounds that are altogether far away from the pulsating pop or vacuous rock or g-funk rap...or snotty third wave ska (hey ska still love ya). Their angle is really to inject an already full-of-imitators genre with some Western twang, and I don't mean southern country, but a Western western twang, reflecting beauty and starkness from times on a "frontier" of some sort. Jordan Hudock's vocals, I thought at first on their song "You Were Brighter", was trying too hard to channel an indie Johnny Cash minus the deadpan, natural calm Cash's voice brings, but on "Twice the Speed", he really succeeds with a steady delivery and good emotion. On "Waiting For The Fire" the falsettos and chorus do a poor man's Shins.

The keys also keep things old timey down-to-earth or conversely add a pronounced orchestral touch, and some lulling backing vocals from cutesy Ny Lee kind of make you wish you were watching a sunset with a beer, maybe in Silverlake, maybe in the woods, maybe just anywhere.

At the core, they fuse this western aesthetic with slow pop progressions, you know, to mimic being contemplative. While not punchy with their switch ups and bridges, they certainly pull through with a lush sound that I'm sure a band with more members and verve like Arcade Fire could admire. They describe their sound as "a washing machine" but I think they can admit to a more calculated delivery than that.

I'm curious to see where they go from their EP "All Is Quiet", with it's silhouette flowery late sixties San Fran vibe artwork; maybe lyrically they'll inject some uppers and the music will follow. Only in the west I guess.

Marvelous Toy will be playing a Halloween show at R Bar with Les Blanks, The Voyeurs, The Hectors, and Fol Chen. Not a huge fan of the mopey music video but I'm sure live they'll throw a few smiles.

Suggested Track: "Twice The Speed" (not on the EP)

Visit their MySpace page or you can buy here at Amazon.