All of Storied Europe

April 28, 2012

Boy oh boy have I been negligent in updating this thing. I hope that isn’t going to become a standard preface for any new entry on here now, but for the time being entries are going to be pretty sporadic and thin. For the time being, at least, I have a good excuse–I am living out of a backpack, with no computer, almost a month into a two month long European tour with David Strackany, aka Paleo, a songwriter of abundant talent and resourcefulness. I am writing this from my great aunt’s cottage in Hook Norton, a village in the Cotswolds, one of my favorite places in the world. I was here for a week or so when I was six years old and it has retained its mystery and its charm.

So far we have been to Denmark, Holland, a bit of Germany, Belgium, and England. The bad weather has followed us around, as everyone we meet says that the week before was lovely and warm, and we have only been met with rain and an early spring chill. We have Scotland and Ireland to look forward to before the weather is likely to improve, but I am excited about Ireland in particular. Then it’s off to an extensive routing through France, with a quick stop in Barcelona included, and then we go to Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, and through much more of Germany.

Many of the foreign reviews of Post-Empire seem not to understand its influences or its trajectory–”Clearly my guitar playing has been heavily influenced by the work of Leonard Cohen,” and similar nonsense–but I suppose that is to be expected. This is American music that I have been making, and not even the Americans appear to ever win this weird critical guessing game. Why critics play at knowing precisely what musicians have been listening to, and why they always present their guesswork in such a condescending way, their confidence matched only by their incorrectness, I will never know. Most critics these days are woefully underinformed about popular music history compared to the people actually making the music, in any case. I hold out hope for the French music press, for now, as the record is released on a French label, and as the notices there so far have understood what I am trying to do, at least. OK, time to stop bemoaning mediocre criticism. People are entitled to their opinions; I just wish they could express their opinions without putting their words in my mouth (and in my hands, and in my guitar, and in my brain).

“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Yes, things have been happening in my world, and I have not been writing about them! January and February have kind of a prosaic quality for me here in Brooklyn, trudging to work and back to home, putting in long hours for seasonal reasons that are too boring for me to want to describe them here. And many of the things that I am most excited about are in the process of being finalized, or even in the process of being initially explored, and I just can’t divulge them yet. What I can do is list some of the more concrete things that are going on.

First, my fourth full-length record, Post-Empire. It is being mastered in a little under two weeks, and I will be releasing it digitally on March 20th. I am still deciding what the vinyl release date will be–probably some time in July or August–but the digital release will include vinyl preorders from the vinyl-only label that Trevor Wilson and I are starting, Rapt Gaze. It will be limited to 500 copies in the first pressing. Trevor’s ensemble’s record will be released in tandem with mine, as we launch our label.

Then, in April, I go to Europe for two months. The tour routing is coming along nicely, and I think it is going to be a fun and completely bewildering experience. I am really looking forward to it. I need a break from the city, even if it’s a strenuous break on a continent where I am a stranger. Some related European opportunities rear their heads every once in a while, but none of them are firm so I can’t discuss them. But they are also exciting.

I guess that’s it for now! I hope to be back with more substantive news about Europe as soon as it feels wise. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of Tamara Lindeman, pka The Weather Station. It looks like she will be coming to play New York for the first time in March, and I will be on the bill as well, if we can get something together. I’m pretty thrilled, as she is fantastic and lovely.

My 11 favorite records of 2011

December 20, 2011

First, a brief word about Pitchfork, as they are the itch that I can never stop scratching, and I will let that come between you, the reader, and my various other opinions. I find myself softening to their wiles these days, as I recall some of the amazing records I first heard as a result [...]

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Eno the gardener/I welcome winter.

November 15, 2011

That image is taken from one of Odilon Redon’s Buddha paintings. I am in a Buddhist mood, sitting here listening to John Luther Adams’s In The White Silence and reflecting on an essay I just read, and I decided I would love to hear from anyone on this topic. Here goes: I love Brian Eno, [...]

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Moneyball, and album news.

September 27, 2011

Biking home from seeing Moneyball tonight, I had a lot to think about. First of all: it was a really good, entertaining movie, and while it had its flaws, it had a lot in common with what I loved about Capote, also directed by Bennett Miller, and The Social Network, also adapted by Aaron Sorkin. [...]

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Post-Empire

August 2, 2011

I hesitate to say that this album will have been the most difficult for me to make so far, but that might end up being true. So many times I listen to the bare tracks that we recorded a month ago, staring the thing in its face, and I don’t recognize it, or don’t care [...]

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My top ten.

July 30, 2011

My “Top Ten Records of All Time”
In no particular order:
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Scott Walker – Scott 4
The Replacements – Let It Be
Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts Of The Great Highway
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Prince – Purple Rain
Arthur Russell – World Of Echo
Leo Kottke – 6 and 12 string guitar
Gilberto [...]

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A reed, so slender

May 28, 2011

The title of this post comes from a snippet of a Scofield Thayer poem, which I came across while reading this article in The Awl. Here is the excerpt, quoted in a letter to Thayer from E.E. Cummings:
‘Her body is a reed, so slenderWhereon God’s lips do blow,And in each petty human motionThe great hymns [...]

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A long, slow thaw

May 18, 2011

I’m very sorry for neglecting this for so long, to anyone who may be reading this. Things have been moving along swimmingly, but there hasn’t been any major news to report until now, and I haven’t exactly been overflowing with thoughtful things to write, for whatever reason. That’s one great thing about writing songs–they don’t [...]

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April 6, 2011

I bought a spring coat today on the way home from work. I had left the house optimistically (and naively) thinking that it would remain in the high sixties all day, so I didn’t wear a coat, but the weather quickly soured and grew wet, as it likes to do in April. So I went [...]

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