DAngerer09

i don't know man. I don't think so. Bon Iver's first album and The Tallest Man on Earth on both fairly simple/straightfoward/built totally around an acoustic guitar sounds (for the most part) and the "indie crowd" you refer to has embraced them whole heartedly.

I just think many people don't want to hear a record full of throwback 70s style songs (not saying the album is that, but much of SBS and some of this album seems to come from that direction to some extent). "They" want to hear something fresh, or at least I do. The first four songs on this album sound really fresh and a few of them are pretty innovative.

I think Country Disappeared is the weakest song on the album as well folks.

I agree. It really falls flat and it feels like a SBS outtake, which is not a good thing.

yeah, whoever mentioned that is was really sonically dense/complex was a bit off I think.

Solitaire is really growing on me and there's a lot of nice subtleties going on in that song.

I guess the only song I really don't like is Country Disappeared and I'm still not diggin the Feist duet at all- its nice and her voice is beautiful, but I don't think it really fits coming in right after Bull Black Nova.

This is far more layered than anything on SBS was.

well yeah, the bulk of that was recorded live, with a few exceptions. there aren't many layers to that album at all.

i'm sorta bummed One Wing is shortened quite a bit from the live versions.

This is a Wilco board. There are going to be a busload of fans that adore this album. There will also be a smaller busload of people who don't like the album, but thats fine because it's all just opinions. It's cool.

 

Enjoy the short bus.

put me on the medium sized bus for now...

i agree with giraffo's comment as well on the album title. makes a lot of sense.

I still think Born Again in the USA is the best album since Ghost.

No, the RS description isn't keeping me from enjoying it. I just wish it was more experimental, edgier, adventurous. The first 4 tracks are fantastic, then it just sorta trails off for me ( so far)

yeah i guess you're right about Rolling Stone, but geez, there is nothing really experimental AT ALL on most of these tracks. i mean, i know they aren't they aren't the beacon of musical criticism and such, but man..... they were way off.

Alan, I think you and I are on the same page here.

i don't think i'd go as far to call it "lazy" (thats pretty extreme), but I just wish they'd inject a little more intensity into their music. its just not there at all. but i am enjoying the textures and details that SBS really really lacked.

I just keep going back to the rolling stone headline of "Wilco gets experimental on new album" -- this really isn't experimental at all, save for BBN

I think I may be the only one to not be so very impressed at first listen.

nope, you're not alone.

the first 4 tracks blew me away and I love them. and then they sorta fall back to the soft rock format (complete with cheesy electric piano flourishes throughout). You and I will probably end up on Grey's Anatomy (I will put money on that), but I think that song really falls flat. The album never really picks back up for me until Sunny Feeling- fun song. Country Disappeared was a tough listen for me- I think its a really boring song, especially with Glenn's 1-2-3 drumming that a 3 year old could play.

Maybe it'll grow on me and I'll definitely be listening to this all week long, but man.... for as excited as I was, I'm pretty let down with the middle chunk of the album (tracks 5-9).

Glad the rest of ya'll are enjoying it so much. I was really diggin' it for the first four tracks and then it just totally dropped off for me.

i defended him from the start....

my god i am so excited to listen to this all night long. almost done d/l'ing....

interesting. i don't doubt that its floating out there somewhere, because all those premium torrent sites require fairly high bit rates in order to be posted.

It might leak before it streams, but I'll wait for the stream.

what's the difference? why wait?

Kalle, I'll give it a listen if you put it up again.

EDIT- i got it, sendspace link still works.

yeah, that is a great bill- vanderslice puts on a pretty dang good live show as well.

I would totally be at the Southgate House show, but I'm away on internships right now.

For all the people who think Pitchfork hates Wilco and has totally written them off, just read the last line of the Sky Blue Sky review:

Perhaps after giving the band-member carousel another spin, Tweedy merely ended up with the wrong personnel to articulate his mood here. If that's the case-- as long as his restless habits hold-- we may only need to wait one more album for message and messenger to click back into alignment.

News about the next Shins album, lineup changes, etc.

from Pitchfork:

After a long drought of Shins news, here comes the flood. Pitchfork chatted with frontman James Mercer today, and he spilled the beans on the band's recent lineup changes (keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval aren't in the band), as well as a bunch of exciting projects. There's a new Shins album in the works for Mercer's own Aural Apothecary label, which will also reissue the sole album from the pre-Shins band Flake Music. There's a mysterious collaboraton. There's that movie he's in with Carrie Brownstein, and his contribution to the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse project Dark Night of the Soul. And finally, there's the film soundtrack Mercer worked on with Modest Mouse...

 

Let's dive right in.

 

When the Shins took the stage at Western Washington University on Saturday night for the first night of their spring tour, fans discovered that the band had changed. Keyboardist Marty Crandall and drummer Jesse Sandoval had been replaced by Ron Lewis from Grand Archives and Fruit Bats on bass and Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse on drums. Crandall, Sandoval, and Mercer had been playing together since their mid-90s Flake Music days, and Mercer decided it was time for a change. "I started to have production ideas that I wanted to do that basically required some other people," he said. "It's mainly about that. It's an aesthetic decision. It's kind of hard to talk abut stuff like that, isn't it? Because I don't want to bum anybody out. I'm on good terms with those guys, I hope to maintain that."

 

He added, "I wouldn't say I'd never work with them again. I love working with those guys." (And in case you're wondering, according to Mercer, Crandall's exit from the Shins didn't have anything to do with that domestic abuse drama from early last year.)

 

To accomplish his new aesthetic goals, Mercer recruited Lewis and Plummer, who are on board for the current tour as well as the next Shins album. That album is still in its very early stages, with Mercer planning to begin recording at the end of the current tour, and continue through the summer. He's aiming for a release early next year.

 

Two songs, "Double Bubble" and "The Rifle's Spiral" are being debuted on the road right now, and Mercer said he has 30 songs in the can. But don't expect to hear much moping around on the new album. "It's a lot more up-tempo stuff," he said. "I haven't really got any real ballad-y stuff right now. I've got 30 songs and none of them are real slow. I think maybe, I'm not so melancholy lately. I'm real happy. I've been lucky in love and I've got a wonderful kid now and things have been going well. Some of the songs are sort of aggressive in a new wave way. I'm excited about it."

 

Mercer thinks that his new material represents some of his best work. "For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope. I think it's just working hard at it and not letting yourself be satisfied with the stuff."

 

The new album will be released on Mercer's own label, Aural Apothecary, possibly with distribution from a larger label, possibly the Shins' former home, Sub Pop. So why not stick with Sub Pop? Why strike out on your own? "Because you get more money," Mercer stated, matter-of-factly. "I mean, it's more work and it's more headache and all that, but I think it'll be worth it in the end."

 

Though Mercer hopes to one day release other artists' music on Aural Apothecary, right now, he only has time for his own work. Before the new Shins album, he plans to re-release Flake Music's 1997 album When You Land Here, It's Time to Return, which has been remixed by Danger Mouse's mixing engineer Kennie Takahashi.

 

In addition to running Aural Apothecary, Mercer also has plenty of other non-Shins extracurricular activities going on. He appears on a track on the forthcoming Dark Night of the Soul album from Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, which he sounded quite excited about. "The challenge of writing to somebody else's music was really fun...I went in and kind of scatted a melody into existence and with some direction we narrowed it down and then he did some editing and got the melody there and then I wrote lyrics to it. It just came out real cool. I was really stoked. If David Lynch is involved it's just rad, you know?"

 

Mercer is also working on another side project...which shall remain shrouded in mystery, at least for now. "I'm kind of not supposed to talk about it," he said. "Both the label and the person I collaborated with are like, "we should chill," so I'm not going to talk about that." Ooh...tantalizing!

 

However, one collaboration with another famous indie band that he would talk about was a film soundtrack he worked on with Modest Mouse. It's for the film 180 Degrees South, a documentary by surfing filmmakers the Malloy Brothers. Mercer explained, "Early last spring I went to Chile with a production company that was doing a documentary about a guy who travels to Chile and he runs in with these people who are doing some environmental work down there. So I was invited to come down to Chile while they were filming it because they thought that I might be able to write some music for it. I worked with Isaac Brock on it. We just kind of watched footage after I came back and got inspired and we put together some music."

 

In addition to Brock, Mercer worked on the soundtrack with Modest Mouse members Plummer, Eric Judy, and Tom Peloso. Mercer described the soundtrack as, "Definitely more soundscapes. I did a lot of acoustic guitar work, Isaac did some electric guitar, Eric Judy has like an accordion thing he was doing and of course playing bass, and then violin." You can hear a snippet of the mostly instrumental soundtrack in the film's trailer here.

 

As previously reported, Mercer is co-starring alongside Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein in a feature film, Some Days Are Better Than Others, directed by Portland experimental filmmaker Matt McCormick."That was really fun and I guess kind of scary, but really, really fun," Mercer said of the experience. "I took acting lessons and everything. I've never acted before...It was a challenge. I had that feeling of accomplishment when you take on something you're a little bit scared to do. It seemed to work out pretty well. I've seen a little bit of it and it's not embarrassing for me to watch. Which is saying something."

The Shins tour dates:

 

05-06 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom

05-07 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom

05-09 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater

05-10 Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Palladium

05-11 San Diego, CA - SOMA

05-13 Richmond, VA - The National

05-14 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

05-15 Baltimore, MD - Ram's Head Live

05-16 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory

05-17 Montclair, NJ - Wellmont Theater

05-18 New York, NY - Terminal Five

I think Pixel Revolt it still my favorite by far.

i was sorta let down at first, but after a few listens it started to sink in nicely. sometimes I wish he'd try something a bit more adventurous, but he never fails to put out a solid album that's worth coming back to again and again.

the album will get between a 5 and a 7.

either way, its not going to affect sales or affect the band in any way.

i've got to think that if there are this many promo copies floating around, we'll it see surface online somewhere by next week....

alright, I apparently don't have a solo version of Panthers.... anyone want to share?