Happy new year from The Bay Bridged!
December 31, 2010
We hope you’ve been enjoying reading our guest contributors’ picks for their favorite Bay Area albums of 2010, and we’ll be returning next week with regular blog coverage. Until then, enjoy a fun and safe New Year’s Eve and try not to spend the whole weekend nursing the resulting hangover. Thanks to all of our recent guest contributors, our excellent staff, and to all of you for continuing to support our efforts to capture the best of the San Francisco Bay Area indie scene. To 2011!
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: Jon Bernson on Tim Cohen
December 30, 2010
Tim Cohen – Laugh Tracks (Captured Tracks)
The cover of Tim Cohen’s Laugh Tracks has a smiling face with a black heart beaming from its mouth. Beside the black heart is a white heart. For now, let’s just say this is Tim’s version of himself (on the day he drew the picture). Above his head, a circus of opposites stare at one another from across the page. Two bald eagles flank the head, one with a flag full of stars, one with a flag full of stripes. The eagles look pretty uptight, but above them, two hooded baseball pitchers look like they’re having the time of their lives. For good or for worse, the pitchers are oblivious to a pair of snakes who threaten to strike at them with massive (but toothless) jaws.
If you listened to the songs before seeing the album art, you wouldn’t imagine this cover. You wouldn’t necessarily think of birds or baseball. The classic melodies and four-track spirit would work their hypnosis. The symptoms of your life would disappear. Cohen’s dilemmas would be part of the medicine. Soon you’d be getting ideas. Ways to draw the fear of death without bringing people down. Ways to laugh at a recurring nightmare. You’d find your way to a hall of mirrors. You’d focus on everyday scenes, changed just enough to make people take another look. Which would lead people to take another look. And then another… Laugh Tracks are contagious.
Jon Bernson is a founding member of Exray’s and Window Twins
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: Scott McDowell on Joanna Newsom
December 29, 2010
The album I’ve listened to more than any other in 2010 may barely qualify as local, but that’s just how it is. I listened to Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me (Drag City) almost every day until I felt sick. After a month off, I’m back to three listens each week. It feels like this is the music I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear, I just didn’t know until I heard it.
This record has so much open space. When it needs to get dense, it does, but without ever feeling cluttered. The instruments are mixed so gently that even in the most explosive and saturated moments, the things never feel over-hyped or shoved in my face.
One of my favorite songs,“Good Intentions Paving Company,†demonstrates how well Newsom can drive a groove on piano, but my favorite moment is when she drops the triple layered vocals with perfectly synced vibrato. I get chills up my spine just thinking about that sound.
Around the time I first heard this record I also discovered the student recitals at the SF Conservatory of Music. Hearing those chamber instruments played in a room with such sweet acoustics opened my mind up to how those instruments want to sound. “Have One On Me†epitomizes the same flattering ambiance in recorded form, and has absolutely changed the way my ears hear music, both live and recorded.
Scott McDowell is a recording engineer who co-produces Chasing The Moon and also co-owns Hyde Street Studio C.
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: Paige K. Parsons on Veil Veil Vanish
December 29, 2010
I’ve been infatuated with many local bands this year, but only one has remained on constant rotation on my iPod: Veil Veil Vanish. I first discovered these gothy shoegazers back in March. They were opening for Norway’s Serena-Maneesh, it was the first show I was covering for The Bay Bridged. There was barely enough room for the brooding quintet on stage that night, but they carved out a nice little niche in my brain. I love listening to Veil Veil Vanish late at night, especially when I’m on my own driving home from a show and the city streets are empty and cold.
Veil Veil Vanish signed to Metropolis Records in late 2009. Their LP, Change in The Neon Light which was released in February, is a wall of sound with layered and cascading guitars that interplay with synths and Keven Tecon’s deep and plaintive vocals. If Robert Smith and Mark Burgess had a love child, he might sing like Keven Tecon.
Here are two of my favorite tracks, “Anthem for a Doomed Youth”, and “This is Violet”, both of which appear on Change in The Neon Light. I love the grizzled bass line of Anthem, and the tribal drums of Violet keep me wanting more.
Veil Veil Vanish – “Anthem for a Doomed Youth”
Veil Veil Vanish – “This Is Violet”
Paige K. Parsons is a Bay Bridged photographer and founder of The Color Awesome.
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: Michelle Broder Van Dyke on Grass Widow
December 29, 2010
For no reason that I can actually take credit for, I feel pretty proud of these ladies. They live intentionally, they defy stereotypes, and they harmonize while rocking. In 2010, Grass Widow also had its major-indie debut on Kill Rock Stars — one of the few San Fran stars that can make such a claim — with Past Time.
The album opens with surf-rock-y “Uncertain Memory,†where Hannah Lew’s bass lines and Raven Mahon’s guitar riffs intertwine, while Lillian Maring’s frantic drumming hurtles the songs forward. It is followed by single “Shadow,†which showcases their affection for the Kinks along with the band’s aforementioned blended vocals singing the phrase “don’t let me down.†“Fried Egg†starts with a call-and-response verse, reminiscent of the bad-ass-ness of the Kill Rock Stars banner, and then surprises the listener with chiming post-punk guitars and saccharine vocals that sing of murky nightmares. The album closes with “Tuesday†a swift number with wooly harmonies, fast-tempo chants as well as a little chaos with its off-kilter melody progression.
With each listen, the hooks on Past Time reel me in more. But it’s the sweet and sour taste of Grass Widow that always gets me; how can something be so dark — with the horrors of the subconscious seeping in at every crack—but sound so pretty? This may be Grass Widow’s first Kill Rock Stars release, but it’s their fifth-record in less than three years. I can’t wait to hear what this prolific band releases in 2011.
Michelle Broder Van Dyke writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Guardian and The Bold Italic.
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: Dawson Ludwig on Magic Bullets
December 28, 2010
Magic Bullets – “Lying Around”
Magic Bullets are the type of songwriters that make me uncomfortably jealous. They have a discipline that I could never have in life. They know how to pace a three-minute song and turn it into an original gem of pop art. On their new self-titled album, there is only one track that narrowly breaks the 4-minute mark. This suggests a quiet confidence in their song construction – no need to play that chorus one more time – the listener gets it. No need to repeat that refrain – that would ruin it. They get in, deliver the goods and get out! By the end of the album, you’re left with enough of an appetite to go back for more.
Beyond their songs, Magic Bullets are also impressive in their sonic stubbornness. They are surrounded by the abundant glory of San Francisco’s garage rock renaissance, yet they find inspiration in the overt pop emotion of The Cure, Orange Juice and The Smiths. When the ‘cool’ sound is defined by fuzzy guitars and mumbled vocals, they’ve decided to be emotive and theatrical. This might not work for any other band, but the Magic Bullets are able to pull it off – in large part because they write damn, damn good songs.
Dawson Ludwig is the Marketing Director at Noise Pop.
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: David Johnson-Igra on Geographer
December 28, 2010
In 2010 many Bay Area bands including The Morning Benders, Girls, Man/Miracle and Moe Green put out records that I showed to my friends saying, “Listen to this great local band!â€
But of the mentioned above no matter which set of my friends, none of these albums were as well received as Geographer’s Animal Shapes. There’s something magical about the group’s dynamic combination of pop music with laden somber lyrics like “Original Sin.†Many praised their debut, Innocent Ghosts, and the group did not disappoint with songs like “Verona,†and “Kites.†I don’t listen to this album alone anymore because I hear it now at all my friends’ houses. It’s a strange phenomenon.
David Johnson-Igra is the Founder and Managing Editor at SFCritic.
Related Posts:
Best of 2010: Yours Truly on Young Prisms
December 28, 2010
Young Prisms – “I Dont Get Much”
San Francisco Band of the Year: Young Prisms
I’ve watched these guys develop as artists over the past year, honing their live show, tightening their sound. From sneaking in the back to catch them at the Hemlock all the way to New York for some showcases, they’ve continued to get better. They get louder and louder each time, but simultaneously refine their melodies and musicianship as that noise builds. They’ve got a record coming out on Kanine early next year and there’s some good buzz surrounding them. Expect to hear a lot more from them soon in the city and beyond. The Young P’s are a great band and great people. They deserve all the success in the world. Go Giants.
Caleb is the Editor and Producer at Yours Truly.
