Freaky Fresh: 7-30

I've been listening to the new Cribs' songs for a while now. I've really, really, really wanted to feature them on the Freaky Fresh at 4, but I had to wait for the first single to be released. Why? Well, "We Were Aborted" almost was featured, but I decided it was probably a better idea to play it safe and not mess with the topics of abortion and masturbation at 4pm on public airwaves (although Green Day says masturbation in "Longview"). Instead, I finally get to spin a copy of "Cheat On Me," the first single and one that's a tad more radio friendly. Adding Johnny Marr to the mix sounds awesome thus far. I can't even describe how excited I am for the new album Ignore The Ignorant to come out September 8th here in the states!
The Cribs - Cheat On Me

Coldplay at Alpine Valley 7-25-09

This past weekend I had the chance to see Coldplay up at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. Normally I don’t consider myself to be a huge Coldplay fan, although yes, I do own every album from them and I can sing along to just about all of their songs. The only reason I shy away from calling myself a fan is to try to stay away from being associated with many of their other “fans.” This weekend highlighted my ideology almost perfectly.

Of course, its at Alpine Valley. Sure, 30-some thousand people are going to show up, many of whom will arrive hours before to tailgate in the massive expanse of grass known as the parking lot. Sure some people will get drunk before entering the actual bowl. To me that’s fine, especially with the exorbitant price of a beer. However, it is completely inappropriate to be yelling at people in front of you when someone stands up to see a band.

Here’s the problem with Alpine: most of the tickets are general admission lawn seats. Way too many people decide to camp on the lawn so for two people they need a gigantic blanket and possibly some lawn chairs. Well, when I can’t find a place to stand, guess what? I’m going to stand in front of your blanket. I know, you hate me for wanting to see the band.

Which leads to my other problem: opening bands aren’t just there to play music for people as everyone walks in to find the best seat to watch Coldplay. The main opener of the evening was Elbow. ELBOW! Most of the crowd didn’t even pay attention to the opening act. Sure Elbow doesn’t have the outward looking live performance as Chris Martin and Coldplay, but they still play some damn good music.

So when the folks behind me decided to jaw about the fact that a group of people was standing in front of their ground level position, a simple question of “who is playing right now?” ensued. Those complaining couldn’t even answer the question. That doesn’t make me want to sit when I’m singing along to Elbow’s set. Oh, and the people in front of us were standing, too.
However, when Coldplay made their way to the stage, everyone immediately stood up and the entire crowd could sing every word to every song that was performed.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast at the show. I know many will question a Coldplay show based on their musical ability, them “borrowing riffs” and what not, but Coldplay sure puts on a hell of a performance. Was it overdone at points? Sure Chris Martin didn’t have to roll on the stage at points, but most of the audience sure connected with it. And did they ever.

I believe a few years ago Coldplay decided to record live at Alpine Valley, and for good reason. I know this year they are recording live during a two-night stand in Vancouver, but the energy at this show would be hard to top in my mind. The nearly two hour set included the band moving to a side stage and playing a couple of techno remixes as well as playing about 10 feet away from me in the center of the lawn. With such a large crowd it really is nice to see a band truly realize the extent to which their fans allow them to do what they do everyday.Overall it was an awesome show. I’ll probably write a bit more about it later, and possibly even post the angry rant I wrote sitting for 2 hours in the parking lot listening to nothing but Left Right Left Right Left, the live disc handed out after the show. Until then, happy listening and have a wonderful day!

Elbow - Grounds For Divorce

Elbow - One Day Like This

Coldplay - Glass Of Water (Live)

Freaky Fresh: 7-29

Since when do I get hangovers that last for 10 hours? Yeah, never is right. I'm not really sure what is up with that today but oh well.

Today's Freaky Fresh track comes to us from London... again. For whatever reason, White Lies' "To Lose My Life" has been getting a bunch of airplay, but the other 3 previous singles from the likewise-titled debut album haven't. I decided today was a good day to change that up a bit. "Death" was released as a single almost a year ago, all the way back in September of 2008. That's around the time when Kings of Leon's latest album was gaining popularity. Its currently fathering three singles in the top 15 of the Modern Rock charts? Oh, well shit!

Anyway, "Death" was one of those tracks I had on repeat a little bit ago. I'm all about the retro-vibe that's been really prevalent in much of the new music that's been coming out the past few years. I'm also all about aviation, and White Lies' not-so-secret fascination with flying is pretty awesome as well. In fact, they used to be called Fear of Flying back in the day! So here it is the second song ever written and now fifth (kinda) single from White Lies:

White Lies - Death

Freaky Fresh: 7-28

A really relaxing pick for today's Freaky Fresh, "Northern Lights" from Bowerbirds. With their nu-folk stylings, mostly based around the vocals and guitar of Phil Moore, Bowerbirds evoke a simple evening just like tonight. I mentioned in the P4K day II round-up how similar Moore sounded live to Andrew Bird, which I have to say is no horrible comparison. I'm currently enjoying this track as well as the second full-length from Bowerbirds titled Upper Air. I know you'll want to buy it to check it out for yourself.

On a slightly unrelated note, Beth Tacular is awesome, especially with that accordion.
Bowerbirds - Northern Lights

Freaky Fresh: 7-27

I never thought running this Freaky Fresh bit on my radio show as well as posting it here would come in handy as much as it did today. I'm sure many of you know the complexities of trying to have anything run smoothly with computers, but try having computer trouble when running a fully commercial radio station! When our touch screen interface decided to quit, we just transferred it over to using a different screen with a mouse. When the phone line lost the ability to run through our sound board and through my mic, we just went to picking up the phone as any household would. But when the program we run the entire station off of decided to not respond, we got into a big problem. And that's just what happened today.

With some quick thinking I remembered that not only can I stream some of the songs I've posted here, but I also had a couple of them on another computer that I can run through the board and play over the airwaves. So while talking about as much as possible, I cued up last Friday's FF@4 track from The Very Best and let it play while rebooting the computer that runs all of our music.

With all of that said here is today's track: Atlas from Eugene McGuinness. I have been raving over the British lad's self-titled, debut studio album since I first heard it. This is my second favorite track off of it and the one I had on repeat while driving 7 hours up to Michigan for the 4th of July. Of course, go out and buy this album, I promise you it is worth it!

Eugene McGuinness - Atlas

Freaky Fresh: 7-24

This one took a bit to grow on me. I know many people, myself included, raved about how awesome Vampire Weekend was the first half of last year, then grew tired of it by the end of summer. Well, this one is kind of similar with the influence of African beats except it is from an ex-pat who was born in Africa. The Very Best played last Sunday at Pitchfork, but I was too busy waiting for the Flaming Lips to see them. As I let their music grow on me I'm really regretting missing it. Oh and I mentioned Vampire Weekend before for good reason. The title track off the upcoming TVB album, Warm Heart of Africa, sees a guest appearance from Ezra Koenig, not to be outdone by Rostam and the Discovery side project.

The Very Best (feat. Ezra Koenig) - Warm Heart of Africa

Freaky Fresh: 7-22

New details are emerging today from a London-based duo known as The Big Pink about their upcoming debut full-length, A Brief History of Love, which will be released September 22nd on 4AD. One of my most anticipated albums of the year will include this new single, "Dominos," due out on vinyl September 9th, and contain a b-side, "She's No Sense," which features Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine on vocals.

A Brief History of Love track list:

1. Crystal Visions
2. Too Young To Love
3. Dominos
4. Love In Vain
5. At War With The Sun
6. Velvet
7. Golden Pendulum
8. Frisk
9. A Brief History of Love
10. Tonight
11. Countbackwards From Ten
    

The Big Pink - Dominos

Freaky Fresh: 7-21

Today Modest Mouse released the 3rd and final 7" leading up to their August 4th release of No One's First and You're Next. The upcoming EP on Epic will feature a collection of 8 songs that did not make it onto their last two full lengths. I have featured both "Satellite Skin" and "Autumn Beds" as part of the Freaky Fresh at Four, so today I give you the new single "Perpetual Motion Machine."

Track list:

1. "Satellite Skin" 3:58
2. "Guilty Cocker Spaniels" 3:59
3. "Autumn Beds" 3:42
4. "Whale Song" 6:07
5. "Perpetual Motion Machine" 3:11
6. "History Sticks to Your Feet" 3:55
7. "King Rat" 5:30
8. "I've Got It All (Most)" 3:10

Modest Mouse - Perpetual Motion Machine

Pitchfork Music Festival: Day II

The last six or so months have been fun leading up to the annual Pitchfork Music Festival. Living in Champaign is an almost perfect staging ground for someone who wants to experience different music whether it be nightly, weekly, or seasonally, thanks to the central location between major cities and venues. This year Pitchfork says the number of tickets sold has not been raised, yet at the fest it felt that way. I attended both Saturday and Sunday and it was a completely different experience between the two days.

I arrived early on Saturday to pick my ticket up from will call, run down the street to the Billy Goat Tavern for a ‘borger, and make my way to the back corner of the festival to enter (it’s a trick to not enter Union Park from Ashland). Upon entering I was relatively surprised to find a pretty empty park. The first band I saw was Cymbals Eat Guitars. I know the band from a steady stream of bloggers enthusiastic about their music, yet was not familiar enough with them to fight my way toward the front. Instead, I took it easy and watched their set from a few hundred feet back. The music sounded good, well put together, and there is no doubt as to their level of talent to be featured on the main stage, even if it was just after the gates opened. It was very apparent, however, the band is somewhat overwhelmed with the fact they are playing at a summer music festival in such a large city. With a little work on their stage presence over time they will soon be an act to catch.

After the Cymbals Eat Guitars set, I headed westward in the park. Plants and Animals started up their set on the Connector stage, which is the other large stage right next to the main stage. Their show was crisp sounding from the decent distance away I was. At the same time, The Dutchess & The Duke went on at the Balance stage, a stage set up on the South side of the park. In order to get a good view of Bowerbirds, who my friend I went with was completely excited to see, we headed over to catch the end of The Dutchess & The Duke’s set.

Early on the Balance stage was relatively calm. Next up was The Antlers making their first ever appearance in the city of Chicago. Interested more in crafting melodies than controlling their crowd, the band weaved in and out of trance inducing lush guitar ballads. It is this sense of musicianship and an audience being truly interested in the music that sets Pitchfork apart from some of the other major festivals, which I love.

The Bowerbirds then took over, adding to the calm, fun atmosphere as if it was the calm before the storm. Their set was one of my favorites, turning me almost instantly into a fan. For those unaware, Bowerbirds is (especially live) mostly Phil Moore on vocals and guitar. Sounding incredibly similar to Andrew Bird, Moore mesmerized the crowd, mostly loyal fans, wth some incredibly beautiful nu-folk bliss. A side note: Beth Tacular is even better looking in real life, a trend we will see reappear a bit later.

But the storm was just beginning to brew. We knew we wanted a good position to watch Matt & Kim, so by this point we decided to forgo attempting to move back and forth between stages and camp out at the Balance stage and just keep moving up. By the end of Bowerbirds we managed to weasel our way up to the rail, front and center. Little did we know, Pitchfork decided to schedule the loud, rambunctious indie crowd favorites for the Balance stage. Ponytail was about to hit the stage.

No sound check needed, other than a few random noises from lead singer and to confirm that the guitars were in fact plugged in. I can’t even begin to try to describe the show Ponytail performed. It was a weird concoction of random, high-pitched noises over screaming guitars (a Tele and Thinline Tele so they were extra bright) and a drummer who was full of fills. Unfortunately, I was caught without hearing protection in the front of a loud rock band. Some of the noises were just over the top. The press was laughing, as were some members of security, at some of our faces that turned sour every so often. A bunch of the girls to my left ended up covering their ears in between the desire to jump and dance. To my right was the crazy crowd: crowd surfing, pushing, jumping, and dancing. Eventually the singer jumped off stage and into the crowd. This helped only to make sure the barricade wouldn’t hold and about 20 security guards had to hold the barricade up.

After about 45 minutes the set was over, but the storm kept coming. In a rapid attempt to fix the barricade, random straps, a tower of some kind, and finally the MISSING BOLTS were put into place to assure the shear mass of people behind me would not crush me.
Next up was a set by none other than Wavves. “I bet all of you want to hear about Barcelona?” “PSYCH!” I thought it was funny that singer Nathan Williams wore a Bulls hat Saturday. Something about the running of the bulls and that hat connected and I just thought it was pretty ironic. Anyway, the set went without flaw, although due to delays before the band didn’t play very long. I, however, was not disappointed, as Wavves didn’t really live up to their live performance standards I’ve read so much about. Maybe it was the fact Nathan was scared of mixing too many drugs for fear drummer Ryan Ulsch would once again grow pissed off, dump beer on Nathan’s head and leave the stage.

Lindstrøm casually started setting up his MacBook Pro while relaxing on stage with a nice cigarette. All the way from Norway, Lindstrøm played a nice relaxing set, although I felt it was sort of dragging as he began to get nagged by one of the volunteers who was trying to get his off the stage. He played nearly an hour after taking the stage at 6:42.
Still up front! A simple enough change of table for half-sized drum set and 2 keyboards gives rise to a flood of fans. Of the approximately 18,000 tickets sold, I would venture to guess at least half of the guests were standing behind the Balance stage for Matt & Kim. One guy even climbed a tree, giving him a pretty good view I guess. After reportedly downing a 6 pack of Coke and a couple of energy drinks, Matt & Kim took the stage to “Brooklyn Go Hard.” I have never seen a person so enthusiastic and happy as Kim. It didn’t seem to bother anyone in the crowd that most of the beats she plays are exactly the same, or that both of them repeatedly messed up, no the fact that you could jump around repeatedly singing Yea Yeah was more than enough to make the $35/day ticket worth it. I really didn’t get much of a chance to take pictures or video as we let the couple of girls behind us get to the front because we felt we could keep people off of us better than they could. Attempting to get away from the Balance stage after Matt & Kim proved to be near impossible.The idea to run over and watch The National didn’t work. However, we ended up in almost the exact same spot we started the day at watching the main Aluminum stage. The crowd went from being an average of about 19 to 35 going from Matt & Kim to The National. Their show was a nice relaxing end to the day, a day filled with some amazing music. All of my favorites were performed including “Fake Empire,” “Apartment Story,” “Secret Meeting,” and as an encore, “About Today.”

It was weird driving down Damen west of the United Center leaving the festival. My friend really didn’t know where he was going, other than “away” from the festival grounds and toward 290. With the number of bicycles and “L” travelers it wouldn’t have been much to just take Ashland but apparently he wanted to venture. I guess I just never realized how gentrified the near west side has become, especially around the United Center.

Other random notes from Pitchfork Day II:

• Around 4 during Bowerbirds I heard sirens repeatedly. An ambulance had to pull into the baseball diamond (it is a park after all) to attend to and cart away a festivalgoer.
• Doom refused to take the stage until he was paid up front in cash. This after he arrived to the stage 9 minutes late. Oh and he was dressed completely in camo, looking almost like a tree.
• Many people complained of both a lack of porta-potties and weak soundsystems overall. I didn’t experience a problem with either, but Pitchfork brought in 35 extra green boxes for Sunday.

Matt & Kim - Yea Yeah

The National - Secret Meeting

Freaky Fresh: 7-20

Fresh off the at Pitchfork's Balance stage Sunday afternoon comes today's Freaky Fresh at Four track of the day. I did not get to see them perform (the choice to stay and watch m83 on the Aluminum stage killed that dream) but from what I've heard their set was pretty awesome. I figure this band will be coming around the state of Illinois sometime in the near future, for they are signed to Champaign's own Polyvinyl Record Co. The band is Japandroids (JPNDRDS) with "Young Hearts Spark Fire" off their debut LP Post-Nothing being re-released after signing to Polyvinyl last month. It is recieving its fair share of spins in the limited time I have been listening to music lately and the track definetely deserves its fair share of plays to an audience.

Post-Nothing track list:

1. "The Boys Are Leaving Town" – 4:01
2. "Young Hearts Spark Fire" – 5:05
3. "Wet Hair" – 3:12
4. "Rockers East Vancouver" – 4:32
5. "Heart Sweats" – 4:25
6. "Crazy/Forever" – 6:04
7. "Sovereignty" – 3:34
8. "I Quit Girls" – 4:55

Japandroids - Young Hearts Spark Fire

Freaky Fresh: 7-13

Today's track is one from the Choir of Young Believers. Led by Jannis Makrigiannis, this Danish choir-pop group is emerging from the ashes of other relatively successful bands in the Copenhagen indie scene. Complete with plenty of dark, picturesque, reverb-laden tracks, the debut album This is for the Whites in Your Eyes, is remarkably enjoyable. Check out the lead single off of it!

Choir of Young Believers - Action/Reaction