Thu 15 Feb 2007
On my eternal drive from New Orleans to Utah, I got to listen to a lot of radio. Probably the most interesting radio I listened to was somewhere in the pitch Nebraska high plains at around 7pm with an interview on Fresh Air with Colin Meloy. Listen to the interview here.
The interview talks a lot about the Colbert Report’s guitar battle, which I saw. Colbert in 2006 challenged the Decemberists to a guitar dual when they (the Decemberists) held a contest to make the best music video with the Decemberists playing in front of a green screen. Colbert had the same contest earlier and accused the Decemberists of copying his idea, so they had a dual.
Chris Funk of the Decemberists isn’t much of a super guitar shredder, and Colbert cheated by bringing Peter Frampton on as proxy, so I wasn’t super impressed and I’d only heard ‘Los Angeles I’m Yours’ prior, so it didn’t leave me wanting to totally get into them.
After listening to the Fresh Air interview, I became extremely engrossed in the desire to listen to The Crane Wife. His explanation of some of the tracks in the interview are great, including the chilling/ironic track Shankhill Butchers, and the touching Japanese folk tale of the Crane Wife. These stories motivated me to get the album and I was blown away.
I think what really brought this album home for me in the very beginning was the that the track 2 encapsulates pretty much all of the defining qualities of 70s Tull-esque Prog-rock. It has multiple movements (The Island, Come and See, The Landlord’s Daughter, You’ll not feel the drowning). Sometimes I get too wrapped up in my own head, but I swore that the main influence of ‘the landlord’s daughter’ portion was derived from Jethro Tull’s 45 minute masterpiece Thick as a Brick, with a lot of quick acoustic guitar finger picking with following tonewheel organ licks hot enough to melt your synapses until they stick to the inside of your skull like the shredded cheese on your omelet, like for instance minute 41:12 till the end of the song.
I was relieved to read this article and come to find that someone else that is apparently even more well informed and connected agreed with me.
Get this album, and find some quick explanations of the stories behind the songs to enrich your listening pleasure.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
That NPR interview is interesting but it’s annoying how they don’t play the whole songs. They only play parts of them.
February 19th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I agree - it’s a superb album. I’m so pleased! It’s great when a band not only doesn’t disappoint but actually raises the bar.
February 20th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Hey Cameron! I loved your article about the Crane wife. Man, I miss listening to NPR in Provo. It’s just not the same now.
Michael and I have a friend who’s living in Provo right now, he has some pretty good music. I know that you’d be really into it, but he doesn’t know where to record his stuff. I thought you said you have recorded at BYU, and I was wondering if you remember how much it costs to record a few songs.
Oh, here are some movie reccomendations: A boy and his dog, Pi, and Harold and Maude. For some reason I thought I’d seen some other really good ones. I didnt like Loverboy or Palindromes. Palindromes was by the guy who did Welcome to the Dollhouse. Alright, peace out yo.
February 20th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Hi Lene, I think its funny that we keep in touch via blog comments. Anyway, I’ve never had to pay to record on campus, mainly because i was taking a class and had access to a studio. I don’t know if BYU offers any studio time for dough.
If he has a computer, I could help him buy all the digital recording hardware he needs for quality recording for about the price of a day in a studio, around $300 maybe. Maybe a little more. I should blog about hobby recording.