Band You Need to Hear: Oakley Hall

Brooklyn's Oakley Hall play American Rock with an edge (and without the typical pretentiousness of a band from Brooklyn. Or at least a minimal amount of it.). Varing from Neil Young style distorted rave ups (that definitely have an abrasive quality) to simpler, more melodic tunes with sweet harmonies, this band runs the gamut between those two rock stylings. And they do it well. The 2 ladies in Oakley Hall add so much to the band's sound, Claudia on the fiddle and Rachel with her shining vocals. I've seen them twice live and both shows were stellar.

Here's what I feel is a pretty spot-on quote:

"Imagine The Band if they were twenty-first-century New York kids." DAVID FRICKE - ROLLING STONE

www.myspace.com/oakleyhall

www.oakleyhall.net/

The video below is of one of their more raucus tracks ("Lazy Susan"),and it's pretty cool (I actually bought the DVD of this show from the PUNKCAST dude who filmed it last year for $5 postpaid. How cool is that?). It's a simple one camera hand-held video and has a grittiness and realness that gives you a good feel for the room (and I think highlights the failings of the much slicker, multi-camera, overly edited shit that seems to have become standard for what "good" concert footage is these days). And the audio is superior to 99% of that other live music shit on youtube.

Check out these tracks on the imeem playlist below:

(1) Angela - I put this mellower first to counterbalance the decidely non-mellow Lazy Susan video. This song highlights Rachel Cox's great voice. The slide guitar part that starts at the 2 minute mark is simple, but so fucking cool...

(2) If I Was in El Dorado - The fiddle is prominent here but it's still not too country for me.

(3) Confidendence Man - Cool intro. Lots of cool distorted guitar. I like the cadence of the vocals too.

(4) Light of My Love - Pat Sullivan shows that he can sing too.

(5) Eyes, Lock and Steel - A slower track, but there's a lot to like about this song

(6) Free Radicals Lament - A mellower Pat Sullivan song that I really dig.

Oakley Hall

[LISTEN HERE]* Drive By Truckers: "Where the Devil Don't Stay"

I like the Truckers. However, I don't love them as much as some people I know. ((1) They have a lot of songs. And a lot of them just don't grab me, you know? (2) I saw them once and they sounded...muddy(?). And this is supported by a live EP someone lent me that sounded similar (but which had some great story which served as a song intro. I forget what the story was about, but it was cool...) Anyway, they do have some truly great songs. And I think it's safe to say that few artists are better at story-telling songs than the Truckers. And as someone not from the South (actually, maybe as far from the South as possible - Queens, NY), they paint such vivid imagery of the South and southern life.

I only got The Dirty South recently and for some reason listened mostly to the other top-notch songs on its first half but not this track. I'm not sure why I skipped over it, but I usually did. Then I was looking to by an Ipod dock for my wife for Christmas for the kitchen so she can listen to the radio and I can crank tunes to drown out her fuckin bitching and moaning (just kidding. I love my wife. And her fuckin bitching and moaning...) I brought my Ipod with me and was checking out some systems at Best Buy. And since this was the first track on the album I was playing it. Loudly. And I was cranking that shit big time in Best Buy, getting weird looks from other patrons. I was waiting - just waiting - for an employee in his blue smock to come over and tell me turn it down so I could lambast him with "But this a stereo store! You need to crank this shit. Wuss." But no employees even noticed me. They were probably in the back talking with other employees about "this killer new 'app' I got for my iphone." Anyway this track rocks. I love the lead with slide. Very cool.

* or maybe I should call it [LISTEN, HEAR]. Kinda a cool play on words. Maybe with a semi-colon, like [LISTEN; HEAR]. I don't know.

Drive By Truckers: "Where the Devil Dont Stay"

[UNDER THE COVERS]: Two Cow plays the Beatles

Our new "Under the Covers" series highlights cover songs that rock particularly hard. This segment brings you Two Cow Garage playing an over-the-top version of the Beatles "Don't Let Me Down". It's off what I have to assume is the little-known "Voluble EP" (which also has a an alternate version of "Goodbye (alt)" which I like way better than the original) Tow Cow put out...actually I have no idea when it came out but I think it hasn't been available for a while. Anyway, it's pretty kick-ass so check it out.

* I wish I had a recording of them doing "Stay With Me" (The Faces), which they closed a recent Albany show with. May not seem like it would on paper, but it absolutely brought the house down...

Dont Let Me Down - Two Cow Garage

video: Grand Champeen

God, I just love this Grand Champeen video. It sure does make life on the road in a struggling rock band look like FUN. I love when they show the odometer flip. So cool.

This song rocks! Lucero - "Noon as Dark as Midnight"

Lucero - "Noon as Dark as..."

If there's one thing I wanna do, it's rock out. Hence the whole backbone of this blog. And this song kicks serious ass. After I first heard it I was like "How are people not shouting about this song from rooftops?" Here's a more detailed take on the song I wrote a while back:

The slow, dour lyrical portion of this song is a great lead-in to the hard rocking that dominates the last 3 and half minutes of this track. Check out the tempo change at the 3:00 mark - for all you lame jambands out there who think 18 minutes of aimless guitar playing is "jamming", you're wrong. This tempo change is the backbone of what real jamming is (at least in my opinion - my opinion is the only one that matters, right?). After some of that shit, they then slow it down and you think they're going back into another lyrical section, but instead there's the cool backscratching guitar part. Then that turns from what you'd traditionally expect to come next (a slower lyrical section) and instead they start jamming even harder. This is the kinda stuff Phish based a career on - and let's face it, they were the hands-down masters of it. I still can't believe more bands across all genres don't adopt this lyrics > guitar solo> [tempo change] harder guitar solo > lyrics approach to rocking out. I'd like to see at least 1 such track on pretty much every rock record (but preferably 2. Really, I'd like there to be 3 on each record. Now I'm just getting greedy - 3 is unrealistic. OK 2 will suffice then...)

[rumor] Slobberbone: New Album?

coolest press photo ever?

I'm not normally a rumor-monger, but...

...in an interview from this November (http://www.donewaiting.com/2008/11/14/road-trippin-with-two-cow-garage/), someone in Two Cow Garage said


Question: [What do you listen to in the van when you're] longing to hear something nostalgic

Answer: (Anonymous) Slobberbone, although there are rumors of a possible new Slobberbone album …


That's news to me. Exciting news. Can anyone add to this?

[update]: I see Slobberbone has 2 reunion gigs booked for early February in Texas. Very cool...