Mosey West are: Mike McGraw (vocals, bass), Adam Brown (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Matt Weitz (drums, piano) and Cody Russell (Pedal Steel/Banjo/Dobro), they are from Fort Collins, Colorado, and they play some A++ folk/rock.
They have two EPs out right now, Merica and Vaca Money, both of which are – for a limited time only! – available for free at bandcamp.
Some highlights / personal favorites of mine:
A song for all those times you knew better, but didn’t care. Or, a brief essay on how new and interesting pain is sometimes also old and familiar pain, hearts and flowers edition, by Old English.
One of these years I will get myself together and actually acquire a CMJ pass. This year was not that year. That said, while I only saw two CMJ sets, they were very good sets.
The event I attended was the CAA Showcase in the Studio at Webster Hall, and the first band was Beast Patrol, from Brooklyn. Beast Patrol are much heavier, aggressive, and face-melty live than they are recorded. Seriously, the music they have on-line is a shadow of their live show. They can shred.
And then, switching genres at CMJ’s traditional breakneck speed, it was time for JJAMZ, of Los Angeles, who were their usual delightful power-poppy selves:
And now, to add some carnival flavor to your Friday, is Vuvuzela, with Like A Lion, from The Hollow Choir.
It is a great song from a great record. As you are about to hear, they do fantastic things with harps, synths, and crashing cymbals to create dark cabaret music that has both verve and bite.
For all of your Halloween party / waiting for trick-or-treaters / quiet evening at home with zombie movie needs: the latest from NTSIB favorites Blackwater Jukebox. I suggest you download it – it’s free! – and then crank it up.
Some of my favorites include Black Rain, from the Restricted Archives of the Smithsonian:
And also Harvest Tarantella from the Sicilian highlands:
Often when you hear a band who sits at the, some would say unlikely, crossroads of country and punk, it seems the punk tag is only given a passing nod, more evident in band members’ tattoos than in the music. Fistful of Beard, who hail from the northern Alabama town of Decatur, attack it from the opposite direction. On FoB’s new album, Until We Know Better, the guitars crash more than they jangle – though the music always speaks with an Alabaman accent, an accent of good ol’ boys who are actually good, of people just trying to do the best they can.
And for those who like a tender moment, songs like “The Rain” offer real poignancy.
You can get Until We Know Better on Bandcamp, either digitally or in a limited-run CD with a hand-screened cover of that wonderful sleeve art.
It’s Fifty Shades of Come Make Fun of Us for What We Listen to When No One Is Looking for FBFY this month. I tried to save a little face with my entry.
“Embarrassed by some of the music that you love? October is for you! Honestly, I was expecting more bad country music submissions for this month, but we got a nice variety. And by nice I mean embarrassing. Your favorite bloggers, twitters, self-important a-holes on the internet, and other jokesters present 50 Shades of Feel Bad for You: Guilty Pleasures Edition. Thanks to @philnorman for the killer cover art.”
1. Title: Killer Whale
Artist: Underground Resistance
Album (year): 1992
Submitted By: Slowcoustic
Comments: I don’t want to say this is a “guilty pleasure” as much as it is a genre that most folks are surprised that I really really love (once and awhile). Early Detroit Techno. The “techno” today tends to be a bit too shiny for me and I am just too far removed from any sort of scene now to get the good stuff I guess. So, like every other aging dude who used to like metal or techno while growing up – I will always enjoy the classics as a guilty pleasure. I am pretty sure I owned the white label vinyl for this track back in the day – sold from a DJ from the trunk of his car…obviously…
2. Title: Planet Earth
Artist: Duran Duran
Album: Greatest Hits (1998)
Submitted by: Simon
Comments: Time to confess I guess, I’m a bit of music snob, sometimes I may voice an opinion on my good ladies choice of music, most times my comments are frowned upon or brushed off with more than a little disdain, in truth I’m lucky I don’t get a punch in the nose for my generally scurrilous commentary, in my defense I am often tortured by Absolute 80′s on the radio and Now That’s What I Call Music Volumes 1 to 6 on the stereo, so my choice is a real guilty pleasure – hopefully I’ll get away with it….
3. Title: Here For The Party
Artist: Gretchen Wilson
Album (year): Here For The Party (2004)
Submitted By: BoogieStudio22
Comments: Shut up! I told you it was a guilty pleasure.
4. Title: I’m Raving
Artist: Scooter
Album (year): Wicked! (1996)
Submitted By: tincanman
Comments: I know this is a sacrilege, so no need to rub my nose in it 
. Scooter’s fast tempos and happy melodies are infectious and this is one of their signature covers. You just gotta get over being a big ole stick in the mud to enjoy it.
5. Title: Que Veux-Tu
Artist: Yelle
Album (year): 2011
Submitted By: @scratchedsoul
Comments: I have no idea what this song is about as my French isn’t that strong. I just hope they’re not singing about fascist topics. Listening to dance/pop songs in a foreign language is much easier because you don’t have the insipidness of the lyrics distracting you from the catchiness of the song.
6. Title: The Background
Artist: Third Eye Blind
Album (year): Third Eye Blind (1997)
Submitted By: Trailer
Comments: This whole album is a guilty pleasure for me, full of ridiculously catchy pop-alt-rock, but it’s this tearjerker about a hospital-bound ex-lover that always gets me.
7. Title: Greatest Night
Artist: Vulture Whale
Album (year): Bamboo You (2010)
Submitted By: TheOtherBrit
Comments: I don’t usually condone singing with a fake British accent, but this Vulture Whale album is awesome.
8. Title: Extraordinary
Artist: Liz Phair
Album (year): Liz Phair (2003)
Submitted By: hoosier buddy
Comments: I’m a process guy, so I started with a list of about twenty “possible” artists, then chose three representative songs from each artist to review. I rejected Lily Allen (too obvious), Delerium (pointless), and ¡Bowling for Soup! before landing on this rough gem from Liz Phair. I am a Phair fan, and I respect her songwriting abilities. She’s made some important contributions to pop music, including Exile in Guyville. But I digress…
“Extraordinary” was manufactured to be like the girl all the bad guys want. But even made up like a teen beauty pageant contestant by über-pop producers The Matrix, this pop-rocket failed in its mission to penetrate the chart stratosphere. It landed with a critical thud. But, as a guilty pleasure, it delivers in spades on both counts. Listen to that industrial-strength garbage can guitar tone, the Johnny-Barbata-drum-school dropout drumming, the Nutrasweet-cum-Chipmunks backing vocals, and you know this is the one you want to take home from the dance. Phair sings these cringe-worthy lyrics lustily, and you can hear the self-image crisis (average every day sane psycho supergoddess) within the this-is-almost-a-relationship crisis within the what-are-the-chances-of-getting-radio-airplay crisis – the Russian dolls of pop angst! This is what a plaisir coupable should be: more pleasure than guilt.
9. Title: Joyride
Artist: Roxette
Album (year): Joyride (1991)
Submitted By: Ryan (Verbow @ altcountrytab.ca)
Comments: When I think guilty pleasures, I think of bands/songs that you would be completely horrified to have your friends find out about. What better guilty pleasure, then, than an early 90′s crap pop song from a Swedish crap pop powerhouse? Ladies and gentleman – “Joyride” by Roxette. I want to hate myself for liking this song, but I can’t. I will sing it at the top of my lungs any time I hear it, unless I happen to be within 100 feet of another actual human being who may hear me and judge me for my forbidden love. I’m so sorry for this.
10. Title: Toxic
Artist: Nickel Creek (covering Britney Spears)
Album (year): live (2005?)
Submitted By: April @ Now This Sound Is Brave
Comments: This tune is such a guilty pleasure for me that I can’t even bring myself to submit the original, so I’m hoping to preserve a modicum of respect with this Nickel Creek cover, serendipitously recorded at the House of Blues (blech) in Cleveland (yay). I’ve never been fond of Spears’ work, but the unique instrumentation and the abjectly sexual vibe of this song hit me in an irresistible spot.
11. Title: I Believe In a Thing Called Love
Artist: The Darkness
Album (year): Permission to Land (2003)
Submitted By: @philnorman
Comments: I love the complete campy perfection of this song, from the falsetto hook to the hair band homage video complete with Ghostbusters photon streams shooting from the guitars. My life as the singer in a party cover band will be complete when we do this song.
12. Title: Shakin’
Artist: Eddie Money
Album (Year): the 80′s
Submitted By: Truersound
Comments: I really struggled with this submission, normally my go to for “guilty pleasure” is Alabama, but those guys are like classic country now I suppose. There were others I considered but did not really feel guilty about enjoying (such as The Eagles), many nostalgia and irony laced acts and then there were many that I enjoy when I hear them on the radio or in a store (such as I Saw The Sign or You Belong To Me) but I don’t actively seek out to listen to. That led me to this, of which I have an Eddie Money greatest hits tape in the car and I genuinely dig. I only feel partially guilty though, and that’s only because I also once enjoyed a scene on King Of Queens featuring this song. For the record Eddie Money’s best song is “Gimme Some Water,” but I have zero guilt about that one.
13. Title: Hit the Switch
Artist: Bright Eyes
Album (Year): Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
Submitted By: Rockstar Aimz
Comments: I am completely embarrassed to admit that I like Bright Eyes. Go ahead. Judge. I can take it.
14. Title: Dirty Song
Artist: Cars Can Be Blue
Album (year): All The Stuff We Do (2005)
Submitted By: annieTUFF
Comments: This was a hard decision for me! Uh, don’t listen to this song with any kids around.
15. Title: Hand Me The Crown
Artist: The Dirty Urchins
Album (2011): Just In Time
Submitted By: @popa2unes
16. Title: Second Chance
Artist: .38 Special
Album (1988): Rock & Roll Strategy
Submitted by: TheSecondSingle/Beldo
Comments: This was tough for me. There were a lot of songs I considered: “Love In The First Degree” by Alabama, “No One Is To Blame” by Howard Jones, “Live To Tell” by Madonna. Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I have a soft spot for guilty pleasures. Sometimes the guilty pleasures override the respectable pleasures, but I digress….38 Special released what is easily one of the wussiest monster ballads of the ’80s and definitely the wussiest song by a band named after a gun, but you know what? I don’t care. Cause this song rules. It has kick ass harmonies and a killer chorus. It also sounds nothing like the shit kickers who recorded “Caught Up In You.” It sounds like Richard Marx. I also recommend checking out the video for the director’s hilarious attempt to try and make a bunch of mulletted Florida rednecks look sensitive by filming their mullets in black & white: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRkaPdfjzEk
photo credit: Nhung Dang
This past spring, I was honored to be asked to edit the liner notes Rick Saunders was writing for the new Mudlow album, Sawyer’s Hope, and there couldn’t be a more evocative description of not only the music, but also the feel of the album than Rick’s words.
The music of Mudlow has been referred to as “noir blues”, and like any good noir story, their songs are packed with colorful characters. And like any good blues, their songs are packed with emotions that can scrape out the bottom of your soul, an effect achieved sometimes with the most simple but telling phrase and sometimes with the sound that spreads between the moment the blade pierces your heart and the moment you begin to feel the sting.
This album is one of the most gorgeous I’ve heard in a long while, and I was pleased to get a few words with band members, and damn fine people, Matt (drums) and Tobias (vocals, guitar) about the band and their new album.
Let’s give the readers some background: where are you all from and how did you get together?
(Matt) Me and Tobias have known each other for years and have played in bands together for most of that time, when our previous band ‘Crawl Limbo’ folded Tobias moved to Brighton and decided to start a new band. We had always played on the gig circuit in Brighton so knew most of the other local band members and had become friends with quite a few of them so finding a new line-up actually wasn’t too difficult, Trimble was there from the start with another Sax player Jules, our first bassist could only play ska because of his unusually fat fingers so we had to let him go. We asked Paul to join and Mudlow was born. We’re definitely a ‘Brighton‘ band and we all live in the city or surrounding area.
Based on the 8-year span between full-length albums, I’d guess the band isn’t what keeps food on the table. What are your daytime alter egos (day jobs)?
(M) Me and Tobias work for a friend in the heating trade. Paul works as a sound recording engineer/producer at Church Road Studios in Brighton (which is where the Mudlow magic happens!). Not sure what Trimble does, I think he’s either a pirate or a spy, depending on what he’s wearing.
Where does the title Sawyer’s Hope come from?
(Tobias) It’s a partly-imagined place that crops up as a lyric in a couple of our songs. I use maps and place names for inspiration and this came from combining the name of a farm and a wood. To me ‘Sawyer’s Hope’ sounds like an old man’s lifelong aspirations, did he achieve or fail? or is it just a name on a map?
I know you were shopping around for a label to release this album for a while. What was that process like? How did the deal come together with Motor Sounds Records?
(M) It wasn’t really a ‘process’ as such. We had in mind quite a few labels that we liked so we sent them copies/press etc but didn’t hear much back. We’d pretty successfully self-released our first record but we really wanted to work with someone else on this one and kinda have a labels name on which to hang our hat. We know the guys at Motor Sounds so we approached them to see if they would assist with putting this one out. Thankfully they were really keen to be involved so that was that. I guess you could say it’s a self-release but via an independent label.
Your songs are so cinematic and contain so many interesting stories. How do you approach songwriting? Any thoughts about writing a novel?
(T) The songs approach me. You can’t write anything until it’s ready to be written. Sitting and trying to force ideas doesn’t work. A train of thought might be triggered by one line that pops in to your head and then once it gets going let it flow and write down everything, then scrub out the crap and join the dots. The lyrics are mine but we work on the music as a band, we don’t have a formula for creating the songs and we approach each song differently so each has it’s own individuality.
I think about writing a book a lot but who has the time to do that?!
What’s next for the band? Any chance of an American tour in the foreseeable future?
(M) We will be playing some shows in support of the new record and will most likely tour here and in Europe. We have already ear-marked band funds for a return trip to the States so we’ll have to see how well Sawyer’s Hope sells. We definitely want to come back.
And because I get some of my best music recommendations from musicians, what have you been listening to lately?
(T) I like that Bruce Peninsula band, they’re like a choir trying to upset God.
(M) I vote for The Bonnevilles.
(T) Wait… I want to choose the Bonnevilles
(M) Well, you can’t. I did.
(T) Right! I’m leaving the band. [stomps out]
In addition to Sawyer’s Hope, Mudlow is generously offering an EP of bits and bobs called The Last Rung Down to Hell, which you can listen to and download right here.
I’ve been a little slow getting to this one (then again, I’ve been a little slow on everything lately – sorry, friends), but I would watch film director Jim Jarmusch open a can of beans and listen to him play his armpits, so I was thrilled to learn he was collaborating on an album with composer and lutenist Jozef Van Wissem. Fortunately for all of you who might not be Jarmusch zealots, the resulting work is a damn site more pleasant and entrancing than either beans or armpits. Indeed, there are moments when you feel you are listening to a soundtrack from one of Jarmusch’s films, which have always been excellently scored.
“The Sun of the Natural World is Pure Fire” – Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch
Jarmusch and Van Wissem released an album, Concerning The Entrance Into Eternity, back in February and are already set to release a second album, The Mystery of Heaven.
Heaven will be out on November 13 and includes vocals from Tilda Swinton (both Van Wissem and Swinton are involved in Jarmusch’s forthcoming film, Only Lovers Left Alive). Jarmusch and Van Wissem will play a record release show at Le Poisson Rouge in New York on November 27.
Today in the category of Songs I Have Been Listening To Somewhat Obsessively, I present World’s End, by Army Navy.
It is the first single from their third record, which is scheduled to released into the wild early next year. I am hoping that by “early next year” they mean “January 1” (it is a Tuesday!) because I am pants-afire to hear the rest of the songs.
The video below is directed by Mark Schoenecker, and stars Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks, Party Down) as the creeptastic Chester Felt and Camille Cregan (The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks) as the object of his affections:
And for the b-side, they did a cover of Yaz’s Only You, which is pretty great too:
Only You (Yaz Cover) by Army Navy
Finally, their fall tour starts tonight (9/26) in Los Angeles, at the Troubador. Check their listings and get out to see them if you can!
