Archive for the ‘m. ward’ tag

monsters of folk – dear god (sincerely m.o.f.)

one album that is definitely near the top of my list of upcoming releases has to be the upcoming album by monsters of folk, the cheekily-titled indie rock supergroup comprised of m. ward, jim james of my morning jacket, conor oberst of bright eyes and producer mike mogis, also of bright eyes. weve only heard a few tracks so far, but from whats been released, the album sounds very promising. the tracks seem to cover a wide range of genres and you can definitely tell that each song sort of plays off the style of one of the members of the group.

after one listen to “dear god (sincerely m.o.f.)”, its clear that this track is definitely in the key of my morning jacket. aside from the obvious fact that jim james provides most of the vocals, there are clear signs of my morning jacket all over this one. the chord changes are classic mmj, and the overall dreamy feel of the song adds to it. the exciting part about this album is the stark contrast between this song and the m. ward led “say please” and “the right place”, which, based on the 10 second youtube teaser, sounds like it will definitely be highlighting conor oberst. is this the first time musicians have posted 10-15 second teasers of upcoming songs on youtube (just search for monsters of folk)? either way, its definitely an interesting marketing strategy and one that seems to be working in this case. the cool part about their tour is they’ll be playing monsters of folk tunes, plus songs by all of their own respective “solo” acts. but im pretty sure they arent making a stop in detroit, because nobody makes stops in detroit anymore.

monsters of folk – dear god (sincerely m.o.f.)

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fleet foxes – ragged wood

what an alliterative post title. is that alliteration or consonance? i cant remember, nor do i really care. today were going to continue our look back at the 2008 pitchfork festival in preparation for the 2009 pitchfork festival, the second of my three music festival adventures this summer. last year i bought a ticket and was going to go just because, and didnt really know many of the bands playing, so i was pretty excited when i discovered fleet foxes a week or two after i bought my ticket, only to find out that they were in fact performing at the festival. they were part of the aforementioned hot, sticky, wet and muddy saturday of last years festival, but the weather seemed to break a little bit after their performance.

fleet foxes are super folky and awesome. their self-titled album sounds to me like a day in a cabin in the mountains. when the opening track “sun it rises” begins, you can almost see the sun rising over the distant rocky horizon, and this mood continues throughout the whole album. the song i chose from the album is “ragged wood”. this and mykonos are my favorite songs by them, in case you care. what was so great about their live performance, besides the dead silent crowd, was that they nailed all of their harmonies live. theyre really good at harmonies. i was especially looking forward to hearing the second half of this song live once i noticed how great their live harmonies were, but, just like m ward, the song i most wanted to hear was a song that they didnt play. great song, great band.

fleet foxes – ragged wood

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m. ward – to go home

after much anticipation, the week of the pitchfork music festival has finally arrived. whilst there has been much uncertainty leading up to this point, namely where we were going to stay, which i was sort of unofficially in charge of, things are looking up. it will be a stark contrast from last year when there were a lowly four people attending the festival (but dont get me wrong, we definitely partied like rock stars and had a killer weekend). this year, our core group is 8 strong, and there are numerous others that we plan on chillin/partying with throughout the weekend that are sure to make it one to remember. so, ive decided that while this weekend will feature an act each day who is performing that day at the festival, id like to spend the next few days looking back on some of the great acts we saw last year.

today, the focus is the illustrious m. ward. ironically, the song im featuring is one he did not even play last year. one i had been anticipating highly, but one that left me with musical blue balls. this is not to say that his performance was lacking, because it was excellent. another reason i chose todays song “to go home” is that its monday, which means that i probably want to go home right now. anyway, what do i like about this song? i like the driving beat. i like the ascending piano notes at the end of each phrase, and i like the wailing “home”s that later in the song overlay the aforementioned piano notes. this was the song that introduced me to m. ward and im glad i got to catch him in person.

m ward – to go home

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my morning jacket – it beats 4 u

my morning jacket is one of those groups that sort of snuck up on me. id heard about them for a while but for some reason, i thought it was going to be some sort of mtv punk group that i hated, a la fallout boy. so imagine my surprise when i heard their album z for the first time. not even close to anything i thought it would be. then i discovered the rest of their catalog and was fortunate enough to see them at the state theater last fall, and that just sealed the deal for me. definitely a top show ever. we actually got really lucky that we even got to see them because just 3 days after our show, the group was performing another show in, i think, chicago? or somewhere around there, when singer jim james slipped and fell and had to cancel a bunch of shows in the next few weeks (i actually have no idea how many shows were cancelled).

basically if you ever have a chance to see them live, you take it and ask questions later, at which time you wont have to ask any questions. the group is a bit of a regular at bonnaroo having played 5 or 6 of the 8 years the festival has been around. the other interesting fact that comes to mind is that singer jim james (im not sure if its the rest of the band or not) makes an insanely weird cameo in the insanely weird biopic (pronounced by’-oh-pic, not by-ah’-pic) “im not there”. it took me probably an hour to realize that all the weird characters were supposed to represent a stage in bob dylans life, but seriously, that movie went right over my head, and i usually like weird movies. but i definitely remember being more confused when suddenly my morning jacket was in the old west singing a song.

there were literally millions upon millions of songs i could have chosen from their repertoire and i would have been content. but in the end, the lucky winner was “it beats 4 u”. the first reason i chose this song is because it is awesome and i think it sums up mmjs sound quite nicely. the second reason is the use of text speak in the song title. the third is because i like to think that the whistler near the end of the song is andrew bird because really who else can whistle like that in the world? but then i also think it would be a random pairing…….

……so i just looked it up, and it turns out that andrew bird AND m. ward both appear on this album, and that andrew bird has also appeared on about a million other albums. without further ado, enjoy the show.

my morning jacket – it beats 4 u

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