Saturday, April 30, 2016
Album Of The Week: "It Feels Like Laughing With You" by Yeah Wings
Flatbasset Radio's Album Of The Week for the week of April 24th-30th, 2016:
Yeah Wings - It Feels Like Laughing With You
01. Trust
02. A New Place To Live
03. The Hill
04. To Human Kindness
05. Streetsboro Accent
06. By My King's Command
07. Grave
08. It Feels Like Laughing With You
09. Neak
My introduction to Minneapolis slow-core band Yeah Wings goes back to the Ecstattic Studios compilation ECS 019: Make A Star (Part One: Shining Bright) and their track "Sharkswords." It's a six and a half minute slow-burner closing out a compilation heavy on punk rock & crunch. It's raw & confessional, with singer/bandleader Collin Dall laying out his affection & surprise at a woman named Sally. While it doesn't necessarily fit the mold of the most of the Ecstattic sound, it stands as a fitting introduction to the world Dall creates under the Yeah Wings name.
It Feels Like Laughing With You picks up where "Sharkswords" left off. Rather than rebel against the "slow-core" label (which would have been an understandable reaction some potential pigeonholing), Dall doubles down on the album's opener "Trust." Opening the first act of an album with a song that's 9:44 takes some stones. Waiting until you're 4:00 in to even utter a word is an act of defiance. Once Dall, percussionist Nico Ciani, bassist Alex Depompei, & pianist Matt Ciani have set the mood, Dall lays out the album's thesis is three simple words: "You, loving you."
Now, make no mistake, It Feels Like Laughing With You is dedicated to love in the most real way possible. While Dall certainly has time for deep, true affection, over the nine songs on this record he explores the loneliness, bitterness, joy, & sorrow that come from something so seemingly simple as love. Hell, the second couplet of "Trust" reads, "You, hating you..."
All of these emotions make IFLLWY a heavy album. To his credit, Dall doesn't shy away from his statements by trying to make things more accessible during the album's second act. "To Human Kindness" is limited to two brief verses, slowly picked guitar work, and enough negative space to feel like you're suffocating in your own head. I don't have any idea what the first half of "Streetsboro Accent" means, but when Dall sings "Words mean more to you than my beating arms around you" before letting loose a distortion-fuelled racket of a coda while claiming, "I'm not the same boy I was, I am the same boy you loved," he lays it out with crystal clarity, a mix of anger, longing, & confusion acting as the mid-album peak and second act closer.
The album, out of necessity, takes a 35 second breather of amplifier buzz with "By My King's Command" before launching into its third act.
When we rejoin Dall, he seems to be in the morning-after phase of "Streetsboro's" climax. "Everything moves back while you fight forward..." he sings, seemingly to himself while Matt Ciani's piano & wurlitzer add color a color and the sense of wonder that comes with reflection.
As an album title, It Feels Like Laughing With You seems to imply an in-the-moment feeling of affection. However, the title finds clarity on the track "It Feels Like Laughing With You." It is still an in-the-moment feeling, but it's a feeling brought by memories of those times when affection was simple and pure, an idealized version of the past that does its best to neglect the raw emotion of "Streetsboro Accent" and instead focuses on how things used to be, how they should have been, and how they couldn't be. Matt Ciani's piano is again a standout during the coda, bringing a necessary sense of playfulness to Dall's reflection. It's the audio equivalent of shaking your head and smiling to yourself.
In this narrative, the title track brings closure (or, at least as much closure as possible) to the IFLLWY arc. In that sense, closer "Neak" seems like an odd way to end the record. However, it stands as probably the most accessible stand alone track on the album. Drummer Nico Cianni picks up the pace while Dall eschews the drama & slow-core for an out-and-out jangling indie-pop rocker (it even has whistling!). The way it does fit on the album, however, is as a sort of palate cleanser, playing over the credits of a deep, heavy film.
Honestly, spending a week with IFLLWY was exhausting. Dall tells his tale in a way that's both obtuse and brutally confessional. It's not an album meant for casual listening. It's themes will cut deeply for anybody willing to open up and listen, though, and in that sense it's an incredibly rewarding album.
If you'd like to check out It Feels Like Laughing With You for yourself, head over to Yeah Wings Bandcamp page and pick it up. The band also has a show coming up May 12th at The Kitty Kat Club that you should probably look into.
For more TCDroogsma be sure to give him a follow on Twitter (@TCDroogsma). Previous episodes of Flatbasset Radio are archived on his Mixcloud page. Stop by Flatbasset Radio's Facebook Page & give it a "Like" if you have the time.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Flatbasset Radio: Episode #76
"Tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram..."
Well hello again, podcast fans. Welcome to Flatbasset Radio: Episode #76!
Folks, it's a gorgeous day outside, so I'd like to take moment to thank you for passing up enjoying the outdoors to spend some time sitting at a computer listening to me rabble on about music.
In this week's episode I pay tribute to one of hip-hop's most underrated builders, get a head start on some of North Carolina's finest pop-punk, reprimand Radiohead for their "tour," drop an 18:00+ Minnesota music hat trick, take a quick trip across the border to Wisconsin for some guitar-based redemption, check in on those incorrigible upstarts over at Pytch Records, revisit an underrated record from the 2000's "Rock Revival," and go back 50 (!) years to celebrate one of the most important American pop albums of all time. All that plus the Cover Of The Week, Flatbasset Flatclassic, and more banter than anybody could ever want.
As always, Flatbasset Radio is completely free. I've finally set up a decent downloading site, so if you'd like to download Flatbasset Radio: Episode #76 (with all the appropriate iTunes tagging), just click here.
If you don't have the time or desire to download the show, just click the Mixcloud player below and you're good to go.
Here's how this week's show plays out:
01. A Tribe Called Quest - Check The Rhime
02. Museum Mouth - Incubus Tattoo
03. Radiohead - Spectre
04. Jesse Lacey - Bad Day
05. Straya - Personally, For Me/For Me, Personally
06. P.O.S - Sleepdrone/Superposition (w/Allan Kingdom, Astronautalis, Eric Mayson, Kathleen Hanna, Hard_R, Lydia Liza, Lizzo, & Nicholas L. Perez)
07. Poliça - Lose You
08. Tenement - The Block Is Safe Again
09. c.Kostra - Miracle Child
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Turn Into
11. The Beach Boys - I Just Wasn't Made For These Times
There it is, folks! Enjoy!
For more TCDroogsma be sure to give him a follow on Twitter (@TCDroogsma). Previous episodes of Flatbasset Radio are archived on his Mixcloud page. Stop by Flatbasset Radio's Facebook Page & give it a "Like" if you have the time.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Flatbasset Radio's 25 Most Played Albums: March '16
Well hello again, everybody, and welcome to yet another installment of the most important running column on the internet: Flatbasset Radio's 25 Most Played Albums.
Thank God it's April. No joke. I won't bore you with the details, but March of every year is far & away my busiest month each year. I have a lot of work between my jobs and honestly, once I finish those my priorities are sleep, basset hound, food... and that's pretty much it. It's not just the blog/podcast that gets neglected, it's friends, family, personal appearance, nutrition, cleanliness... Pretty much everything.
That's a roundabout way of apologizing for the lack of posts over the last month. However, with March behind me, it's time to get back to work. What better way to ease my toes back into the cold, harsh waters of the internet than recapping which albums were getting the most play while I slogged through another brutal March? Let's get to some instant nostalgia!
As always, please remember that one song = one play. If I listen to, Blur's The Great Escape once all the way through, it counts as 15 plays. These stats are all pulled from my Last.fm page, which you should definitely follow if you're certain you've checked out absolutely everything else on the internet.
Here we go!
01. Poliça - United Crushers (84 plays)
02. Yeah Wings - It Feels Like Laughing With You (63 plays)
03. Tony Peachka - Hello Tony (44 plays)
04. The Kelley Deal 6000 - Go To The Sugar Altar (32 plays)
05. Big Cats - What If It Doesn't Get Better? (32 plays)
06. Blur - The Great Escape (31 plays)
07. DJ Shadow - Excessive Ephemera (30 plays)
08. Bad Religion - The Gray Race (30 plays)
09. Motion City Soundtrack - I Am The Movie (29 plays)
10. Son Volt - Wide Swing Tremolo (28 plays)
11. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger (26 plays)
12. Superdrag - Head Trip In Every Key (26 plays)
13. Poolboy - Poolboy (25 plays)
14. Prince - 3121 (24 plays)
15. Bill Withers - Just As I Am (24 plays)
16. The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour (24 plays)
17. The Stone Roses - Second Coming (24 plays)
18. Still Life Still - Girls Come Too (22 plays)
19. Rancid - Life Won't Wait (22 plays)
20. The Hold Steady - Almost Killed Me (20 plays)
21. Down By Law - All Scratched Up! (18 plays)
22. Pale Spectre - Live On Radio K (2016) (18 plays)
23. CFCF - Do U Like Night Bus? (17 plays)
24. Tiny Deaths - Night Flowers (17 plays)
25. Sloan - Peppermint (16 plays)
Image via Tap Music
Stats via my Last.fm page
For more TCDroogsma be sure to give him a follow on Twitter (@TCDroogsma). Previous episodes of Flatbasset Radio are archived on his Mixcloud page. Stop by Flatbasset Radio's Facebook Page & give it a "Like" if you have the time.
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