Sounds you Should Try & Buy 3 August 2014

  This week in Sounds You Should Try & Buy we’re listening to an Oakland band ready to bring their underground sound to the surface and then there seems to be a lot of right-on birds round here. So let us begin to dig into what we’re listening to this week and thoughts from around the web… (For more infos, click on the album title) Everyone Is Dirty – ‘Dying Is Fun’ (Tricycle) Direct, honest, quirky, dirty, spellbinding, murky, sarcastic, right-on and salty tales set to a backdrop of chunky, crunchy brilliance that causes one to understand why the world needs an underground music scene in the first place, a glimpse at why every aspiring player should invest in a 4-track recorder and let their freedom expose itself. A sound that can and will (if need be) kick the ass of any sugarpuff that stands in its way. A band full of charm bubbles and vinegar springs… I wrote not long ago, right before EID hit the road on their first tour of the US South, “Everyone Is Dirty is a uniquely delicious collective of artists accomplishing a dynamic, playfully murky all over the place, certainly interesting experience that should be explored, bathed in before you take anyone’s word(s) for granted. Form your own needy lust for something new in the depths of Everyone Is Dirty.” – Walter Price (The GTC EID says of DYING IS FUN, “Our spaceship has landed. Listen to all 10 songs in order for maximum blast off.”

Counting Crows – ‘Somewhere Under Wonderland’ (Capital) Say what?! Yes, Counting Crows may be mega rockstars in their own right but at the core of the group has always been rootsy singer/songwriter ethics and stellar congress with their fans and they haven’t really changed a thing besides their writing process and perhaps their ages and that happens to a lot of us. Vampires excluded. So, perhaps, Adam Duritz had an issue or two (subjects explored on Wonderland) possibly holding back new studio works for a time. We say that is understandable. Also consider the thought they have always been round and back and this time things seem comfy and right on, major label and all. Good on ‘em. Duritz recently told Ray Roa of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay about approaching new material, “We were so good on stage the last couple years. It was great playing covers and playing our own songs, expressing ourselves and the band was so in tune with each other. By the time we finished at the end of last August I was so excited about recording with the band. I just needed songs. The way I used to work, I’d finish all my songs in one sitting. It could be a 45-minute sitting with “Rain King” or it could be an eight-and-a-half hour sitting with “Ms. Potter Lullaby,” but they were always in one sitting. If I didn’t finish a song it was because I thought it was because it wasn’t good so I’d throw it out. A few years ago while I was working on the play for a while I started to realize I wasn’t finishing anything, and that didn’t seem like a good thing to do. So I started like taking really careful notes about everything and trying to record every idea that I came up with. I’d sing it to my phone, record it or write it down, just document everything so I wasn’t losing things just because I wasn’t finishing them. I felt like I was purposely not finishing things. Purposely? Yeah, when you’re crazy a lot of shit happens that you cause without you realizing it and it seemed like I was making a choice on some level that I wasn’t aware of, where I wasn’t finishing songs. So I started documenting everything and I had all these pieces in my phone and I was pretty excited about it. I wanted to get everything out of my phone and notes and see that they really were all of these songs. So I asked Millard (Powers, bass) to come to New York when tour was ending and have him hang. Dan (Vickrey, guitar) came and Imme (David Immergluck, guitar) came, and we sat here and went through all these pieces and found all these songs. I just started pouring stuff out. It was helpful to have the guys here because I didn’t understand these they way I’ve understood my other songs. I didn’t think they were good at first. They were so different from the other stuff I’d written before, so I just didn’t get it. But then they just started to come, and we just loved them. I came out with a verse and chorus and they’d flip out so I’d be like ‘oh okay’ and go lock myself in the back again and they’d be out here playing guitar and piano in the living room and I would come out into the living room and show them what I had and they’d be like, ‘holy shit.” Full Q&A HERE.