Music that Tries Not to Move Mountains

I’m not an expert, but this seems like a retarded way to get coal. You end up destroying a lot of the environment (burying streams with the toxic mining byproducts, just for starters) to scrape the last bits of coal from places where maybe it’s not such a good idea to go scraping (mountaintop removal miners are required to “restore” the mountain tops but often get permits that allow them to skirt that responsibility, employing a practice called “valley fills” to deposit the waste in valleys. This is the mining equivalent of throwing your dog’s shit in the neighbor’s yard). It can fuck up the water quality and ecosystem in ways that are hard to repair (and can even kill people, but we’ll get to that in a minute). So what kind of brain-fucked primates would still engage in this barbaric style of mining? Well, if you live in the south and are tired of the dumb redneck stereotype, get ready to be angry. Turns out mountaintop removal mining (MTR to its friends, whoever they are) is pretty popular in the Appalachians. Unless you have to, I dunno, live near there and don’t work for a coal mining company. Just take a random sample of, say, 125 folks from Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, and see how they feel about it. But be careful which ones you choose because 125 people died in a flood of black water (from a lake that was used to clean coal, held back by a dam made of coal waste) in Buffalo Creek back in 1972. I’m guessing MTR is a sore subject for some Buffalo Creek residents.

I know what you’re thinking: What the fuck does this have to do with music?

Turns out some of Kentucky’s finest musicians are none too happy about MTR and its less-than-helpful side effects (by the way, this isn’t some wishy-washy liberal tree-hugger issue – fucking Science magazine, hardly a left-wing rag, evaluated current peer-reviewed studies and water quality data and concluded that so-called mitigation practices cannot fully address the environmental concerns raised by MTR) and three of them got together to make an album so that they could donate 100% of the artists’ proceeds to these guys. The musicians are cellist Ben Sollee and Sub Pop folky Daniel Martin Moore, the album is called Dear Companion, and it’s produced by a mysterious Kentuckian named Yim Yames who, rumor (and fact) has it is actually Jim James from My Morning Jacket, one of the finest rock bands on the planet right now. So James is the biggest celebrity on board here, which isn’t saying much. While he’s a bearded god on par with Woden in indie circles, I’m not sure the people who enjoyed the well-intentioned but musically awful performances on the Haiti telethon will take much notice of Dear Companion. I’m kind of torn about this because, on the positive side, I won’t have to hear any horrible acts like the Black Eyed Peas sing about mountaintop removal; but, on the negative side, the fight against MTR could certainly use the shit-tons of money that the Black Eyed Peas usually reel in for charity gigs (I’m trying to be nice here – while I detest the music made by the Black Eyed Peas, you’d have to be a really heartless bastard to be angry at  bands that raise money for good causes).

Which is cool and all, but how does it sound?

The great thing about Dear Companion is it successfully fights what must be a pretty strong urge to go all Billy Bragg outrage on your ass and supplies the listener instead with eleven tracks that range from beautiful (“Try”) to stunning (“Something, Somewhere, Sometime” and “Sweet Marie”), all basically on the theme of loss (of love and mountaintops). It’s a quiet, mostly subtle (“Only a Song” feels a bit obligatory but is still an all right listen) album made by two guys with absolutely no star power. Which means they probably won’t raise enough money to put a stop to MTR, but they probably knew they couldn’t do it on their own anyway. Perhaps, faced with such impressive destruction (and I’m a fan of blowing shit up, I really am, but blowing shit up and crushing ecosystems with the leftovers is in poor taste to say the least), Sollee and Moore could only retreat to what they do best, which, judging by Dear Companion, is make achingly beautiful music.

So in some ways, it’s kinda sad that Dear Companion is such a heartbreaking success. Although it looks like the Obama Administration has suspended the permits that enable MTR for the time being, one can imagine that the fight over mountaintop removal is far from over. If the wrong guys win, the mountains will go away, but we’ll have some amazing music to mourn the loss. With cello, guitar, and voice, Sollee and Moore transmit their grief through soft, folky indie rock that is steeped in the traditions of Appalachian music, suggesting without ever saying that the mountains are not the only things that will disappear if this disastrous mining technique is allowed to continue. Though I should point out, lest you mistake me, that Sollee and Moore are certainly not resigned to the continuation of MTR and the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. If they were, there would be no point in donating the money from this album to fighting MTR. Think of it this way: about thirty years ago, Joe Strummer sang, “Let fury have the hour/ anger can be power/ d’you know that you can use it?” and on Dear Companion, Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore seem to be grieving that fury didn’t have the hour thirty-eight fucking years ago at Buffalo Creek.

Even if Sollee and Moore were just out to entertain and were keeping all the money for themselves, Dear Companion would be a beautiful record and definitely worth your time and money. It’s smartly produced by Yames/James, who clearly understood that the best thing to do was let Sollee and Moore play their instruments and sing without a whole lot of knob-tweaking. James even adds some backing vocals here and there, though Sollee and Moore are better-than-good singers on their own.

At the end of the day, I find it exceedingly difficult not to reward great music for a good cause, so Dear Companion was an easy acquisition for me. Even if you’re not into the cause (honestly, though, after looking at the facts, I’m not sure how a thinking person could support mountaintop removal mining. If you consider yourself a thinking person and you do support MTR, let’s please have ourselves a respectful debate), the music is truly lovely and will probably end up being one of the great hidden treasures of 2010.

Win a Free National Ticket!

The first time I saw The National, they were playing the Hollywood Bowl, opening for R.E.M. I should mention that they were… what’s the phrase I’m looking for here? Oh yeah, they were fucking amazing. I remember thinking it would be awesome to see them in a headlining situation.

Fortunately for me, they’re coming back to L.A. on Saturday, August 29th. Fortunately for you, I have an extra ticket and I don’t want to sell it. I want to give it away. But I also thought, in the spirit of awesome charity that led The National’s Dessner brothers to produce Dark Was the Night earlier this year, that I should ask you to do something good in return. So I’m holding an  Bollocks! Charity Extravaganza to see who gets the ticket. And here’s the best part – there’s a bunch of good stuff you can do for charity without spending much money (after all, I don’t want you to spend hundreds of dollars winning a 30 dollar ticket).

So here’s how it’s gonna work: I will hold a raffle on Friday, August 28th to determine the winner of my extra National ticket. How do you get in the raffle? There are several charitable ways to do it and – to sweeten the pot – you can earn extra raffle entries and increase your odds by continuing to do awesome stuff for charity. Read on:

1) Notice that little ad in the lower corner of my page? If you click on that sucker and watch a Showtime ad, they donate money to help war-affected kids in Uganda. So do that. I keep track of how helpful Bollocks! has been by a point system, which is at 88 points this morning. If you watch an ad, comment in the space provided, and send me an email, you get one entry in the raffle. For every 20 point increase, EVERYONE who watched one ad and emailed me gets a bonus entry.

2) Beat my score on Free Rice.com, English Vocab edition. I’ll post screen caps at least three times a week for my score at first fail (no retry – it’s how many you get right before you fuck up) and if you send me a screen cap of your higher score, you get an entry. Each time you beat me, you get a bonus entry in the raffle, with a maximum of three bonus (four total) for this particular event. www.freerice.com/

3) There’s an awesome charity The National supports called Camp Amerikids that does summer camps for kids with HIV/AIDS. They have a wish list here with a bunch of stuff you can send them, most of which can be gently used. Send them some wish list items and, for each item you send them, you get an entry in the raffle. To verify that you did this, send me a photo of you at the Post Office mailing the package and include in the package a note that says “I’m doing this for the Bollocks! National Contest” and the charity will verify to me that you did what you said you did. In addition to the wish list, I’ve received an email that details some other stuff you can donate, so if you’re interested, email me and we’ll talk about what you can do.

4) “But with all these ways to get in the raffle, won’t their be a billion people in the raffle?” you’re thinking. The answer is, hopefully “yes.” But my readership is smallish (I will be posting ads for this contest ’round the ol’ interwub though), so you probably don’t have much to worry about. But, just in case, is there a way that you can circumvent the system and, E-Bay “Buy It Now”-style, just win the ticket outright? The answer is definitely yes. But you have to do something that I don’t think anyone will do: first, you have to raise a thousand grains of rice on freerice.com. Email me the screen cap.  Second, watch one ad on my banner and email me – remember to make a comment when you’re prompted so I can verify that you did it. Third, and most difficult, you gotta make someone’s summer at Camp Amerikids: gather, photograph, and box up 15 items from the wish list. If you nut up and do this one, I’ll even pay the shipping to get it to Camp Amerikids. THIS IS A FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE, WIN THE WHOLE FUCKING THING DEAL. The first person to complete this option wins the ticket outright, end of raffle, end of discussion.

All emails should come to me at bollocksblog@gmail.com (you’ll have to copy/paste the email address because WordPress is snotty about mailto links, I guess).

Depending on how things go, I might cook up a couple of bonus prizes, if  there’s a lot of interest. I can’t fly people to Los Angeles for the show, so you have to be able to be here on August 29th under your own power – so the contest is open to everyone who can actually attend the show. Similiarly, I can’t whip up a smashing grand prize like getting you backstage to meet the band. I simply don’t have that kind of juice. I do have a ticket that, with a little effort, you can get for free. The raffle will be held on Friday, August 28th at 9pm. Game on.

Dark Was the Night

AIDS has an interesting history. It was ignored by the Reagan administration until his final year in office, which was detailed in the exemplary book And the Band Played On; it was dramatized effectively in Philadelphia, less effectively in Rent and served as a major catalyst for prophetic vision in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, which is – bet yer ass – the most important play of the last twenty years. Much has been made of raising awareness about AIDS, although our current Pope (quick anecdote – I have a good friend who is Catholic and her father, who is sadly no longer with us, knew about Pope Benedict back when he was merely Cardinal Ratzinger. His nickname for the guy was Cardinal Ratfucker) doesn’t seem to think condoms will help prevent it. Once again, Pope Benedict, Science and I would like to have a word with you.

Somewhere in here is the context in which we find the two-disc Red Hot compilation Dark Was the Night, produced by Aaron and Bryce Dessner, two members of The National who used to work at Red Hot. Dark Was the Night exists to raise money for AIDS education and prevention and it’s pretty irresistible at 13 bucks. I ordered my copy from Red Hot and got 2 free 7 inch singles, which I can’t play because I lack a turntable at the moment. But I would like to thank Red Hot for starting my vinyl collection for me. In case the whole value-for-money thing is  a big deal to you, I should like to repeat: I bought Dark Was the Night for 13 dollars. That’s 31 songs for 13 dollars. And most of the songs are pretty good, too. The comp starts off on a weird note with David Byrne and The Dirty Projectors mutilating a song called “Knotty Pine.” The Dirty Projectors have a female vocalist who is absolutely terrible. But that track is followed by a series of very pretty songs, starting with Jose Gonzalez (everyone’s favorite Swede) and The Books doing “Cello Song,” which is all soft and lovely and just like you’d expect from Mr. Gonzalez. Ben Gibbard (s0on to be Mr. Zooey Deschanel) and Feist take on “Train Song,” next, but it’s not the Tom Waits version of the song, which kind of disappointed me. For some reason, I expect one of these artists to cover Tom Waits. I don’t know why.

There’s really no way to talk about Dark Was the Night as anything other than it’s good bits and it’s bad bits. It starts off with a bad song, then goes on a run of several truly lovely tunes, climaxing with The National’s outstanding (as usual) “So Far Around the Bend,” which quips, “You’ve been hummin’ in a haze forever/ praying for Pavement to get back together.” I think we’ve all been doing that. Am I right? There are a few surprises on the album. For instance, I’ve not been a big Grizzly Bear fan, but their “Deep Blue Sea” is part of the afore-mentioned run of loveliness. Stuart Murdoch (of Belle & Sebastian, perhaps the most over-rated indie band ever) turns in a very pretty tune called “Another Saturday.” I’m not a big Antony & the Johnsons fan but Antony sings Bob Dylan’s “I Was Young When I Left Home” like Nina fucking Simone, which is to say he sings it in an unparalleled, hauntingly beautiful sort of way. If The Crying Light is like this (doubtful), I might just be persuaded to check it out. Yeasayer, a band I’ve never given a shit about, made me pretty happy with “Tightrope,” although it mostly makes me miss Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I’ve never listened to My Brightest Diamond before, but “Feeling Good” is quite compelling. I think Beirut is kind of obnoxious, but didn’t mind “Mimizan” at all.

And, naturally, there are some unsurprising moments, like Sufjan Stevens still pissing me off with “You are the Blood” which is a ten minute bastard of a melodramatic, horn-infused, self-indulgent piece of shit. And then Buck 65 remixes it on Disc 2, making it shorter and still fuck-terrible. I mean, it’s awful. It’s not surprising to me that The National have the best song of the compilation in a landslide (My Morning Jacket comes in a close second with the swinging “El Caporal” – don’t believe the Pitchfork kids’ disses of MMJ; they’re a great band and Evil Urges is an awesome album) and it’s not surprising that my favorite songs on the album are by artists I already know and love.

Perhaps the biggest criticism I could lob at the compilation as a whole is that it represents a very soft side of indie music, which I don’t mind, but My Morning Jacket, Spoon, and Sharon Jones are the only artists who really get the pulse racing on Dark Was the Night. The album could benefit from some of indies louder acts, like maybe The Hold Steady or The Thermals or even The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  Some more raucous stuff would be welcome on the comp, but I’m not gonna throw the thing out just because it lacks electric guitars.

Among the 31 tracks, the score is overwhelmingly toward the good – I would score it somewhere around 27 to 4 or 28 to 3, allowing for personal taste. But some of the good stuff is truly amazing, like “So Far Around the Bend” and the stunning Riceboy Sleeps (who the fuck is that? Turns out it involves the singer from Sigur Ros and his boyfriend. They have released two singles and a book) instrumental “Happiness.” In fact, the worst stuff on this album mostly involves Sufjan Stevens. And you can’t pay 13 bucks for 28 awesome songs anywhere but the Russian black market. When you can pay 13 bucks for music this uniformly excellent and have the money go to fight AIDS, I would like to think you need no more persuading.

Go here to find out how to order the comp and to see an awesome video of The National performing their stellar contribution to Dark Was the Night