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A Hippie Thanksgiving Dinner With Joy of Cooking

        
Joy of Cooking – two rootsy singing-and-songwriting feminist musicians from Berkeley, California, plus a few male fellow travelers providing rhythmic accompaniment, all of whom apparently took their band name from Irma Rombauer’s eternal Depression-era cookbook classic – might have the distinction of being the most critically acclaimed ‘70s rock band that almost no rock critic who graduated high school in the past 35 years has an opinion about. Their self-titled Capitol debut album finished in sixth place in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics poll in 1971; Robert Christgau called it “exciting and amazingly durable” and gave it an “A” grade, praising its rolling piano-and-percussion grooves and lyrics about wives victimized at both ends of the economic spectrum. 

Dig This! The Dutchess & The Duke

Folk-rock that harkens back to the mid-‘60s isn’t a new direction for music. But Seattle duo, the Dutchess & the Duke, aren’t all that predisposed to the glow of the new. Lifelong friends Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrisson lived through their twenties chasing a youthful energy in a long line of surf, garage and punk-rock bands. They have also come out on the other side of 30 with an expertise in two-part harmonies, acoustic guitar- and tambourine-driven songs that bear the tight construction of Stones and Dylan classics, and personal biographies that make for some interesting points and counterpoints. In under 30 relatively lo-fi recorded minutes, their debut, She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke, shows off songwriting chops and an empathetic vision of life gained from experience. And while experience isn’t necessarily a new direction, it’s always worth gaining. This was the undercurrent to the conversation Rhapsody began with Lortz and Morrisson in Seattle and finished in New York, soon after the Dutchess & the Duke played the Rhapsody Rocks NYC party earlier this October.

CMJ '08: Cory Chisel & the Wandering Sons

A few years ago, I interviewed the Dodos, a San Francisco duo who was, at that time, trying to keep their heads during the disorienting situation that befalls a band who's being vigorously courted by record labels. We parked on the sidewalk of a café in the Mission District as the singer, Meric Long, spoke about the most bewildering gig he'd ever played, a few weeks prior, in the board room of a Manhattan skyscraper, to an audience of record industry decision-makers. For a musician of Long's pedigree -- a vet of San Francisco's indie songwriter scene who pens unapologetically nervy, decidedly un-commercial songs -- his obvious discomfort about the situation was evident then, and even more so when they issued their first LP on a reputable small independent label, French Kiss. The situation with the Dodos office gig was on the brain yesterday, sitting in a conference room on the 48th floor of a building near the chaotic center of Times Square (where Rhapsody's New York office makes its home) when Ryan Star strode in, guitar in hand, dressed in faded black, buttressed by a small trio of nervous, doting label operatives.  

Heavy Metal Ketchup #6: Eluveitie, Dragonforce & more

Metal in 2008 is a lot of different things to different people. Personally, I'll take the druids-in-the-woods thing over the dorks-playing-Guitar Hero thing. But feel free to differ, of course!

Live: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

It’s Friday at rush hour, and the show has only begun on the N Judah train line. Regular commuters clutch their briefcases, terrified, as a crowd of rowdy interlopers -- many in cowboy shirts, many in no shirts at all -- pack the car. The route is headed toward Golden Gate Park, where the eighth annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival commenced this afternoon, and two of the car's more enthusiastic riders are stone-giddy about the opening day headliner: "Robert f*ck*ng Plant, man," one says to the other in the blown-mind inflection that's the universal dialect of the three-day event. San Francisco might host a slew other open-air music festivals, but Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a multi-stage festival of roots rock, country and bluegrass (paid for by San Francisco venture capitalist Warren Hellman) is probably the one that most accurately reflects the eccentricities of its host city. Starting with Robert f*ck*ng Plant.

Jose Gonzalez and the Death of the Album

At a glance, last night's performance by Argentinean/Swede folk phenom Jose Gonzalez wasn't much to see: the final set of a two-day, sold-out stand at Yoshi's in Oakland, CA, mostly featured Gonzalez at center stage, hunched over a nylon-string guitar. Sitting between a heavy red curtain and a curious mix of the jazz club's typical chardonnay-and-maki crowd and reverent doe-eyed fans, he was occasionally buttressed by singer Yukimi Nagamo and percussionist Erik Bodin. There was almost no banter ("This song," he said in the honeyed shush of a yoga instructor, "is about tribalism") and few frills beyond those inherent in Gonzalez's faux-traditional Brazilian finger-picking and melancholic evocation of Joao Gilberto. Even the setlist -- drawn from his similarly elegant, bare pair of albums and scattered with new material -- didn't raise eyebrows, save for a forceful cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" that was trotted out for an encore. But, Gonzalez demonstrated that he's one of the most commanding songwriters of recent years by achieving the difficult task of what architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe called "an interesting plainness." The set also made it plainly apparent, and never more serenely unobjectionable, that Gonzalez, is also someone who thrives in an industry that's seen the death of the album-based career. He could be the poster child of its passing.

Liukin for the Perfect Beat

by Stephanie Benson

Can you do a Yurchenko two-and-a-half, an Onodi, a Tkatchev, a Gienger, a Pak salto, a Stalder shoot, a triple full -- wait, let’s make this easier -- can you do a cartwheel? We know you’ve been practicing your best “stick-it” moment since watching the one-two winning punch of gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson in Beijing. But how about saving yourself a trip to the hospital and impress your friends with some Olympic trivia that has nothing to do with Michael Phelps, or um, Michael Phelps.

John Norris Interviews ... Fleet Foxes

Harken yonder ear towards the Northwestern horizon, to where the teen spirit's roar has been replaced by the meditative classic strains of iron and of wine, of horses and of...foxes. Listen closely: it's the sound of a new Sub Pop-blessed vibe, and Lord knows we hear it too. Thus for this latest installment of "John Norris Interviews...," we sent our very own man with a microphone to confront Summer '08's most celebrated purveyors of the Seattle pastoral folk-pop scene, Fleet Foxes. John talks to singer-songwriter Robin Pecknold and his merry band of harmony-and-soul providers about their baby steps out of the coffee-and-Grunge capital, about their recent leap into the indie-rock limelight and their inspirations. Don't wanna hear the chatter? Fast forward to the third part of the video to check out an exclusive acoustic performance of "White Winter Hymnal."

Further Reading:
"The Most Unlikely Breakout Band of the Year" [MTV News]

Further Viewing:
More "John Norris Interviews ..." [PLAY]

Rhap Session: J. Spaceman of Spiritualized

by Piotr Orlov

(photo by Kate Glicksberg)

If you want to deconstruct the territory that Jason Pierce probes with his music, look no further than his sometime-sobriquet: J. Spaceman. Exploring the starry, simple, ancient and mysterious has always been his calling -- whether as co-founder with Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember of influential drone-gazers Spacemen 3, or as the principal player in the outward-bound Britpop group Spiritualized. That he’s turned free-jazz-influenced experimental leanings into relatively popular rock is a testament to the breadth of his vision. This vision became physically impaired during the prolonged recording of Spiritualized's eighth album, Songs in A&E, first when Pierce developed a creative block, and then when he was struck by pneumonia which almost killed him in 2006. When he emerged from this experience, he had not only found a new, traditional side of Spiritualized, but had also created music for the Harmony Korine film Mr. Lonely. When Rhapsody spoke to him in May 2008, Pierce was less interested in discussing the specifics of his sickness (full details in another interview here), and more about the creative process that bookended it. Though we, of course, forced the obligatory “Spacemen 3 reunion” question on him as well.

Video: Devendra Banhart, "Carmensita"

by Angela Bruno

It's safe to say that Devendra's baduizms on girlfriend Natalie Portman are in full effect. In the crackly retro-Bollywood-inspired video for "Carmensita" -- which with its whimsy, chants and fuzzy psychedelic euphoria would sound pretty perfect on The Darjeeling Ltd. soundtrack -- Portman plays the damsel in distress, Devendra the quixotic hero. Clearly dreamt up in a patchouli-induced state while perpetually summering in yonder Topanga (a place immune to the fallout of the Love Guru  -- we hope), the melodrama flows like mango lassi. "Where are you my ratty assed compadre?" she pines (via subtitles). "Fear not my sweet flower, for I have obtained the powers of the Enochian ninth circuit," he answers. But that's probably just pillow talk for those two anyway.