Spare a thought for poor old Ryan Adams (and his underappreciated career)

As some of you might already know, prolific songwriter Ryan Adams recently announced he would be leaving the music business, explaining that he's sick of being taken for granted and is battered by the road. "i lost more than anyone will ever know (hearing, someone i loved, my sense of dignity, a never ending losing battle with stage fright and now my hearing and balance due to an inner ear issue."

Apparently a show at Atlanta's Fox Theater on March 20 will be his "last venture" with his group The Cardinals. "Maybe we will play again sometime and maybe i will work my way back into some kind of music situation," he writes, "but this is the time for me to step back now, to reel it in and i wish everyone peace and happiness." As for how he'll be remembered, Ryan writes the following: "i am a punch-line and a footnote"... ouch.

 

Now in all fairness, lately he's kind of lost my interest, and something tells me I'm not alone there. But for him to just slip out the back door like this, well, just seems a bit sad and unfair.
 
Here are a few of my own highlights of his career so far:

 

  Come pick me up

To Be Young (is to be sad, is to be high)

  (Heartbreaker, 2000)

  

She wants to play hearts
Chin up, cheer up 

  (Demolition, 2002)

 

So alive 

 (Rock 'n Roll , 2003)
   

Fuck The Universe

 (Love is Hell, 2003)

 

spare a thought for the record industry.

*****

And finally, a few points of advice to musicians not wanting to end up like poor old Ryan Adams (and his underappreciated career):
 

-Don't release so damn much. If Ryan Adams' career isn't clear enough testament to that, just look at Robert Pollard, who single-handedly chased even his last few remaining fans away by releasing on average of an album per month for the past 20 odd years

 

-Don't blog. It just tends to make you look petty, narcissistic and touchy (Hey, Kanye). You may well be extremely pissed off at some c level celebrity you bumped into at a club on Wednesday night.  But chances are you won't even care about it anymore the next day. But if you blogged it, people will remember it (and Stereogum will likely have a feature on it).

-Stay away from Winona Ryder: Ok, the facts, well they kinda speak for themselves: Ryan Adams, Conor Oberst, Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum), Beck, Pete Yorn, etc. While there might not be any clear causal relationship that I can prove in these pages, they didn't exactly get better (after Winona) now did they?
 
-Don't announce your retirement from music when everyone knows you'll be back anyway. See ya around, Ryan!

New Band: Mimicking Birds

What do we know about them? Their Myspace site describes them as 'lyrical/surf ' and they appear to consist of Nate Lacy, Tim Skellenger, and Aaron Hanson. Though Nate Lacy appears to be the heart, right leg and both hands of the band; he also does the artwork and mostly records alone. They're influenced by 'the Jingle Cats and Crash Test Dummies' (I did always wonder when bands would start citing them as an influence... guess that time has come!). They're signed to Glacial Pace (Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock's label and also home to Love as Laughter) and they go to sleep and wake up in Portland, Oregon. 

 

Their music sounds like cold mornings, imaginary answering machine messages and (dreams of) forests, rivers and the late night glow of empty refrigerators. (And they're brilliant!)

  

Oh and you're about to hear a hell of a lot more about them as they're scheduled to open for Modest Mouse on the following dates:

 

02-22 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater

02-23 Visalia, CA - Fox Theatre

02-24 Hollywood, CA - Hollywood Palladium

02-25 Tempe, AZ - Marquee

02-26 Albuquerque, NM - Albuquerque Convention Center

02-28 Boulder, CO - Balch Fieldhouse

03-02 Kansas City, MO - Uptown Theater

03-03 Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom

03-04 Austin, TX - Stubb's

03-05 Oxford, MS - Lyric Oxford

03-07 Atlanta, GA - Tabernacle

03-08 Miami, FL - Langerado Festival
 

None of which are even remotely close to us, but, as festival season is soon upon us, who knows?

 

 

 Mimicking Birds - Home and Somewhere else...

Mimicking Birds - The Chimney Sweep

Mimicking Birds - New Doomsdays 

  

Head over to their Myspace page now for plenty of other songs!

For when you travel at night...

* North by North *
* Polaroid Solution *

First lose the light, then the train,
and as the great boxed-in shadow of yourselves takes out whole cornfields,
wordlessly agree to right-crossed journey-legs.

Corn. What’s it to you, now
your shadow snaps in half the flood-lit steeples? Unvisitable towns
wave their plastic welcome mat at your backs.

Arrival is the new horizon.
Near the door-to what?-the young stuff their ears and mouths.
When the little trolley rolls up with drinks you think,

tea, what is it? Still here
in seven settings of the sun? That's when you’ll end diversion,
use words to decide who mates with who

and who gets the last moth-eaten rind.
Then it's time to pool your languages, choose one for housekeeping,
one for games,
one to describe the slightest changes in weather.

("Night Travel" by Sarah Wolfson)

[the photographs were taken by the extremely talented - and extremely underappreciated - Duane Michals ] [We thank Faded Paper Figures for sending us their wonderful songs! Support the band by buying their album Dynamo here or here ]

Some Top Fives. Just Because.

*this post is dedicated to the inimitable Jason Sho Green, in the hope that he won't one day sue us for having used so many of his illustrations on our blog*

Top five songs I've had on repeat the past week:
1. Dark Dark Dark - Dig a Grave (more Beirutesque than the new Beirut)
2. Julie Doiron - Consolation Prize (this is just wonderful, I'm truly in love with it)
3. Matt & Kim - Lessons Learned (doing wonders for my morning moods)
4. The National - So Far Around the Bend (best song received in a mail in a long time)
5. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Wind Phoenix (thanks Music for Ants)

(presently not including anything Animal Collective. I'm still processing the album. So far, my favorite is In the Flowers.)

Top five albums that I'm really looking forward to hearing:
1. Emmy the Great
2. The Decemberists
3. Architecture in Helsinki
4. Slow Club
5. PJ Harvey (with John Parish)

Top five websites we've been spending time on:
1. Librarything
2. IndieBlips
3. Jason Sho Green
4. Mii Characters
5. Bookmooch

Union of Knives

 

art: jmarshall.lively

You may well remember Glasgow based Union of Knives from their 2006 album Violence & Birdsong, which contained one of my favourite songs of that year, Evil Has Never. Their sound? Uhm, how about this: Thom Yorke replaces Ben Gibbard in The Postal Service, gets dumped by his girlfriend, develops a rather unpleasant prescription drug habit and gets into bad fights with Jimmy Tamborello. Great music ensues.

 

 

Here's a taster from the upcoming album they recently completed during a two month recording session in and around LA with Atticus Ross (NIN).

 

Union of Knives - We are all doing Drugs

Union of Knives - I Decline

Union of Knives - Evil Has Never

  

They have a few brilliant promotional videos up on their site, 

though if the following descriptions in any way offend you, I suggest perhaps not clicking

here

 

"Two girls slapping each other very hard in a hotel room. Hundreds of naked Japanese couples having sex at the same time."

 

Chances are these videos won't be played on MTV any time soon. 

The light from a new song from The Rakes brightens an otherwise dark and dull January afternoon

 pic: ellen mayfield

 

Ah, there's nothing quite like receiving a brand new song from a band you like to brighten an afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, we hereby present to you: a new song from The Rakes. Am I the only one who thinks it sounds a bit like Love Buzz? This can of course only be a good thing.

 

This is taken from their upcoming (third) album ‘KLANG’, which is out on the 23rd of March. Go mark your calendars!

 

The Rakes - The Light from Your Mac

The return of Suburban Kids with Biblical Names!

 

'Yeah, they say two thousand zero zero party over...'

 

No, this isn't a cover of Prince's famous ode to late-millennial partying (cause 'life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last'), but a new release by everyone's favourite (Silver Jews inspired) Swedish indie popsters Suburban Kids with Biblical Names. It's so summery you'll want to put your clocks forward an hour!

Suburban Kids with Biblical Names - 1999

taken from their upcoming EP '#4', out on February 4th.

LHNA News

*

For those of you who like to read, you should know that Letters Have No Arms has joined Bookmooch. This is our profile, take a look at our inventory and see if there's anything you might want. We're giving away Great Expectations, The Little Friend, Women in Love, Jane Eyre and A Boy's Own Story, among others. Oh, and a lovely abridged edition of Of Mice and Men for children! And if you have time, take a look at our wishlist, see if you can make our day by sending us something on there :P For those of you not familiar with Bookmooch, it's a great site for swapping books and it's brilliant so you should be familiar with it.

Also, make sure to pass by Librarything and check out my 50 book challenge for 2009! Readers or non-readers, I think you might enjoy it. See you there!

Little playlist for the week:

The Rural Alberta Advantage - The Dethbridge in Lethbridge
Cop on the Edge - Summer Games II
Immaculate Machine - C'mon Sea Legs**
Johanna Samuels - Man at the Vendor
Panda Steps in Chocolate - BRAINATHON!
Born Ruffians - Kurt Vonnegut
Ghost Hunter - In the Early Months of the Emergency
Maria Taylor - Smile and Wave
Savoir Adore - Gloria & the Scarlet Exit

* the pretty picture was taken by Jenna Carver
**(I'd forgotten how much I loved this song when it came out!)

Letters have no Arms reaches 100,000 views!

Yayoi Kusama Fireflies on Water
   
Yes, Letters have no Arms is happy to announce its 100,000 view anniversary.
 

So a big thanks to everyone who has visited our page over the past, oh nine months or so. To quote many a boyband and teen sensation, we couldn't have done it without you! (well, we could have, of course, but what would have been the fun of that?)
 

 Thanks for all the comments, the views, the bookmarks, and the time taken to check us out (even if you just came straight from Hype Machine/Elbo.ws and downloaded an mp3) We love you all!

And here are some party favours to take home with you:


The Magnetic Fields - 100,000 Fireflies
The Decemberists - The Rake's Song
Beirut - La Llorona

Why Franz Ferdinand Should Spend Less Time Trying To Make Girls Dance, And More Time Trying To Make Girls Cry

pic by yyellowbird

 

"Sometimes I say the stupid things I think
I mean I
Sometimes I think the stupidest things
Mmmmmm
And do you ever wonder, how the boy feels?"

 

Franz Ferdinand - Katherine Kiss Me

Other People's Songs

So we haven't done a covers post in quite a long time and were feeling quite guilty so we're gonna make up for it. And our timing is perfect because...

The Sarcastic Dharma Society
...happen to have a new covers album out. I have good news and even better news and amazing news about it, which one do you want to hear first? The good news is that we're talking covers of such artists as Julie Doiron, Why?, Mount Eerie, and Pedro the Lion. Even better news is the fact that you can download the whole thing over at cllct.com. How about I tell you the best news about the album then? Here goes: It's good.

Bad Bad Things (Andrew Jackson Jihad Cover)
"And then I grabbed the knife and I let the blood out of your throat
And I smashed those tiny mirrors inside of your skull
And I got to thinking: if I don't go to hell when I die I might go to heaven"

Simeon's Dilemma (Why? Cover)
"But I still hear your name in wedding bells
Will I look better or will I look the same rotting in hell?
You're the only proper noun I need; hurry."

First Day of My Life (Bright Eyes Cover)
"This is the first day of my life
Glad I didn't die before I met you
Now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you and I'd probably be happy"

Other cool covers that either are or will soon be embarking on a 'round the blog in 80 days mission:


Little Pictures - Buddy Holly (Weezer Cover)

We Are Scientists - Hoppipolla (Sigur Ros Cover)

Dawn Landes - Young Folks (Peter, Bjorn and John Cover)

Zooey - Father to a Sister of Thought (Pavement Cover)

The Twilight Sad - Half a Person (The Smiths Cover)

Emiliana Torrini - Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)

Ian McGlynn - Mistaken for Strangers (The National Cover)

First Aid Kit - Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Fleet Foxes)

Winter Gloves - Someone Great (LCD Soundsystem Cover)



*illustrations on the left by Maxwell Loren Holyoke Hirsch (yes, I know, with that name how can you not be talented?)

Waking up to the DMCA

pic: Albuquerque NM Police Dep

Letters have no Arms woke up to an email with a rather ominous subject today:
 

"Blogger DMCA takedown notification"

 

We've received one before and therefore already knew what it was going to tell us, and more importantly, what it meant to our blog: a post will have been removed. Not just the offending song(s), nope, the entire post. It seems that, ironically, on their crusade to protect the rights of their clients' creations, our words and our creations are of no value and importance whatsoever. This is exactly why we, and many other blogs, have a pleasant little text on the side of our page, saying "if you want us to take anything down, please tell us and we will immediately etc etc"... Deleting everything means we LOSE what we wrote.
 

 
Of course it also means that we don't actually know which artists we shouldn't include in the future. We don't know who we offended. The procedure therefore mostly seems to be an intimidation tactic. Sort of a "hey, are you sure you really want to keep blogging? You do know we can do anything we want with you, right?".
 

i.e. An utterly depressing situation.
 

It's also obviously something we can't win. They're big, we're small. End of story. We could try and fight it, but we would just end up having our entire blog deleted.

  

I also know however that they're fighting a war they can't possibly win. The ball is rolling, and there's nothing they will ever be able to do to stop it. A better solution will definitely have to be thought up. Until then, I guess we'll simply have to continue putting up with this farce.

By way of an experiment, I'm going to attempt to have my own post taken down. This post in fact. I'm going to attach an mp3 I know for a fact will not have any obvious legal repercussions (it's by my brother), and will then (anonymously) write to Blogger, requesting it be taken down, using the template below. I'm rather curious to see what happens...  Of course I am using a picture that I myself did not take, so maybe they'll beat me to it!

Michael Beijer - Day One Cambados Advent Calendar
 
Go here for a great article entitled 'Are Music Blogs under Fire?'

A new Morrissey album is much like a can of Danish Butter Cookies

 

A new Morrissey album is much like a can of Danish Butter Cookies (you know, the round ones). All cookies are decent, yet  all taste somewhat the same. And while none particularly stand out, there are always one or two that you like slightly more than the others, and eat (both layers) before the rest. Though these won't really change your life either.
 
Listening to Years of Refusal you can't help but wish Morrissey would just fire his band and hire some musicians with a little more, well, subtlety. His lyrics are great as always, as would his melodies  probably be if you could only hear them! Instead they're often lost in a rather generic guitar sound (ditto live). 

 

Hey, The Cribs, any chance you could lend us Johnny Marr?
 
Anyway, Years of Refusal has leaked. Have a listen if you're looking for something nice to go with your coffee.

 

Morrissey - Something is Squeezing my Skull

LHNA is back!

Ciao and welcome back dear reader!! Buon Natale e Buon Anno! (Why does everyone that visits a foreign country feel compelled to use the few words they learned during their stay when they return? No idea.) Anyway - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we hope you had a lovely time and enjoyed the holidays! As you probably know, if you are one of our regulars, LHNA spent their holidays in Venice and Milan, sightseeing on vaporetti, making videos on ships with bunny masks (see picture above; don't ask further questions), opening champagne bottles outside shoe stores and doing their best to avoid firecrakers. Parenthesis - really, those people for whom NYE is just an excuse to hang around crowded places with their "mates" so they can throw firecrackers AT people, snigger when they yelp and jump and enjoy the fact that they're SCARING them: you're a teenage deliquent, fuck you, you're more sickening than that James Blunt video with those freaky technicolor bimbos - parenthesis closed. Phew, that was a lot of hatred I had stored for them there. Don't let this nonsensical intro stop you from relishing our comeback, I really AM getting closer to saying something music-related.

THE DARK SIDE: During our stay I a) watched more MTV than I probably ever have since I was twelve, and b) listened to more bad music than I probably have since...well, my mother's womb possibly. I'm thinking those two are probably related. The reason I indulged in such masochism is this: MTV Italy happens to be the only channel there that occasionally has something in English. The experience was certainly eye-opening. Realizations: Hype Machine world is definitely not MTV world. Coldplay have a lot to answer for. Emo is still alive in Italy. I miss good old Britney. There was a time when MTV music awards didn't make me cringe. And people sure listen to a lot of crap.

Top 10 horrors I had to witness on MTV:
1) Katy Perry hosting (and performing at) the MTV Europe Music Awards. Practically the most untalented, brainless, unfunny, revolting, sleazy without even being hot, manufactured bimbo to come out of the music industry after Paris Hilton. I liked Paris more, for the record.
2) James Blunt's video for 'Love Love Love'. I was truly shocked. I really didn't think a song or video could be more horrific than "Beautiful". And I don't mean this in a trying-to-be-funny way. This video really makes me scared about the world we live in.
3) Speaking of things that make me scared about the world, there was this Italian ad for ringtones.... I won't even go into it because you won't know what I'm talking about, but believe me, vomit-inducing, scary shit.
4) This. Id est, Estonian singer Kerli Koiv's "Walking On Air". Song lyrics: There's a little creepy house in a little creepy place/ Little creepy town in a little creepy world/ Little creepy girl with her little creepy face/ Saying funny things that you have never heard/ She has a little creepy cat and a little creepy bat/ Little rocking chair and an old blue hat/ That little creepy girl oh she loves to sing/ She has a little gift an amazing thing/With her little funny eyes of hazel/ With her little funny old blue hat/She will go and set the world on fire/ No one ever thought she could do that
5) Are we human or are we dancer? Enough nonsense. Please.
6) A 30-minute interview with Tokyo Hotel. Because they're one of those bands it's considered ok to hate, I'm not gonna go on about it. I really do wish teenagers these days had slightly smarter people to look up to, though.
7) New Oasis song/video. So boring that I'd rather watch another 30 minutes of Tokyo Hotel saying nonsense into the camera than listen to the whole song. On the other hand, we did have tons of fun trying to find other such thought-provoking lyrics as "Love is a time machine up on the silver screen". (You know... love is a rabbit chewing grandma's knickers; love is a blue fat alien dancing in your brain; love is a cucumber in a wheelchair etc.) Deep stuff... deep stuff.
8) Kanye West live at the EMAs. Thank God Estelle saved his American boy's ass by coming onstage and singing with him, because Love Lockdown was simply horrifying. Some people should be told that they can't sing, no matter how big they are. Oh yeah, someone should notify the manager of the Ting Tings that their sales are decreasing with every live appearance as well.
9) A two-hour documentary about Britney Spears' life. I really like the girl and feel sorry for her, and actually thought her first album was good pop music (too bad she didn't actually write any of it). But, my God, she depresses the hell out of me. Hearing her answer questions about her life was painful; hearing her trying to justify herself just made me want to step into the TV and give the girl a damn hug. MTV!! Did you really need to air this depressing stuff on Christmas Eve????
10) Coldplay wannabes polluting the music scene. The same Coldplayish guitar riffs every other song, same Chris Martin-inspired (French revolution and all that) jackets every other video. Yawn.

THE BRIGHT SIDE: Yes, as you can guess from the picture above, it's about the much-advertised "Pitchfork500", which kept LHNA good company during the holidays. I don't care if you think that Pitchfork was good 5 (or more) years ago and now it's crap - this really is a must-read. I haven't agreed much with PF lately myself, I don't think every Animal Collective album is genius and I think Vampire Weekend are boring. But the fact is all best-songs-ever lists I've seen always have three things in common: They include about a thousand songs from the usual suspects (Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Radiohead etc.). They generally stick to the philosophy that Older Is Better, suggesting that musically not much happened since Nirvana. (The 2000s are practically absent from most tops - and we are, after all, only one year away from entering a new decade) And, of course, a last great problem is that there really isn't that much variety. Where's twee in all these anthologies? The most you'll get is a mention of The Vaselines or Belle & Sebastian. Where's fabricated mainstream pop in the last two decades? Or has there really been nothing good after Madonna or Prince? Also, doesn't at least one Of Montreal song deserve to be on EVERY FUCKING LIST there is? Now say what you will about PF, but this book has all these things. There's twee and there's pop and there's Of Montreal. There's Eminem, there's My Bloody Valentine, and there's Minor Threat and there's Bright Eyes. And yes, there's Radiohead, Bowie and The Rolling Stones, but there's also Kylie and Justin. And there's also Modest Mouse. And there's also The Decemberists. And for that you should read this.

Sorry! If we kept them up or re-linked them we'd risk losing our blog! The only reason we were able to repost it is because Firefox remembered our history, otherwise we would have lost the entire post (see our post on the subject) .

New Year + New Music = Happy 2009!

pic = Danny North
 

Arcade Fire - Burning Bridges

Black Lips - Starting Over (200 Million Thousand, 2009)

Animal Collective - Bluish (Merriweather Post Pavilion - 2009)

 

 Go here for an extensive list of upcoming releases.

 

Happy 2009 everyone!