Pizza for dinner

Notes from today's train

Hello from Amtrak train 87 en route from Boston to Philadelphia. I’m on my way to “America’s Garden Capital” aka “The City Of Neighborhoods” aka “The Athens of America” aka “The City That Loves You Back” to rehearse with Remember Sports for album release shows in NYC and Philly this upcoming weekend. I have four (4) bags with me on this train: big backpack, cymbals, snare, pedalboard with SPD. It is unwieldy but I’m going to make it to West Philly for practice today come hell or high water. I’m very excited to rock and also potentially roll.

We have reached the part of winter where I start looking at Zillow in warmer cities and consider trashing my entire life to never have to go through this again. My birthday is at the end of January and the time between that and the daylight saving’s switch is just an unbearable slog. My phone’s health app keeps sending me messages that my steps are down and I don’t think that’s helpful personally. I know my steps are down. Everything’s down until it warms and lightens up a little.

Here’s some music I’m listening to to fight the February doldrums:

• Gruff Rhys, singer of everyone’s favorite Welsh power-pop polymaths Super Furry Animals, has a superb new record called Dim Probs that’s really hitting the spot for me at the moment. It’s a Welsh language release featuring melancholy songs with acoustic guitar, puttering drum machine, and occasional dashes of humor. The Welsh record is a thing Rhys has done before to great effect and his non-English albums tend to be my favorites, so this one’s very welcome. Dim Probs isn’t a sunny respite from the cold; it’s more like a heated blanket and a hot cup of coffee in bed.

• Shintaro Sakamoto has long been a fav at the Julbucket house (wherever that house may be) and he once again hits the Julbucket sweet spot with his new album Yoohoo. It’s another set of lightly funky exotica suffused pop tunes filled to the brim with surf guitars, flutes, and serpentine chord changes. As with a lot of his other music, the compositions twist and turn but they always feel like they’re ambling rather than rushing to their destination. Patient, groovy, surfy, winking. Perfect music, no notes.

• I, like many perhaps, was only really familiar with the hit 1990 DNA remix of Suzanne Vega’s 1987 song “Tom’s Diner”. During the recording of the most recent Ava Luna album, Carlos showed us the original version of the song and it’s striking video:

  It’s so funny they retroactively call this “acapella version” because it’s actually just the real original version of the song! I much prefer it to the more well known remix myself, and the video’s really something. I really didn’t know much more about her but Emily sent me this song from her 1992 album 99.9F called “In Liverpool” and I immediately knew I was at the mouth of yet another rabbit hole.

  Apparently ,this record was produced in the aftermath of the remix of Tom’s Diner remix going to #2 in the UK, #5 in the US, and #1 in a bunch of other places. Vega seems to be looking for a way to move her music towards more rhythmic/industrial territory but the path she takes gets there, along with future husband/uber-producer Mitchell Froom and mixer Tchad Blake, is very idiosyncratic. 99.9F’s tracks are built around heavily compressed loops that for lack of a better term would typically be described as “lo-fi”. This is expensive lo-fi though — we are looping hand drums, printing them through a crappy boombox, and then recording that back via a $10,000 Neumann binaural head. We’re recording the rhythm section with one mic in the room but the rhythm section is Jerry Marotta and Bruce Thomas and the room is the Magic Shop in NYC. Hifi lowbrow. This record is the beginning of one of my favorite eras of pop/rock/alternative music bands often went for an extremely expensive major label take on a homespun lo-fi sound. This record predates Beck’s major label debut by a few years and I truly wouldn’t be shocked if he or the Dust Brothers weren’t familiar with this record (and it’s fantastic follow up Nine Objects of Desire).
  
  Production aside, Vega’s songwriting is extremely strong on this album — this is the beauty of having 10 years to really perfect ones’ craft. This is her fourth record and it definitely feels that way. She cooks with gas, able to sell through both opaque lyrical themes and winding structures and make it still comprehensible and fun. I hit the end of this album and I just start over again. Masterful stuff from an underrated craftsperson, go listen to it now.

Some quick updates from my world:

Since moving to Boston four years ago, Emily and I have had a standing appointment on Sunday mornings to drink a warm beverage and listen to Subject To Change on WMBR. Every week, DJ Patrick Bryant spins every cover he can find of a specific song for two straight hours, peppering in funny stories, tangential raps, and straight discographical information. It’s meditative, annoying, psychedelic, hilarious. Just the way I like to start my Sunday.

A few weeks ago, I noticed someone had bought two tracks from my bandcamp, specifically my two covers of “Leave My Kitten Alone”, a Little Willie John song most famously covered by the Beatles in the early 60s. I had recorded the song first as an 8 year old making a father’s day Beatles cover tape for my dad and then again 30 years later when I covered my own cover tape. Both tapes are available on bandcamp:

Anyways, I saw that a “Patrick Bryant” had bought the tracks and so I reached out and found out it was the same Patrick and that he’d be playing my covers on his show. What a mind fuck to hear my 8 year old self followed by my 38 year old self coming from the radio! I cannot recommend digging into old episodes of Subject To Change enough, they can be found here. And if you want to hear the show I’m on, please listen right here!

What else?

Gemma released the first single from their new album, recorded and mixed by me. This is a couple years old already — the older you get, the longer it takes to finish and get stuff out, I think but much like the Suzanne Vega record I was talking about, you know immediately when people have been really working at their craft. This is an album that could only be made by people who have put in the time. It’s glorious.

The new Remember Sports record is out! That’s why I’m on this train — we’re playing two sold out release shows this weekend in Philly and NYC. In the modern era, one thing about releasing music is that no matter how forward thinking you are, most of your art will be consumed online. As such, it’s really important to get out as close to your album release and get face to face with people and remember that music is sound that exists in the air. It’s not an embed, it’s not a file, it’s not a pre-save. It’s for people, by people. Release day in the modern era involves a lot of looking at a screen, checking metrics, texting, emailing. Get out there and don’t forget to play in front of people…or at least that’s what we’re doing here. These shows are sold out but you can find more tour dates (including additional NYC and Philly shows) HERE.

New Youbet!

I had the joy of co-producing this with Katie AND I also play the drums. What a treat! I’m probably most valuable to someone’s project if I can also drum on it, it gives me more control over how the final product will sound. This album is a doozy, this first single was also the first song we recorded for the record and I’m happy it’s out there.

Okay well, my train is somewhere in southern Connecticut so I’m going to hit publish and see if I can wrangle up some snacks from the café car before we hit NYC and they do the crew change. If you’ve made it this far, let me know what you’re listening to beat the cold out of winter! Also, of course reach out if you wanna work together on music, I’m always here for us.

love,

Julian