(Separate Columbus list further down. Though, if the lists were combined, some of the local releases would unseat a few here…)

1. Larry Jon Wilson – Larry Jon Wilson
I won’t lie. Talking to Larry Jon and producer Jerry DeCicca (Black Swans) about this album, learning about its origins, and visiting Wilson’s back catalog gave me a heightened appreciation for this masterpiece. So context helps, but even if you know nothing about the back story, this is a stark, beautiful album from start to finish from one of the forgotten country outlaws. Wilson’s Georgia baritone is the sweetest thing I heard this year. For Townes Van Zandt fans, this is required listening.

MP3: Feel Alright Again

2. The Love Language – The Love Language
It’s a rock n’ roll cliché and a PR flack’s dream: Guy breaks up with girl, drinks heavily, pisses off all his friends, eventually sobers up and retreats to his parents’ house to record an album on a four-track. But man does this cliché jangle with some of the best in-the-red pop songs I’ve heard in a while. Stuart McLamb’s Chapel Hill band signed to Merge in October and is slated to have a new release in August, and after seeing the full band (now a 7-piece) put on a terrific show at the Wexner Center in the fall, McLamb’s next outing could be even better with a little help from his friends.

MP3: Manteo I MP3: Lalita

3. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Every aspect of Andrew Bird just keeps getting better—his voice; his gorgeous, multi-layered violin arrangements; his whistling. It makes for a backdrop so compelling that he can sing about proto-Sanskrit Minoans, porto-centric Lisboans, Greek Cypriots and Hobis-hots and have you nodding your head in agreement instead of scratching it in confusion.

MP3: Oh No

4. Kurt Vile – Constant Hitmaker; God is Saying This to You…; Childish Prodigy
I’m grouping these together so I can squeeze more in, but all three LPs probably deserve a separate spot for different reasons. God finds Vile filtering his psychedelia through John Fahey and Neil Young; Childish kicks the volume up a notch and tones the lo-fi down; and Hitmaker, the best of the three, plays both sides with casual brilliance. “Freeway” is one of my favorite songs of 2009.

MP3: Freeway

5. The Antlers – Hospice
Hospice is one of only a few albums this year that completely transports me whenever I give it my full attention. (Brian Harnetty’s Silent City is another.) A concept album about a hospice worker and a young patient, the songs swell like Sigur Ros then retreat into gingerly tapped piano, lightly strummed guitar or shimmery synth. It’s in those quiet portions that Silberman employs his alabaster falsetto — more hushed than Jeff Buckley but less wispy than Antony Hegarty. Back in March, the Antlers played a show at Cafe Bourbon St. in front of me and maybe three other people. I’m thinking there’ll be a few more in attendance next time.

MP3: Bear

#6 onward + Columbus list after the jump. (more…)

Schedule:
Fri, Jan 22 / Pontiac, MI / Crofoot Ballroom
Sat, Jan 23 / Madison, WI / Barrymore Theatre
Sun, Jan 24 / St. Louis, MO / The Pageant
Tue, Jan 26 / Lawrence, KS / Granada Theatre
Wed, Jan 27 / Tulsa, OK / Cain’s Ballroom
Thu, Jan 28 / Houston, TX / Warehouse Live
Fri, Jan 29 / Austin, TX / Antone’s
Sat, Jan 30 / Dallas, TX / Granada Theatre

Ticket info here.

This mini-documentary about Times New Viking features footage of their Wexner Center Valentine’s Day Velvet Underground performance, and tons and tons of Clintonville.

Directed by Brandon Reichard and Pelham Johnston. We should see another video from Born Again Revisited some time next week.

Donewaiting’s first foray into this “Behind the Artwork” feature was with Mike Carney, who did the cover of Heartless Bastards’ The Mountain and the entire Black Keys discography. This time around, we decided to get the skinny on Times New Viking’s new one from TNV drummer/vocalist Adam Elliott. (Can you tell yet that we’re excited about this record?)

Elliott answered the questions I sent him with his usual candor, and it’s a pretty good insight not only into the reasons behind the album covers these art-school kids create, but also the creative philosophy behind the band itself.

Who does the band’s cover art, or is it a collaboration?

all of our art is a collaboration, much like all of our music. when we were in actual art school we started the band with the idea of 300% creative control, which allows every band member to have 100%. someone will come up with an idea, another person will add or subtract and so on until we all get stoned, listen to the record and agree the two go together.

What kind of process do you use to create the finished product?

we don’t use any computers during recording, so we try not use computers with our art as well. we usually send our label the actual final product–the exact 12 inch size. on this record we decided to get away from just plain photocopy and collage and used a technique we finessed at school, an old school photoshop sort of deal. the front cover was done with xylene transfers, even the color, on matte paper, from photocopies. it gives it a soft edge. we also make sure the paper it is printing on is matte, not glossy.
(more…)

Listen to the whole album here:

From the Wex:

Hometown faves Times New Viking have played the Wexner Center on two previous occasions, and on September 17, even though they’ll be half a world away, we’ll get the first listen to their upcoming Matador Records release Born Again Revisited at a listening party starting at 6 pm in the Wexner Center Store. Lots of other events going on at the Wex that evening, so stop by, listen to the new TNV before anyone else, maybe win some swag and tickets to upcoming Wex films and concerts.

And a poster for the event from the folks at Matador:

(And hey, no need for a “full disclosure” anymore!)

The Breeders and Times New Viking
Newport Music Hall | Columbus, OH
August 23, 2009

The Breeders

Keep reading for more photos… (more…)

MP3: Move to California

Matador says:

Catalog number OLE-896 is Times New Viking MOVE TO CALIFORNIA 7″, slated to come out on September 8. The four song 7″ contains two tracks from the upcoming BORN AGAIN REVISITED LP, those being “Move To California” and “City On Drugs,” plus two songs from the coveted STAY AWAKE REVISITED cassette, namely “Pentagram” and “Teen Spirit In Hell.”

Preorder the new album, in stores September 22, and get this 7″, plus a copy of last year’s STAY AWAKE 7″, and a free poster, all for only $13 – while supplies last.

Times New Viking recorded a video for a new Yo La Tengo song at Lost Weekend Records in Columbus OH.

CDR SAMPLER:
MP3: Piledriver Nitemare #2 by Dan Melchior und das Menace
MP3: Untitled .WAV File by Deathly Fighter
MP3: Little White Chords by Sandwitch
MP3: Don’t You Look Sideways by Bassholes
MP3: Accidental Space Tourist by Guinea Worms

One of the most foolish notions that has circulated this year is the idea that bands like Karate Coyate, Wing & Tusk, Ghost Shirt, This is My Suitcase and other indie groups exist as a reaction to the existence of Columbus art-rock, art-damage, shitgaze or whatever moniker is out there.

Bands of those types, that reflect the current climate of national indie rock have always existed. I don’t think Ryan Horns wakes up angry at Chris Lutsko.

Call it the 09 We Want Action.
Hopefully a Tiara emerges.

Just as Columbus has always had musicians that were keeping speed with the rest of the nation, it has also had a long-history of weird drop-outs that accidently have a reoccurring appearence.

Columbus Discount Records along with, but not to be confused with the local bands on the legendary Siltbreeze label, obviously would be the current crop of indigenous strange.

Columbus Discount Records is celebrating. For full itinary please check our message board.

What was your first release?

Terribly Empty Pockets – Sexy World Single. That record was like, the best record Flying Nun never put out. I still think it’s a great pop single.

What was motivation behind creating CDR?

At first we were just kind of blindly doing it, like, we knew there was a vacuum that needed to be filled and we had a lot of ideas about Columbus Punk rock as a sort of cultural history or lineage that we felt was being overlooked a lot by dudes in the city and we wanted to not let that happen. Some of that stuff was stuff we could articulate and some of it was just stuff that was intuitive to us. A solid set of ideas on what we were actually trying to pull off didn’t come till a few years ago.

These days, the manifesto is to do anything we can to keep that lineage going and to make records that teenagers and young adults can get their hands on and understand that you really don’t have to go down that right-wing type path. When we were kids, it was punk rock records from Columbus that made us realize that there was an alternative way of life to doing what the sociopaths on the right did. That’s really big underlying goal w/ each record we work on, is to put something into the world that some kid will pick up and understand that it’s a great idea to drop out. As poor people, we really don’t have the power to affect a lot of change, and I’m not allowed to just go behead the Glenn Becks of the world, so you figure out alternative ways to increase the freak power in the universe and you can really do a lot to push back through simple, unassuming things like 7” records.

Why is maintaining and nurturing a Columbus specific culture so crucial to you?

It’s important to have a local infrastructure for every kind of artist, be it a shitty rock and roll band or a painter or a graffiti artist, whatever. Keeping it local, and not really focusing on “making it” on a national level takes steps and people out of the process that make the art bad or plastic or uninspiring. I think local culture is better than big, national culture in almost every case. So it’s important to think about the Cultural History of Columbus rock and roll in a way that is accessible to younger bands so they can find the stuff and can learn from the dudes that owned their city before them. That’s why we’re always digging into the Columbus back catalog, the more stuff from the past that comes out, the better understanding everyone can get of how they fit into it. And it’s important for bands playing in Columbus, OH now to do a little homework and find out about the lineage they are a part of, even if it is only to buck it, that’s good enough. A band that has sort of tapped into that energy and is of Columbus and not just from Columbus is in a way better position to move the people they are playing to, because what is being created belongs to both the audience and the band in a more tangible way. (more…)

I got bored of searching for images of people I know dancing at the Hi-Five or Red Zone and/or vandalizing property and I came across this on
Matablog.

From the Matablog announcement

Times New Viking delivered the master recordings to their forthcoming LP/CD/digital album ‘Born Again Revisited’ (OLE 860) on a Video Home System cassette. Addressing the mountain of constructive criticism they’ve received from self-styled musicologists wanna-be producers and persons with my initials, the Columbus based trio promise their 2nd Matador album (and 4th overall) features “25% higher fidelity”, a percentage our own engineering staff has confirmed after hourse of exhaustive laboratory tests.

Matador also gave up this new MP3:Times New Viking:No Time No Hope.

If this makes your really happy that Columbus’ champions have a new record coming out…. Go to Bourban Street & stair at them while they drink.

Matt Horseshit, Golden Birthday, & Techno Prisioners are there playing tonight

The last musical performance I saw at the Gateway was DMX at Skybar. But I have to say between Yao’s, Mad Mex & Dirtnap working at Happy Greek I have long maintained that the Gateway goes hard.

SO OSU throwing an arts festival there is very wonderful thing. In addition to Times New Viking playing at 845 for free; Phonzie Davis and Pattycake will be in the plaza. I bet there is a bunch a shit I never heard of, and a bunch of those college people that have their own world and house shows like in Bexley will be around.