You can hear an acoustic version below of a beautiful track from the upcoming album entitled “Yesterday Has Gone Forever.” The melancholy lyrics and atypical pop song structure are just the type of soul-penetrating solipsistic poesy that make rainy days feel that much more lonesome. As Mick Jagger once said to John Lennon, “It’s a blues, John. It’s a blues.”

And if you can’t wait until June 29, 2010 to listen, you can hear a sample of the entire album right now on Amazon.com.

Superchunk – Majesty Shredding from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Get ready to pull up the calendar section on your iPhone/smartphone. On September 14, one of BlackSwanSongs’ favorite bands, Superchunk,  will release Majesty Shredding on CD, LP and digital download. The band have announced summer festival dates and September east coast dates with west coast dates to be announced soon. Superchunk will also perform on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Monday, September 20, their first television appearance since 1994. (Let’s pray they announce an Austin show!)

The press release on the Merge Records site reveals:

Having cleared the deck of odds and sods with last year’s Leaves in the Gutter EP, Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan set about to write a batch of songs that would capture the spirit of the band’s live shows. From 1997’s Indoor Living through 2001’s Here’s to Shutting Up, Superchunk had written most of their records together, building their songs through collaborative writing and rehearsal. But, in an effort not to overthink their new material (and because drummer Jon Wurster lives a couple hundred miles away from the rest of the band), Superchunk approached Majesty Shredding the same way they approached their early records: McCaughan provided skeletal demos to his bandmates, who in turn fleshed out the songs during a brief period of rehearsal and recording.

This sense of purpose is enhanced by the presence of Scott Solter, an engineer and producer (The Mountain Goats, John Vanderslice, St. Vincent) known for coaxing exceptional performances out of the artists he works with. Majesty Shredding is a powerful document of Superchunk as a band, augmented as needed with well-placed harmonies, keyboards, and guitar overdubs (and some backing vocals courtesy of the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle).

Since releasing their first 7-inch in 1989, Superchunk has run the gamut of milestone albums: early punk rock stompers, polished mid-career masterpieces, and lush, adventurous curveballs. Conventional wisdom holds that a band two decades into its career can only rehash or reinvent, but with Majesty Shredding, Superchunk has done something entirely different. Neither a return nor a departure, Majesty Shredding telescopes two decades into 41 indelible, action-packed minutes. It is the sound of youthful exuberance fine-tuned with grown-up confidence. And it may very well be Superchunk’s best record yet.

Superchunk also recently drank the social media Kool-Aid too; check out their twitter.

Track Listing:
1. Digging for Something
2. My Gap Feels Weird
3. Rosemarie
4. Crossed Wires
5. Slow Drip
6. Fractures in Plaster
7. Learned to Surf
8. Winter Games
9. Rope Light
10. Hot Tubes
11. Everything at Once

Superchunk tour dates:
6/19  Denver, CO – Westword Music Festival
6/20  Chicago, IL – Taste of Randolph Street Festival w/The Love Language
7/24  Omaha, NE – MAHA Music Festival
9/17  Washington, DC- 930 Club
9/18  New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
9/19  Brooklyn, NY- Music Hall of Williamsburg
9/20  New York, NY – Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
9/21  Boston, MA- Royale
9/22  Philadelphia, PA- Trocadero

BlackSwanSongs.com had the extreme honor of attending two Sixteen Deluxe reunion shows, as well as interviewing them for a short feature in the Austin American-Statesman. Easily the best band to emerge from Austin during the 1990s, Sixteen Deluxe had the potential to be a label’s prestige act. Warner Brothers signed them after a small bidding war. But I personally didn’t feel like Warner Brothers properly promoted the release, “Emits Showers of Sparks” during those dark days just prior to mass Internet adoption.

If you enjoy My Bloody Valentine, The Flaming Lips, Swervedriver and other noise pop/space rock bands, please seek out Sixteen Deluxe and their music. Then convince your friends that are music supervisors to use their music in films.

Yes!

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Note: showcases in bold hold the highest probability of my attendance.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

8:00 Strange Boys – Emo’s Jr.
9:00 Here We Go Magic – Club de Ville
10:30 Motorhead – Austin Music Hall
12:00 Nas & Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley
1:00 Sixteen Deluxe – Encore

Thursday, March 18, 2010

8:00 Ozomatli – Auditorium Shores (free show; no wristband or badge required)
9:00 Miles Kurosky – Emo’s Main Room
10:00 Rogue Wave – Emo’s Main Room
11:30 Band of Horses – Stubb’s
12:00 Centro-matic – Emo’s Annex
1:00 Evan Dando – The Ale House

Friday, March 19, 2010

8:55 Band of Horses – Central Presbyterian Church
9:30 Cruiserweight – Buffalo Billiards
10:00 Smokey Robinson – Austin Music Hall
11:00 Girl in a Coma – Buffalo Billiards
12:00 Broken Social Scene – The Parish
1:00 Dengue Fever – Encore Patio

Saturday, March 20, 2010

8:00 She & Him – Auditorium Shores (free show; no wristband or badge required)
9:30 Sarah Jarosz – Austin Music Hall
10:00 Margaret Cho – Esther’s Follies
11:20 Xzibit – Club de Ville
12:30 Big Star – Antone’s
1:00 Adam Franklin & The Bolts of Melody – The Tap Room at Six

LOST's season 6 promo photo resembling da Vinci's "The Last Supper." The homage was no accident.

LOST’s final season has been slightly disappointing…until last night’s (Tuesday, March 9, 2010 in the United States) Ben-centric episode #7, “Dr. Linus.”  The episode pulses from a lively, yet taught script and an original vision deftly directed by veteran actor/director Mario Van Peebles.

Whoever the genius was that hired Van Peebles – an established independent film director – to direct such a pivotal episode in the LOST mythology, they deserve much credit for helping to create what proved to be a series-defining episode. Van Peebles has made a few cheesy choices as an actor, but the majority of his work as a director is passionate, powerful and under-appreciated (including NEW JACK CITY, PANTHER and his pièce de résistance biopic about his father, BAADASSSSS!

The LOST creative team have produced a unique situation in network television: for the first time, fans are looking forward to the end of a series…as opposed to watching a great series continually get green lit until it becomes  mediocre, running out of new ideas and story themes until finally advertisers drop off and the series is cancelled.

With LOST’s planned series ending, longtime fans anticipate the wrap-up of plot points and conflicts introduced five and six years ago.  The writers continue to innovate, appropriately blowing up your standard serial drama expectations as they developed an entire new time line with season 6, further complicating the master story arch.

Now casual and devoted fans alike, don’t get discouraged.

LOST writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have already used the first 7 episodes of sesason 6 to pay off some of the island’s biggest mysteries:

• 1. The numbers – We now know where the origin of the numbers significance. Candidates from a master list of mortal heroes. Mortal warriors for the forces of righteousness, fallen and flawed as all humans.
• 2. The Smoke Monster – …is nature’s dark force. A force that also uses a genetic replica of John Locke’s body to walk the Earth island in human form.
• 3. Jacob – …God? Buddha? Jesus of suburbia? The Holy Ghost? Jacob has clearly come into focus as a force of nature. A force of positivity. A steward of the hero candidates.
• 4. Super Fanboy Easter Eggs – …continue to pay off. Minor characters like Rose, Leslie Artz and many, many others continue to return with crucial plot-forwarding screen time. Likewise, popular deceased characters like Boone Carlyle and Alex Rousseau have returned as part of the “flash sideways” time line. Wikipedia reveals – complete with credible sources – that nearly every major and minor character from the series will return for season 6 including Elizabeth Mitchell as fertility specialist Dr. Juliet Burke, Michelle Rodriguez as police officer Ana Lucia Cortez, Dominic Monaghan as rock star Charlie Pace, Jeremy Davies as deceased physicist Daniel Faraday, Rebecca Mader as anthropologist Charlotte Lewis,  Harold Perrineau as Michael Dawson Maggie Grace as Shannon Rutherford, Katey Sagal as Locke’s ex-girlfriend Helen Norwood and Cynthia Watros as Hurley’s short-lived love interest, Libby Smith.

Considering the season 5 cliffhanger wherin series hero Jack Sheppard (his last name is beginning to have added subtext) puts the gears in motion to blow up an atomic bomb and yield the dual timelines in season 6, Jack has been a reflective, passive protagonist throughout season 6…until episode 7.

Absorbing and internally deliberating the universal forces of darkness and light – forces beyond his control – Jack’s standoff with fate, as the lit stick of dynamite hisses, allows the audience to see that Jack’s inner battle has been resolved: his transformation into a man of faith is complete.  The prodigal hero even impresses ageless Others’ adviser Richard Albert with his show of faith in Jacob’s motives (at the crucial life-saving moment when Albert has lost his own faith).

Considering the show’s Western hemisphere production, it would be easy for the writer’s to make the good-versus-evil themes play out in a Judeo-Christian sub-textual framework. But show runners Cuse and Lindelof have managed to evade that pothole in which creative works like THE MATRIX and LORD OF THE RINGS unavoidably fell…an endorsement of monotheism by proxy. The promo photo tribute to “The Last Supper” might suggest otherwise, but LOST entire current season is more of a battle between good and evil as opposed to the Christian God and Devil.

Ben’s monologue at the end of act 2, prior to the final commercial break, pulses as a moving work of mannered acting, eliciting that same emotional push/pull that only an unspeakable car-crash combination of happiness and sadness can pronounce. That cold weather melancholy only a Superchunk song can elicit. Or a Nick Drake, Elliott Smith or Big Star song. Prosaic pop songs wherein crushing sadness is only alleviated because you (the listener) realize that there is at least one other person in the world (the songwriter) that feels the way you feel.

The monologue is punctuated by the unexpected response from Jacob’s mysterious guard, Ilana. Her character’s emotional response to Ben, that she’ll be willing to vouch for his soul, to give him another chance at redemption is one of the most original, pure storytelling devises that Lindelof and Cuse have created. Completely unexpected, the often tragic history that we’ve seen associated with Ben’s character arch makes the monologue and the entire episode payoff with a deep emotional punch unlike anything network television storytelling has ever encountered.

Road to recovery: the decrease in US job losses.

When I was a little kid, I thought the United States was the greatest country in the world. And in 1976, it very well may have been.

I remember singing Yankee Doodle Dandy in a chorus line at my private elementary school during our end of the year pageant. Being that it was the United States’ bi-centennial celebration, the feeling in the air was quite magnanimous and fantastic. Parades made their way through the Southern Florida streets. In Boca Raton, the Florida town where I spent my first 7 years, many of my schoolmates parents worked at IBM, as did my father, so there was a sense of financial security and middle-class stability as it was still possible to achieve the American Dream.

My father was a hard-working high school valedictorian who ran out of money while attending junior college, yet he was still able to secure good jobs at Lockheed Martin, then later at International Business Machines (IBM). I was proud of my dad when I was a little kid…and I didn’t even really know why. I think I was able to figure out just by watching popular culture that there were not a plethora of African American men working as systems analysts at IBM. Even as a young tyke, I knew my dad was special. Likewise, I quickly picked up that my mother was one of the most gifted high school English teachers in the country.

Now – all these years later – while I think about my country and my president…I feel more pride than I felt in 1976.

And I find it interesting that none of the news cycle pundits are questioning why Congress is voting down party lines – for every vote – for the first time in its history.

If you could put a microphone in the Republican’s caucus meetings, I’m convinced you’d hear: “The Nigger gets none of our votes…not a one…not for anything.”

I can’t wait for that racist, homophobic, sexist baby boomer generation to finally die off.

“The music business is a scornful, mirthless lover hellbent on breaking most musicians’ hearts,” said a very wise sage. Actually that’s not true, I just made that sentence up, but I think it’s more often true that not.

No talent pop stars with beautiful smiles often rise to the top of the mediocrity heap while some of the greatest recorded works by the most artful musicians never see the light of day. My friends and their former band Dynamite Hack still watch their greatest creative work collect dust as an unreleased album. Likewise, my old band Schatzi’s sophomore album Snow Is for Saving Hearts remains unreleased, tied up in legal limbo. (The film industry has it’s own version of this scenario – something called “development hell,” or turnaround purgatory – when a project or a great script can never get beyond developmental talks and negotiations.)

That jaded experience aside, Jan and Dean’s lost album Carnival of Sound is an interesting piece of music history that is finally seeing some sunlight thanks to Rhino Records’ Handmade division.

If you enjoy California surf music from the 1960s, you’ll enjoy this creative curiosity that Jan Berry spent 3 years recording after his unfortunate car accident on Dead Man’s Curve, ironically the very same stretch of road that his band  immortalized with their hit song of the same name years earlier.

I love the majority of art created during the fertile period between 1967-1969. And Jan and Dean’s lost tracks are no different. Poppy, whimsical and artfully mixed in mono, Carnival of Sound is a deserving legacy to two musician’s that caught a horrible break during the height of their career.

As distribution becomes more and more available to the masses, albums like Carnival of Sound will hopefully find the appreciative niche audiences that they deserve.

With Gilly – the little trouble-causing, Orphan Annie-resembling, minx – Wiig’s face becomes elastic, her voice and spacious timing are dastardly neurotic while her eyes bug right out of her head. You can tell that Wiig has fine-tuned her comic skills with more than 10,000 hours of rehearsal, improve and performance from the sheer intensity…she never breaks character (Jimmy Falon anyone?). With years of training as a member of The Groundlings, her focus and comic timing leave some of the other SNL cast members appearing amateurish and boring.

Digging up the best holiday related clips from season 1 to the present, the entire special was hilarious, but it was the Gilly character that forever sold me on Wiig’s mighty thespian powers.

The Gilly character and her childish desire to create anarchy while remaining mostly silent holds a mirror up to society. She becomes both light and dark, good and evil…and Wiig abandons her mastery of sarcasm with Gilly. Sadistic and adorable, Gilly is Wiig at her most brilliant…rolling the entirety of the dark chaos of the human condition into a character that barely speaks. It’s both creative and creepy…and I totally understand why they had Wiig host the Christmas clips show as Gilly.

I absolutely get it…and it’s genius. Look for Wiig to become SNL’s next break-out superstar.