New Music 2016 - Part 27 - Tim Heidecker - In Glendale

I've been thinking about putting up another post that is a road-trip or rail-trip through music. It's an idea that I like and I enjoyed figuring-out the first one but then again it was pretty spontaneous. Ideas and the music to go with them I am not short of. There is no doubt at all about that. There are only three significant matters remaining undetermined; the starting point, the destination and the itinerary. I guess I need a little more time working on that project. It isn't something that I can't conjure up on demand and trying only makes the problem worse.

That neatly brings me to this. A project complete, except for its release to an expectant world, and a project more-or-less about a single place. Tim Heidecker is a comedian by trade and this is his first foray into "serious" music. That might sound alarm bells for many but in this case it shouldn't.
This is his semi-serious take on life, family and anything else (not all of it pleasant) in and around their home in California.

In Glendale - Tim Heidecker (Rado Records, 20 May 2016).

• In Glendale
• Cleaning Up The Dog Shit
• Work From Home
• Ghost In My Bed
• Good Looking Babies
• When The Cash Runs Out
• I Dare You To Watch Me Sleep
• Central Air
• I Saw Nicolas Cage
• Ocean's Too Cold

Rado Records is an imprint, under the Jagjaguwar label, curated by Jonathan Rado of Foxygen. Whatever the sound, and it is mostly indie rock here, music doesn't get much more independent-minded than this.
In a sense Tim Heidecker has a parallel in Courtney Barnett: they are contemplating similar conundrums and the resulting decisions but starting from quite different points of view.

Worth the risk?

I mentioned that I wanted to hear this a couple of months ago and finally, having read some negative reviews and then been unable to source it on vinyl at a sensible price for some time, it arrived yesterday morning. For once I was actually at home when the postman knocked and he asked me, very politely and in a slightly round-about way, what these apparently strange, square, flat, thin packages contained.
I told the truth - a vinyl LP.

Was this LP worth the wait?
Taking risks when buying music unheard is inevitable and not to do so is now unthinkable as far as I'm concerned. It is true that I've bought a few things I don't much care for but that can happen even when one has heard some tracks. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me - it is my only gambling tendency - and I'm winning far more often than losing. Surely most people don't expect to to hear a novel before reading it so why should music be any different?

Well, as I suspected, it is neither nu-miserable nor Black Mountain-lite. In The Future - Black Mountain (2008) is also one of my current 2008 favourites but Lightning Dust is more than likely to also be right up there with the best.
Nothing like the expansive sound of Black Mountain, this is really a late-night, early morning compsition. Keyboards and strings, including cello on several tracks, accompany the lyrics perfectly. Amber Webber wrote them and she sings them too, sometimes accompanied by Joshua Wells, and this is a very different proposition to Black Mountain. If you have 'In The Future' then the best guide is the track Night Walks (see lyrics) as that was written and sung by Webber.
I can't pick any favourite tracks yet and I suspect that it is one of those albums, released in this case by Jagjaguwar, on which I may never be able to do so. It is that good.

In The Future - Black Mountain

I've mentioned this before and now had this on vinyl for some weeks. While not everyone agrees with me it is fast becoming one of my favourites of 2008 so far.

The first time I heard it the opening guitar gambit instantly reminded me of a classic Rainbow song. Not, as far as I have yet been able to tell, any particular one but the issue of sounding somehow generic 1970s/1980s is something that other reviews I have read have also levelled against Black Mountain.
I can see where they are coming from, and there are plenty of other influences in there if one cares to mention them, but I think it is wonderful nevertheless. The other common accusation is that it is rather gloomy in tone and execution and I'd generally agree with that but rarely does it seem as apocalyptic as that by, to name an album by another Canadian band, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.
Night Walks is the final track on In The Future.

Night Walks

Night walks with me
And the moon leaves me just enough light to see
And my shadow my only company
And it moves just like me
And it walks just like me.

Help me to breathe.
I can only read what I see.
Be kind to me ‘cause the words come out carefully
And they break up easily
And I woke up in between.

Night walks with me
And the moon leaves me just enough light to see
And my shadow my only company
And it moves just like me
And it walks just like me.

Had Rainbow become folk-tinged, given to experimenting with acoustic instruments and also had a female co-vocalist, it is not quite impossible that they might have turned out a song like some of these here but that is only the half of it. After repeated listening it still does remind me of Rainbow however and it makes me want to dig out some, and therefore perhaps discover why, but mine was sadly all on long departed cassettes. I have no doubt that the CDs are out there and readily available - maybe the vinyl too that I should have bought that for pennies when I had the chance - but it is no secret that I have a soft spot both for folk and also the bombast of rock and that may matter more when it comes to my liking of In The Future.
More importantly, to tell the truth and despite or perhaps because of the mediocre reviews of it that I've read so far, I'm pretty keen to hear the eponymous album Lightning Dust recorded by Amber Webber and Joshua Wells. (Jagjaguwar CD/LP JAG112)

Deprived of the rest of Black Mountain - Steve McBean has his own side project Pink Mountaintops - this is even fitted by some in the category of nu-miserable. Truth-to-tell, and I can just imagine how I think it might sound, I just don't think so but I'm interested to see if I'm right and buying it completely unheard is a risk I'm now quite prepared to take.

To listen to in 2008 - Part 2

Too much pop, dance and nu-folk maybe?
I'm not too concerned about that, and can't tell you how good Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree is... I'm currently listening to it on vinyl. That said wouldn't it be sad if everything sounded this way? Yet another Canadian band ride to the rescue!

Black Mountain come from Vancouver and have released their second album, In The Future, on Jagjaguwar Records who last year gave us the Besnard Lakes' rather surprising second album The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse.

The two are not the same but when it comes to their heavy/progressive rock tendencies there is a point of comparison. In addition both bands continue the now common Canadian tradition of being a collective of musicians who also make use of male-female vocals: in the case of Black Mountain these are (mostly) provided by Steve McBean and Amber Webber and is allied, on some tracks, with a real folk sensitivity.

Black Mountain - In The Future.

In many ways it sounds considerably influenced by the music of the early 1970s but not remotely in a 'tribute band' sort of way; in fact the most derivative 1970s thing about this album is that Jagjaguwar have also made it available on 12"!