Jim White- "10 Miles to Go on a 9 Mile Road" Video (2001)

hmmm, this says it all for me, but I do want to thank everyone for your support. It does help...

~v

Neil Young- "Old Man" (1971) Live BBC Performance

What more can be said about the genius of Neil Young?

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter- Reckless Burning (2002) / Oh, My Girl (2004) MP3 & FLAC

"Pretty thing, I've got you, right where I used to be. We ride across this city, 
starting fires recklessly."

Jesse Sykes: "I met Phil Wandscher in 1998 in a dive bar back when Seattle still had dive bars (how I miss those times!). I think I knew instantly upon meeting him that my life would change forever- just a gut feeling I guess, but I was right!" At the time of this fortuitous meeting, Sykes had just seen both her music career and personal life take a dark turn, as Hominy, the band she had started with her then-husband Jim Sykes, quickly dissolved following the release of their eponymous debut album, and it wasn't long before their marriage suffered a similar fate. Wandscher was best known as one of the founding members of Whiskeytown, the brilliantly combustive Alt-Country band from Raleigh N.C. that also featured Ryan Adams, who, during a legendary 1997 meltdown at a show in Kansas City, fired the entire band, including Wandscher, telling the stunned crowd, "You've just saw the last fuckin' Whiskeytown show!" before proceeding to smash his guitar and storm off stage. Ousted from the band he had helped create, Wandscher, thoroughly disillusioned, drifted to Seattle and was working in a restaurant when he crossed paths with Jesse Sykes. Both nursing emotional wounds, a romance sparked immediately, but their musical partnership was something that evolved at a more measured pace. Sykes: "Phil was really reluctant to work with, well, his girlfriend [....] But it just kinda morphed anyway; it was inevitable. People will warn you, but I like working with someone you're in a relationship with. There's a greater level of intimacy and trust [....] and when you're sleeping with someone, it's actually a lot easier to say 'fuck you' or 'that's a shitty song.'" After initially gigging around Seattle as a duo, Sykes and Wandscher decided to assemble a full band, and, after doing so, quickly garnered enough critical praise for their languidly dark approach to psych-laced Americana that they were soon signed by indie label Devil in the Woods, allowing them to immediately set about recording their debut LP, Reckless Burning.

Jesse Sykes

 Sykes: "I like to refer to that time of my life as 'the reckless burning years.' It was less about making that record than it was learning how to just 'be.' Two estranged people going into lonely dark places- beautiful places. All we had was each other. We didn't even talk that much but somehow we just knew each other's story. That record was our story." Powerfully conveying the bitter pain and foggy, desolate spaces of emotional loss, Reckless Burning is clearly indebted to certain aspects of traditional Appalachian music, but the laconic darkness of Wandscher's noirish guitar-work and Sykes' bewitchingly distinctive alto subtly and quietly push the music into dreamy regions more commonly associated with psych-rock. Nowhere is this more evident than on the stunningly mournful title track, a song often compared to The Cowboy Junkies, but in truth, walks fifty paces further into unmitigated darkness than anything the Timmons siblings would be capable of committing to tape (okay, maybe with the exception of "Sweet Jane"). And while the song charts a slow descent into the numbness of emotional resignation, conveyed unforgettably through the lyrics and Sykes' world-weary vocals, it ends where such pain always ends, in abject ambiguity, as an equally dreamy rendition of "Goodnight Irene" brings "Reckless Burning" to its conclusion. Another standout track, "Don't Let Me Go," uses a slightly brighter country-influenced arrangement to counter-balance the song's dark emotional subject matter, weaving a subtle sense of irony into the song's overall tone. Sykes: "When I sat down and started playing some of the original songs that later became Reckless Burning, it just felt like he [Wandscher] was building the house that the songs lived in [....] He gave them the visual, cinematic aspect that they needed. He would create these little vignettes within the song- that other character answering back to my vocals [....] It's almost like I never had to articulate my vision to him; it became intact and fully realized as soon as he started playing on the songs. We're just hard wired into the same muse." As in the dream-state itself, Reckless Burning and its equally gorgeous follow-up, Oh, My Girl, take familiar elements and by re-arranging and re-imagining them, create something uncannily meaningful, a sound that charts the darkest interstices of the human heart while managing to feel both timeless and new.

Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter- "Hushed by Devotion" / "Come to Mary" / "Your Own Kind" / "Wooden Roses" (2011) Live at KEXP- Full Performance

An amazing full performance from one of my favorite bands. A Jesse Sykes post is coming up next...

Paisley Underground Series #26: The Long Ryders- Native Sons (1984) / 10-5-60 (1983) MP3 & FLAC

"Well my daddy rode the train to take him to the factory where he slaved eatin' shit
to save my mama and me."

While Uncle Tupelo is commonly credited with spearheading the rise of the Alt-Country movement (referred to in some quarters as "No Depression") that flourished throughout the nineties, its true origins can be traced back to a number of Los Angeles-based cow-punk bands that inhabited the margins of the Paisley Underground scene during the early eighties. Bands such as Tex and The Horseheads, Blood on the Saddle, The Beat Farmers, Rank and File and many others helped pioneer the unique fusion of Country music and Punk that would profoundly inform bands like Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Whiskeytown a decade later; however, no cow-punk band was more influential or as talented as The Long Ryders who integrated influences such as Gram Parsons, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield into a harder-edged Punk-tinged sound. The seeds for what eventually became The Long Ryders were sown in an uber-obscure and militantly retro Los Angeles garage-psych band called The Unclaimed, which Sid Griffin had joined in 1978 after tiring of the then-nascent Punk scene. However, Griffin soon felt trapped by the band's unwillingness to broaden their mid-sixties aesthetic and consequently left in late 1981 to form the nucleus of what would quickly evolve into The Long Ryders, which early on included Steve Wynn who soon left to form The Dream Syndicate. Fatefully, the band's formation coincided with the beginnings of the Los Angeles-based pysch-rock revival that eventually (and quite reductively) came to be known as the Paisley Underground, a scene that actually featured an eclectic mix of bands that were linked together more through strong friendships and an ethos of mutual support than any sense of a shared musical approach.

The Long Ryders in paisley period gear

Sid Griffin: "There was tremendous sharing in those days. At first everyone was on equal footing and then some bands became rather possessive and a bit more private but the Long Ryders were always looking at things from a socialist perspective. People shared amps, guitars, worked for other bands [...] Steve Wynn put out the early Green on Red album, I worked doing merch for several bands, Matt Piucci of Rain Parade became a kinda guitar roadie if you needed help like that and the Bangles sang back up on a lot of other people's records. Many of the bills of the day were three of these bands all at once. Perhaps Bangles, Dream Syndicate, Long Ryders, something like that." The early days of The Long Ryders featured several lineup changes, but their debut EP, 10-5-60, produced by former Sparks guitarist Earl Mankey, established the band as peerless exponents of the kind of country-infused Jangle-Pop The Byrds were doing in their post-Sweetheart of the Rodeo incarnation. Starting with the stellar Griffin-penned jangle rave-up "Join My Gang," a song that might actually be better than a good percentage of the material many claim it to be emulating, and also featuring the raucous title track, a Garage-Rock holdover from Griffin's days in The Unclaimed, 10-5-60 finds the band on the precipice of greatness.

Following the release of 10-5-60, the band's bass player, Des Brewer, jumped ship to resume his career as a longshoreman, which apparently appealed to him more than touring; as a result, Tom Stevens, who at the time was working at a record store, joined The Long Ryders, thus ushering in the band's classic line-up. Having recently signed to Frontier Records, the band entered the studio with producer Henry Lewy whose résumé included the first two Flying Burrito Brothers LPs, and the result, their first full LP, Native Sons, represents a step away from the occasionally literalistic approach of 10-5-60 and step towards something approximating what Gram Parsons once described as Cosmic American Music. Tom Stevens: "From the start, The Long Ryders were all about hybrids of pure American styles of music, as mostly defined by 60s bands, both rock and country. That all distilled through skilled songwriting into more of the classic style that you hear on Native Sons [....] I think at the time The Long Ryders were at the very height of their songwriting powers, and ability to naturally hybrid cool styles into a single form." From the opening track, "Final Wild Son," a snarling paisley update of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," to "Wreck of the 809," a psych-drenched version of R.E.M.-style Jangle-Pop, to the brilliant single, "I Had a Dream," a song that manages to stand shoulder to shoulder with the band's formidable influences (Griffin's vocals can't help but recall Gene Clark) and to lay out a sonic blueprint that would keep Jeff Tweedy busy for the better part of a decade, Native Sons stands as The Long Ryders' masterpiece, as their next album and major-label debut, State of Our Union, despite containing a number of stellar songs, would suffer a bit by comparison due to its overly-polished production. Drummer Greg Sowders: "we wanted to control our own art and it was just a very do-it-yourself attitude that we learned from the punks. But ultimately we thought punk rock in L.A.- I do kind of exclude X because they were very musical- but a lot of them really sucked [....] But that do-it-yourself attitude and the "we want to control everything ourselves and deal directly with the fans"- that's what we learned from the punks. Plus, we liked to play our songs kinda fast."

The Long Ryders- "I Had a Dream" Video (1984)

An absolutely scorching piece of Byrds-meet-Punk brilliance. Incidentally, this video (The Long Ryders' first by the way) was filmed in my hometown.

Paisley Underground Series, #22: The Dream Syndicate- Medicine Show (1984) / This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album...Live! (1984) MP3 & FLAC

"I got some John Coltrane on the stereo baby, make it feel all right. I got some fine wine in the freezer mama, I know what you like."

The Dream Syndicate's debut LP, The Days of Wine and Roses, is justly considered to be one of the best neo-psych albums released during the eighties, a dark, feedback-drenched love letter to The Velvet Underground and Television that quickly catapulted the band into the forefront of the emerging L.A. Paisley Underground scene only nine short months after they had come together in Davis, CA. As lead vocalist and guitarist Steve Wynn recalls, "It was an overnight thing. There was no dues paying. It was very weird and it screwed us up in some ways." One negative consequence of producing a masterpiece their first time out is that the band's later work has tended to languish in the long shadow of their formidable precursor. In the aftermath of their early brush with success, change settled in on The Dream Syndicate. First, their bassist and sometime vocalist Kendra Smith left to join boyfriend and ex-Rain Parade guitarist David Roback to work on his Rainy Day  project (she was replaced by former Al Green bassist David Provost). In addition, the band was signed by a major label, A&M Records, and thereafter quickly set to work, with former Blue Oyster Cult, Dictators, and Clash producer Sandy Pearlman, on what would become their most divisive and misunderstood record, Medicine Show. This album has tended to garner charges of being a major label sellout, and while it is certainly more polished than the band's debut (which is to be expected), it is anything but a play for mainstream success (unlike fellow Paisley Underground figureheads The Bangles). Rather, Medicine Show captures a young band finding their way as mature songwriters. Steve Wynn: "I'd written a lot of songs before Wine and Roses, but the storytelling, the larger scale, taking a frozen moment in time- it all started on this record." The band was also dealing with their meteoric rise from feeling fortunate if they got third billing at the L.A.-area clubs they were playing to suddenly being the headliner: "Defiance, fear, apprehension- they were all happening to us by then, and a lot of that came out on the record. It's in the songs, in the sound." By all reports, Pearlman drove the band hard, insisting on take after take until the performances reached a raw state of emotional honesty, an approach that served Wynn's dark, sometimes violent lyrical content well. The album's terrific opener, "Still Holding on to You," which has a faintly similar vibe to the debut album's "Tell Me When It's Over," sets the tone for the entire album with its tale of inconsolable loss and emotional desperation. While the band is still conjuring the ghosts of The Velvets here, there is a new-found confidence and a more open sound that lends the song a rootsy feel reminiscent of Neil Young. Medicine Show concludes with two epics: "John Coltrane Stereo Blues" and the stunning "Merrittville," which Wynn has described as "the Book of Job in eight minutes." The latter sounds something like The Church jamming with Crazy Horse, and is a heady reminder of just how misunderstood and criminally underrated this album is. Steve Wynn: "Karl [Precoda] wanted to make a big, panoramic rock record to justify our move to a major label and the plethora of attention we had received in the mere nine months that had passed since the release of The Days of Wine and Roses. I wanted to make a 'beautiful loser,' button-pushing, over-the-top emotional catharsis in the tradition of most of my all-time favorite records (i.e. Big Star 3rd, Tonight's the Night, Plastic Ono Band, etc.). We both got our way- and in ways that neither of us could have predicted. I think it was this improbable collision of desires and personality that gives Medicine Show its character."

1r0n & Win3- The Cr33k Dr@nk the Cr@dle (2002) / The Se@ & the Rhythm EP (2003) MP3 & FLAC

"Love is a scene I render when you catch me wide awake. Love's a dream you enter though I shake and shake and shake you."

Until a homemade tape made its way into the hands of Sup Pop co-owner Jonathan Poneman (with an assist from the editor of Portland-area art mag Yeti, who had previously included an Iron and Wine song on a Yeti compilation CD), Sam Beam was the perfect embodiment of the "bedroom artist": working as a Miami-area Professor of  Film & Cinematography by day, by night writing hauntingly beautiful folk songs as equally grounded in the Delta-Blues as they were Nick Drake. He had been writing songs for the better part of a decade when a friend lent him a four-track recorder, and it was from these homemade demos that Beam's Sub Pop debut, released under the moniker Iron and Wine, was culled. While it's tempting to compare The Creek Drank the Cradle with other contemporary, feathery-voiced, folk-based singer-songwriters (there is a seemingly endless supply of them out there), Beam's debut sounds unique, not only due to the meticulously constructed yet lo-fi pedigree of the songs, the way the album as a whole reaches back to influences that pre-date folk music's 1960s-era heyday in addition to displaying an affinity with idiosyncratic Tahoma artists such as John Fahey and Robbie Basho, but also lyrically, as his use of imagery and symbolism, especially relating to animals, lends the album a singular and affective emotional tenor. On the loping opening track, "Lion's Mane," Beam's hushed, lullaby-esque vocal delivery provides perfect accompaniment to the gentle, woody-sounding acoustic guitar arpeggios and slide guitar accents that dominate the song's minimalist arrangement. Lyrically, Beam tends toward impressionistic images of love's allusiveness, perhaps suggesting, with lines such as, "Love's like a tired symphony to hum when you're awake," that is is inevitably so. Yet, as is the case with many of his songs, an animal symbol, in this case, a lion's mane, is used to interject a particularly ambivalent sense of hope into the narrative. Beam's Delta-Blues influence steps forth loud and clear on Southern Gothic tales such as "The Rooster Moans"; with its plucked banjo and slide guitar, it taps into the creaky mystique of an old 78, which serves as the perfect backdrop to its narrative of a young man's journey toward perdition. Another aspect that sets The Creek Drank the Cradle apart is Beam's astonishingly effective use of over-dubbed vocal harmonies. For example, on the achingly dark "Upward Over the Mountain," he over-dubs additional vocal tracks sung at a higher pitch but buried deeply in the mix; the ghostly effect that results is largely responsible for the song's considerable emotional impact. On his follow-up album, Our Endless Numbered Days, Beam, now with a professional recording studio at his disposal, left behind the charming austerity of his debut, and while the more polished results are often equally impressive, Beam's early songs possess a hazy timelessness that no studio could hope to replicate.

Mark Lanegan- "Ugly Sunday" Video (1989)

Any other Mark Lanegan or Screaming Trees fans out there?

Paisley Underground Series, #17: True West- Hollywood Holiday (1983) / Drifters (1984) MP3 & FLAC

"The rain it's fast and hard, pooling like quicksilver on the ground, ran for the shelter of a nearby door, and I watched the drops come down."

Along with bands such as The Dream Syndicate, Game Theory, and Thin White Rope, True West originally hailed from the small but very influential music scene that thrived in the college town of Davis, CA. during the late seventies and early eighties, and like those other bands, they ended up gravitating to the Paisley Underground scene based in L.A. in order to find a wider audience and a record deal. True West's sound was a fertile blend of psych-tinged roots-rock, Jangle-Pop, and a touch of the dark, spidery dual-guitar interplay of Television, a combination of influences that made them quite unique among the Paisley crowd. After a brilliant self-released EP (which would eventually be grouped with additional tracks and released as the even more brilliant Hollywood Holiday), the band was invited by EMI to record some demos with Tom Verlaine; however, the sessions didn't go well, and EMI passed on them. By the time True West finally released their first proper LP, the slightly less brilliant but still quite enjoyable Drifters, they were beginning to undergo personnel changes that would eventually rob the band of much of their momentum. Though a third album appeared a few years later, True West were never able to hit the significant heights of their earliest recordings again. Because these recordings remained out of print for more than twenty years, Hollywood Holiday is very much one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Paisley scene. While its production sounds a bit thin in places, the austerity serves True West's aesthetic well, as their later recordings tended to polish the dark, almost Post-Punk grime out of their sound, thus making them seem, at times, like just another Jangle-Pop band. A perfect example of what made True West so distinctive is their cover of "Lucifer Sam" from Pink Floyd's psychedelic masterpiece, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which manages to capture both the twisted whimsey of the original and to inject it with a little early-eighties paranoia courtesy of lead vocalist Gavin Blair, whose voice possesses none of the child-like naivete of Syd Barrett's. Coupled with the intertwining guitars of Russ Tolman and Richard McGrath, the song traverses new-found depths of acid-drenched darkness. "And Then the Rain," True West's signature song and easily one of the best things to come out of the Paisley scene, is a tense piece of Jangle-Pop melancholia that wallows beautifully in its doom-filled verses. My personal True West favorite is "Look Around," the lead track on Drifters, which features a killer Power-Pop-style hook and some memorable, inspired vocals from Blair. Although the phrase "lost classic" is used far too often by music reviewers, Hollywood Holiday and Drifters exemplify this notion. Eerily similar to the fate of Big Star ten years earlier, True West was as talented as any neo-psych band of the era, but commercial success would prove frustratingly elusive and, as is so often the case, an early demise soon followed.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce- Wildweed (1985) MP3 & FLAC

"With your mind on fire and raving the end, you open the gates and welcome the men."

One look at the cover of Jeffrey Lee Pierce's solo debut--in which he is seen standing casually, maybe even reflectively, in a sparsely populated desert-scape with a shotgun propped on his shoulder--and the subject matter of the songs comprising the album becomes undeniably evident: tales of self-destruction and murder. While anyone familiar with Pierce's incomparable work with his influential noir-punk band The Gun Club will know that these topics are nothing new for him, what is distinctive about Wildweed is the significantly more polished (perhaps too polished) sound of the album and its emphasis on alt-pop structures over his usual Blues-derived fare. Recorded in London, Wildweed  is, among other things, a great place to hear some of Pierce's Television-inspired guitar work and some of his most accomplished songs. Wildweed begins with "Love and Desperation," a strange, almost Ska-like concoction, which features some great tongue-in-cheek vocals from Pierce and a guitar solo dripping with histrionics. This is followed by "Sex Killer," one of the poppier songs on the album, and though it suffers from over-produced eighties-style percussion, Pierce's grimy vocals ultimately take the song over. One of Wildweed's absolute gems is "Hey Juana," which features lyrics that mention Nick Cave and a catchy walking bass line that keeps the song moving at a torrid pace. While not as consistently great as the better Gun Club albums, Wildweed is, nevertheless, a worthy representation of Pierce's singular talents.

Paisley Underground Series, #12: The Gun Club- Fire of Love (1981) MP3 & FLAC

"Gonna get me religion. Gonna join the Baptist church. Gonna be a Baptist preacher, 
so I don't have to work."

While The Gun Club weren't the only band effectively mining the strange but fertile intersection between Punk and the American country-blues tradition (The Birthday Party are an obvious parallel here), no one was doing it with quite as much raw immediacy (and for that matter, authenticity) as Jeffrey Lee Pierce and co. Pierce's formative years were spent in the city of El Monte in Southern California, and as a teenager, he became immersed in the underground Punk scene that was burgeoning in and around L.A. during the late seventies. One characteristic that differentiated this scene from other Punk scenes at the time was the integration of roots music into the Punk aesthetic by bands such as The Blasters, X, and The Flesh Eaters. What set The Gun Club apart from their contemporaries was Pierce's overriding interest in the Delta-Blues, which provided him with a wealth of dark themes and imagery with which to construct his "fire & brimstone" tales of sex, excess, and death. Given an appropriately bare-bones production by Chris D. (of The Flesh Eaters), The Gun Club's debut, Fire of Love is a heady concoction of Swampy Blues, Country-Goth, Rockabilly, and Punk. Pierce's singular voice, equals parts cow-punk twang and hardcore rant, lends emotional weight to these howling testimonials and wailing confessionals, simultaneously grounding these songs in well-worn traditions and recasting them in radically new contexts. An obvious example of this is the cover of Robert Johnson's "Preaching the Blues," which, while thoroughly re-imagining this apocalyptic Delta-Blues chestnut as a psycho-billy epic, manages to do justice to the creepy fatalism of the original. One of Pierce's most brilliant Country-Punk amalgamations is "She's Like Heroin to Me," which features some wonderfully dark electric slide-guitar work from Ward Dotson, relentless drumming from Terry Graham, and one of Pierce's most manic vocal performances. While legends of the L.A. underground, The Gun Club were not technically affiliated with The Paisley Underground scene; however, it is hard to overestimate the influence Fire of Love had on many of the roots-oriented Paisley bands such as Blood on the Saddle, True West, The Long Ryders and Green on Red.

Paisley Underground Series, #11: Green on Red- Gravity Talks (1983) MP3 & FLAC

"I've crawled around caves and books; I've seen the blue parade."

With roots in the Tucson neo-psych scene of the late seventies and early eighties (the same milieu that produced Howie Gelb's Giant Sand), Green on Red left for the more fertile underground musical pastures of L.A., relocating there in 1981, and, so the story goes, playing an instrumental role in solidifying The Paisley Underground scene by holding weekly barbecues at their Hollywood apartment, which were regularly attended by members of bands such as The Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade. As Steve Wynn (of The Dream Syndicate) recalls, "Every Sunday, we’d get together for a barbecue, bring tons of alcohol and whatever drugs—lots of burgers and chicken—and we’d just sit around, play guitar, and talk. That’s how the friendships happened, not in nightclubs or recording studios." Gravity Talks, the band's first long player after releasing two EPs, features the early line-up before the arrival of guitarist Chuck Prophet and with him, a much more overtly country/roots-based sound. This is not to say that Gravity Talks is a straight up neo-psyche record because signs of Green on Red's roots music origins are everywhere, but Chris Cacavas' Manzarek-style contributions on electric organ lend the album its distinctive (and quite memorable) psychedelic character. Admittedly, Dan Stuart's whiney country-tinged vocals can be an acquired taste, but juxtaposed to the album's psychedelic overtones, they give the songs some Garage-Rock authenticity. Many of the songs on Gravity Talks meditate on death and the irretrievable loss of childhood. For example, on "Blue Parade," which features some lovely, haunting organ-work from Cacavas, Stuart, in one of his best vocal performances, sings about loss, ranging from a dead dog's unplanned exhumation to finding a parent dead in a bedroom. The title track, a catchy garage-rocker with an irresistible Doors-style electric organ hook, features Stuart at his snotty, Jagger-esque best. Green on Red's later more roots-oriented albums, such as Gas Food Lodging, are usually cited as their best work, but Gravity Talks, coming as it does midway between the band's overtly psychedelic and roots-rock phases, catches the band at their creative peak, and is a true classic of The Paisley Underground.

Paisley Underground Series, #9: Thin White Rope- Sack Full of Silver (1990) MP3 & FLAC

"There comes a time when everyone's plans fall like a dog from a truckbed grandstand."

While The Paisley Underground is most often described as an off-shoot of the burgeoning L.A.-based underground music scene of the 1980s, in reality, it included bands hailing from both coasts and many stops in between who were involved in their own local iterations of Psychedelic revivalism. For example, Thin White Rope emerged out of a thriving neo-psych scene in Davis, California, and quickly became fixtures in the various L.A.-area clubs that catered to the Paisley bands. While their earlier albums such as Exploring the Axis and Moonhead offered a distinctive brand of dark Psychedelia mixed with a bit of intense Post-Punk spike, on Sack Full of Silver, Thin White Rope began to foreground the Americana-based elements that had always been lurking in the back alleys of their sound. For those unfamiliar with the work of this band, the first thing that is likely to stand out is Guy Kyser's distinctive vocals, which sound something like Tom Waits paying tribute to Roger McGuinn. Sack Full of Silver is full of under-appreciated gems, such as "Hidden Lands," one of the most majestic songs Thin White Rope ever recorded; it sounds as if it could be a long lost masterpiece of Gene Clark and features some great guitar-work and percussion. Perhaps the album's highlight is the off-kilter psyche-countrification of Can's "Yoo Doo Right." By reducing the original's twenty minute length to an intense and wild six minutes, Thin White Rope completely reinvents the song, and in doing so, turns in an absolutely brilliant performance. While Sack Full of Silver is often overshadowed by their earlier, more explicitly neo-psyche work, the album is easily one of the best attempts at integrating roots-rock and Psychedelia to emanate from the Paisley scene.

Alex Chilton- 1970 (1996) MP3 & FLAC

"Travel the brand new highway. Doin' things finally my way."

Alex Chilton's early taste of commercial success during his stint as the voice of late-sixties A.M. radio favorites The Box Tops also exposed him to the more exploitative side of the music business, which, in many ways, was the catalyst for the unconventional career path he would wander down for the remainder of his life. After quitting The Box Tops in 1969 in order to gain more artistic control of his work, Chilton returned home to Memphis where he participated in a few recording sessions at Ardent Studios, ostensibly to put together a solo album. The fruit of these sessions was not deemed worthy of release; as a result, Chilton fled to New York City in an abortive attempt to make a name for himself as a troubadour before returning to Memphis and forming Big Star with Chris Bell. These unreleased Ardent solo sessions are gathered on 1970, and though not nearly as essential as Chilton's work with Big Star, the album does offer an interesting glimpse into his post-Box Tops artistic evolution. Many have suggested that Chilton's particular genius was at its best when working with collaborators who often functioned as a form of quality control for Chilton; thus, his solo ventures are notoriously uneven in terms of quality from song-to-song, and the sessions comprising 1970 are no exception. However, the album is not without a number of gems. Chief among these are the poppier tunes, which anticipate Chilton's work with Big Star. For example, "The EMI Song (Smile for Me)" is a beautifully recorded song with Chilton eschewing the gruff vocal style of his Box Top days for a softer, more introspective vocal performance, while featuring some of the distinctive characteristics that would come to define Big Star's trademark sound. On "The Happy Song," a countrified re-imagining of a Box Tops song, Chilton does his best Roger McGuinn imitation, while the studio band seems to channel The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the results are nothing short of lovely. While 1970 contains its share of unfocused throwaways (what Chilton solo album doesn't?), it also documents the early stages of Chilton's transformation from teen idol to artistic iconoclast.

The Flying Burrito Brothers- "Christine's Tune" (1969)

The holy grail of country-psych...

Paisley Underground Series, #3: The Long Ryders- State of Our Union (1985) MP3 & FLAC

"I was thinking about the late Tim Hardin (looking for Lewis and Clark)."

Integrating country music and psychedelia was nothing new in the early eighties; after all, the late sixties bore witness to the Gram-era Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Country Joe & The Fish to name but a few, and fifteen years later, the Paisley Underground scene followed suit in equally fine fashion. While there were a lot of bands attempting to resurrect the ghost of Gram Parsons, none came closer than The Long Ryders whose mix of cowpunk, country, Jangle-Pop, and Psychedelia set the stage in every conceivable way for the "No Depression" movement of the nineties. State of Our Union was the band's second full-length and first major label release. While there is a palpable production sheen cast over the proceedings, it ultimately lends this brilliant set of songs a certain punchiness that serves the music well. The album kicks off with a stone-cold classic in "Looking for Lewis and Clark," a powerful political anthem that sets out to punch a few holes in Reagan's "morning in America" myth. Another standout is "Here Comes That Train Again," a gorgeously spacious piece of Jangle-Pop that virtually embodies Gram Parson's vision of cosmic American cowboy music. State of Our Union is one of the most beautiful and enduring albums to emerge from the Paisley Underground scene as well as one of the most eloquently progressive albums of the eighties. Not to be missed.

FL33t Foxes- H3lplessness Blu3s (2011) MP3 & FLAC

"I was raised up believing I was somehow unique, like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes."

While a cursory listen to the Fleet Foxes' long-awaited and much-delayed follow-up to their brilliant debut album suggests that not much has changed in terms of the band's sonic approach, those who dig beneath the ornate surface of Helplessness Blues will discover a journey into darker, often existential, territory. With Phil Ek once again manning the production booth, Fleet Foxes inhabit an even more expansive reverb-drenched soundscape than before, lending both a bottomless and timeless feel to their meticulously constructed baroque-folk compositions. Whereas their debut album tended to be a bit abstract lyrically (which put a lot of responsibility on the music itself to convey the album's emotional power), Helplessness Blues finds Robin Pecknold venturing into singer-songwriter territory; for example, in "Blue-Spotted Tail," Pecknold ponders humankind's greatest yet utterly unanswerable question: "Why in the night sky are the lights on?"  On "Helplessness Blues," one of the most powerful songs the Fleet Foxes have yet recorded, a similarly reflective existential theme emerges, as Pecknold peels away the illusions we cling to in order to give a vestige of form to our lives in the face of inconceivable randomness: "If I know only one thing, it's that everything I see of the world outside is so inconceivable, often I barely can speak."  While Helplessness Blues does depart occasionally from the soaring harmonies that have become the band's trademark (there are several tracks with Pecknold playing lone folk troubadour), overall, their sophomore album manages to improve on one of the best debut albums in recent memory. Go out and support this band.

FL33t Foxes- S/T EP (2006) MP3 & FLAC

"Beneath the icicle tusk, you and me among the flattering dusk."

Two years before the release of their debut LP for Sub-Pop, Fleet Foxes issued an eponymous self-released EP, which was only distributed in the Seattle area. Produced by Seattle music scene veteran Phil Ek, the sound of Fleet Foxes will come as a surprise to those who have only heard their more recent work. While Robin Pecknold's vocals only occasionally flash with the brilliance that marks the later Sub-Pop recordings, the overall sound seems a little more rough-hewn and Jazz inflected. One of the obvious highlights is "Icicle Tusk," which is the only song that attempts the kind of vocal harmonizing that would soon become their trademark. However, the true gem here is "Anyone Who's Anyone" with its spaghetti-western guitar lick and charging energy; it is a worthy precursor to what came next.

FL33t Foxes- Sun Gi@nt EP (2008) / S/T (2008) MP3 & FLAC

"Penniless and tired with your hair grown long, I was looking at you there, and your face looked wrong."

Art is often, if not always, some form of bricolage, a tapestry woven using various and sundry materials that are collectively transformed into something new. I mention this because Fleet Foxes epitomize the artistic alchemy that can occur when familiar things are taken up and re-contextualized. An obvious contemporary touchstone for this band's sound would be My Morning Jacket, and while vocally, Robin Pecknold and Jim James wander through similar ornately desolate canyons of reverb (though James has been known to take these excursions to extremes), these bands pursue very different muses. What sets Fleet Foxes apart from the Indie pack is the timelessness of their sound and the often stunning vocal harmonies that can't help but recall, in a slightly refracted way, the early albums of Crosby, Stills & Nash. A perfect example of this is "Mykonos" from the Sun Giant EP; with its vaguely Hellenic feel coupled with Pecknold's backwoods vocal delivery and a seemingly looped acoustic guitar arpeggio, the song is already quite memorable in a quirky way, but once the bridge comes around with its transcendent vocal harmonies and classic rock flourishes, it simply sounds universal. Likewise, on "White Winter Hymnal" from the debut LP, Fleet Foxes seamlessly sew together elements of the Appalachian and British folk traditions, which, when punctuated with their wide-eyed vocal harmonies, creates something that sounds as if it could have been written any time within the past 150 years. Forget the hype and its inevitable backlash; this is simply gorgeous music created by some extremely gifted young musicians who have tapped into something both bittersweetly familiar and darkly beautiful.