Some of The Sterns’ biography reads like a Boston kid’s dream: Playing in a rock band that’s played a show at Fenway Park, sharing bills with the Meat Puppets and The English Beat, and a feature on one of the most popular video game franchises in years.
Line-up changes at one point threatened the success of the group, which solidified itself recently with original members Alex Stern and Emeen Zarookian adding drummer, Zak Kahn to the mix.
The trio is now riding high, a far cry from their humble beginnings, making the cover of Performer Magazine for August 2008, and just announcing their single “Supreme Girl,” will be featured on the upcoming Rock Band 2 video game. To add to those solid endorsements, The Sterns have earned respect from the music world, landing two nominations for Boston Music Awards.
Alex Stern recently gave us a few minutes to briefly answer the Stranded in Stereo Local Q & A.
Hailing from Boston makes us better than all those non-Boston bands because: I can conduct an entire rehearsal in my "joe from revere" voice and get laughs.
Name at least three bands that are still around and touring that you'd love to be on a bill with, and think it fits well: The Aggrolites, Morrissey and Squeeze.
Your favorite Boston venue to perform in is: Its a toss-up between Great Scott and The Middle East Downstairs.
Are there any genres that influence your music conceptually, rather than sonically? (In that you can't hear from simply listening to the music, but from getting into the structure or mathematics of the song-writing, etc.) REGGAE! REGGAE! REGGAE!
Your favorite local bar to hit up when not doing the whole band deal is: I try to never not be doing music, but, I love Deep Ellum!
It was about a year ago now that Dany Sloan sent me the link to the video for "Devil's A-Go-Go," the Blitzen Trapper jam that made me run out and buy their stellar Wild Mountain Nation. Because I had Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga sitting in the same stack, it kind of got overshadowed. This year, I make the vow that the second I get my copy of Furr that it will be the only thing I listen to for quite some time. This is just basing it off of the amazing title track which is, unlike the herky jerky motion of "A-Go-Go," a rather catchy acoustic camp fire singalong. Download it, put it on repeat and agree with me, would you?
Insert your best "What the fuck" right here I suppose, but, yes, I will now defend a Better Than Ezra album.
It's funny that I decided a few days ago to revisit this album for this column. When I was giving a preview to the best friend yesterday, I thought I couldn't of timed this post better. This week is 10 years exactly since the album was released. Sometimes, I have a good thing with timing and sometimes I don't. I'm happy this one worked out at least.
1998 was an interesting time for alternative rock. In the year prior, The Chemical Brothers came out of nowhere with Dig Your Own Hole and the smash singles "Setting Sun" and "Block Rockin' Beats". The question on the mind of every prominent musician and music fan was that of "Is this it? Is electronica the next big movement?" This paved the way for bands to rethink their rock and roll approach: The Smashing Pumpkins did it in June of 1998 with their dark opus, Adore, and in 1999 Blur would trade in their "Woo-ooh's!" for melancholy, malaise and keyboards and drum loops on 13. And in between these two releases, in August of 1998, Better Than Ezra emerged with a collection that no one could've seen coming. An album that was a critical landmark and a commercial flop, a fish out of water, gasping for its last moments of air. It was in 1998 that a Sunday night tune-in to Modern Rock Live, the syndicated new music show where Max Tolkoff interviewed bands with new album's who would sometimes play in the studio, would bring us to where we are now, to this tale. Max talked with the trio from N'awlins and it was the song "One More Murder" that just blew me away. I had my worn out copy of Deluxe, thanks to the alterna-hit "Good", and I also enjoyed the track "Rosalita", but nothing had moved me in their catalog like this song did. It's dark piano started it off: it sounded like it was going to be a trip-hop number until the drums kicked in. And there was no guitar, it was all keyboards, samples, programmed elements. Kevin Griffin sang of chalk line profiles, times spent in the slammer, all while speaking it in a gruff deep in the right channel of the mix.
There was no "Good" on this album; no "Desperately Wanting" to be found among the 14 tracks on an album subtitled A Series of Nocturnes. There would be songs that would hark back to their earlier rock-infused roots like "Pull", but you wouldn't know from the opening moments of the album. The first song, "Je Ne M'en Souviens Pas" let the listener know they were not getting a sequel to their first two albums. Starting off with drum loops, keys and samples would enter the fold before treated vocals would deliver a muffled line. Eventually, Griffin would start to ramble low in the mix, like any other man in BTE's beloved home of New Orleans. He kept talking while he started singing while that inital first line came back in. I'm sure most people turned this off right away, being confused by what in the hell was going on, but I was just floored.
And while at most times experimenting with the trip-hop and the electronica that was being dubbed the music of our futures, they did know how to step back for a minute and try to fuse both past and present for a future sound. The very minor hit "At The Stars" was a solid radio hit, as if they had to go back at the 11th hour and add that one in, but everything else found ways to incorporate what they were and what they wanted to be. The best examples would be that of the epic "Particle", with it's drum loop intro and programmed elements throughout that fought for their time in the six-minutes of the song with strings and guitars.
What brings it all together is the closing pair of tracks. There's the mini-suite "New Kind Of Low" - "a) Low" was 80 seconds of just loud rock guitars, fuzzy sludge bass and barked out lyrics, which then is met with samples firing off, signalling the transition in to "b) Coma". This part was a rollicking slow blues jam without BB King's guitar, just wurlitzers, keyboards and introspective lyrics. It showcased a fully realized idea of what this three men were trying to accomplish, throwing their names in to the rocktronica hat. And you think the album would there, but instead it goes in to "Waxing Or Waning?" It was a three-minute afterthought, a jazzy epilogue with 12-string guitars, muted horns and a near-waltz created by the bass drum and hi hat. I'm convinced there's no snare in the mix at all.
Die hard fans of this band easily cite this the best album in the band's catalog, and it's pretty obvious why. It's also an album that completes the trifecta of albums released in 1998 on Elektra by bands that got dropped soon thereafter (the other albums? Nada Surf's The Proximity Effect and Superdrag's Head Trip in Every Key. Duh.) Serene and experimental, it makes you wish they would've made another album like this, but they didn't. Like all great bands who experiment, they eventually denounce what they were trying to do as an artistic statement and go back to their old ways. Sometimes, maybe they should just stay true to what they wanted to be as opposed to going back to play the same dog and pony show that is comfortable.
Earlier this year, I totally really got in to Grizzly Bear. When I was in college I was all over Yellow House like the rest of us were in the fall of 2006, but it just really hit me this spring when I revisited the record after spending too much time with that Friend EP. More recently, thanks to their stellar performance at Lollapalooza, "Two Weeks" has been on repeat in my head and at my home. Not so much for the bouncy rhythm and Ed Droste's lyrics, but more for Daniel Rossen's backing vocals of "oh's" and additional occassional words.
So I then found out that before becoming a member of the ol' G-Bear, Rossen and college roommate Fred Nicolaus had a little band called Department of Eagles. I kept reading about them and their new album In Ear Park, now in my possession, I feel is the best transitional record from summer in to fall. It's dreamy and peaceful, splendid guitars filling up the mix overtop of interesting loops innerspersed with both men's contagious vocals. This is going to slowly become one of my favorite albums of the year, mark my word. Either slowly or super fast, only time will tell.
Their second album under the DoE moniker, 4AD will release the album on October 7th. I know Rossen is busy recording the next Grizzly Bear album, but maybe he can find a moment to play a few shows so I can catch them live (please please please please please.)
Download: "No One Does It Like You" [mp3] // [Buy Here]
With the Fritz out on vacation this week, I thought I would do my best to fill his shoes to come up with this week's newsletter. Odds are I will not do nearly as good a job as him being witty and all, but I am willing to give it a try.
Mac McCaughn's other band, Portastatic, will release a two-disc compilation of odds and sods on September 9th entitled Some Small History. The 44-song set includes covers, alternate versions and previously unreleased material. I'm just ecstatic there's a place where all can finally get his awesome rendition of Hot Chip's "And I Was A Boy From School". Merge is letting you stream the entire thing for a limited time right now, so get on that.
It wouldn't be right of me to take Fritz's place and not discuss his beloved Metallica. The band offered up a stream of their new single "The Day That Never Comes" on their MySpace page last week. The 8-minute track does indeed sound like the old-school Metallica of the 1980s that the San Francisco four-piece promised their new album, Death Magnetic, would harken back to. They successfully achieve this by rehashing the melodies of earlier songs "Fade To Black" and "One" in the same song. Good job, assholes.
Famed produer Jerry Finn passed away last week at the age of 39. Finn suffered a brain hemorrhage in July and was taken off life support earlier this month. Finn's family will announce plans in the near future for a scholarship in his honor. Finn produced many acclaimed records over the last 15 years, including Rancid's And Out Came The Wolves, Morrissey's You Are The Quarry and Blink-182's Enema of the State. The one album people keep neglecting to mention in obituaries is his tremendous production work on Superdrag's 1998 masterpiece, Head Trip In Every Key. His last work known was his production on the new Morrissey album, Years Of Refusal, which is due out next year.
Some Neil Young guy is going on tour for the umpteenth time this fall in the United States of America, and has drafted Death Cab For Cutie and Wilco to support him on the separate legs. You might remember Young doing this in the early 1990s, i.e. building his indie cred, by asking bands like Sonic Youth and R.E.M. to join him on the road.
If you live in the NYC area and have nothing to do tonight, might I suggest catching a one-off reunion of the original line-up of And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead at Santos' Party House. I guess it's not a reunion really, but just the original duo of current members Conrad Keely and Jason Reece. Either way, I'm sure it will be a pretty cool time and better than staying in and watching the U.S. Open.
You know, Mike Judge isn't just known for Beavis & Butt-Head and King Of The Hill and Office Space. He's also known for crafting some other pretty cool animated shorts. Along with some great pieces by other animators like Don Hertzfeldt and Bill Plympton, The Animation Show DVD set compiles some of their best works. One grand prize winner will win all three volumes of the collection, while two runner's up will win the recently release Volume 3.
Earlier this week, it was David Byrne and Brian Eno who gave us their first album in nearly three decades via the internet. And it was at 4AM east coast time was when the world was invited to the most private sector of Bloc Party land when they unleashed upon the world Intimacy, their third album.
The band announced on Monday that, surprise, our record is done and you can buy in this Thursday. The album won't be in stores until October 28th, but you can buy it digitally this instant. I won't lie, A Weekend In The City wasn't my favorite Bloc Party album, but the open drum and bass and buzzsaw guitars of "Ares" have me reeled in. I still can't get in to "Mercury" though. Even after seeing them play it before 50,000 or so people at Lollapalooza, Kele Okereke looping and manipulating his own vocals, the song .. wait, I already mentioned this in my Lollapalooza write-up.
It appears that the album's title comes from Okereke's brutally honest lyrics this time around, after going through a break up last year. Maybe we'll finally get an album as good as their landmark debut, Silent Alarm. I'm finding out right now as we speak.
Download Audio/Video Tracklisting
--
Also, make sure to Sign Up for our weekly newsletter, letting you know about what's going on with the blog and website, alongside news about upcoming SIS co-sponsored Rumbles.
--
See your MP3 up here and want me to take it down? Just want to write and say "Hi, you're an awesome blogger?" Feel free to reach me at info at strandedinstereo dot com
Some of The Sterns’ biography reads like a Boston kid’s dream: Playing in a rock band that’s played a show at Fenway Park, sharing bills with the Meat Puppets and The English Beat, and a feature on one of the most popular video game franchises in years.
