SASQUATCH! Music: Drive-By Truckers - The Righteous Path

[WATCH THE VIDEO]

A real life alt-country band. The Drive-By Truckers have been touring for12 years now, based out of the deep south. Their first live album was called Alabama Ass Whuppin'.

I saw their show at the All Good Music Festival a couple of years ago, the centerpiece of the performance was a bottle of Jack they passed all the way around the band in-between and sometimes during each song.

Early influences are said to be Sam Phillips, John Henry and of course Lynyrd Skynyrd; traces of The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and Neil Young can be heard on the newer stuff.

Mostly Midwestern tour and more songs are at myspace.

SASQUATCH! Music: Portugal. The Man - The Sun

I have to be honest, I picked this one for the video, which is the first time I've felt compelled to do such a thing. The music is pretty good, mostly indie rock/pop with a whole lota high and layered vocals.

Portugal. The Man is based out of the Northwest, however most of the current and former members are from Alaska. There have been attempts to explain the band name, which is awkward because of the period in the middle, but they seem to abstract too repeat here.

They've released six full albums since the first one in 2006, the most recent being American Ghetto, which the Post reviewed here.

A student newspaper recently did an interview with the band, and you can find their national tour schedule on myspace.

SASQUATCH! Music: Phantogram - Mouthful of Diamonds

Upstate New York's own, named after an optical illusion in which you can make a 2-d object look three dimensional; perhaps (guessing here) some kind of comment on the fact that the duo synthetically fill out a pretty full sound with just two members. They just finished a week's worth of show at SXSW. "Local" website -ist chain the Austinist named them one of the 5 bands you have to see:

Their psychedelic synth pop has earned them opening spots with bands like Minus The Bear, Zero 7, Ra Ra Riot, Yeasayer, Brazilian Girls and The Slip. In 2009, they signed to Barsuk, and their latest release, Eyelid Movies, is a pop gem...

The mostly West and Midwest tour dates are at their myspace page.

The Gorge, The Lesser-Known View

SASQUATCH! Music: Freelance Whales - Generator ^ First Floor

My first reaction to this band after sampling on LaLa was that they sound too synthetic. But after seeing this subway clip, they actually seem to be organically making the sounds and not just using made-up midi voices. The harmonies are especially interesting when live.

This is the first band I’ve looked up that doesn’t have a wiki page, which speaks to their status I guess. However they were bioed as a “band to watch” by Steriogum last fall:

[W]e sorta figured this band would fall squarely into the prevailing washed out/hypnagogic fuzzbucket hazed-pop thing before having heard a note. After seeing ‘em at a loft party and spending some time with their self-released debut, it’s really nice to hear that they don’t fall there at all.

Reviews talk in absolutes in order to be interesting, so I won’t blame them, but I'm not sure "they don't fall there at all" is really accurate.

So while they do still capture that now-falling Sufjan Stevens sound, it’s mostly because of recording style. If they didn’t clean up their studio sound so much it would sound a lot more like the live clips, which I think are more interesting.

SASQUATCH! Music: She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

This is an interesting one: Zooey Deschanel, lead actress from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the more recent (500) Days of Summer, teams up with musician M Ward to from a band called She & Him.

They met on the set of The Go-Getter,sang together, and the ball kind of rolled from there. Deschanel writes and sings, Ward plays guitar and does the production.

All of the songs I've heard have that well constructed, layered sound from a typical M Ward song, but the bright vocals of Deschanel are a pretty sharp contrast from a typical M Ward vocal.

You can check out a live version of the song here; it looks like they tour with a well-versed backup band that helps with a lot of the harmonies heard on the record. Here's a slower tune on something called MTV Canada, which I didn't know existed.

They are playing an impressive set of festivals: South by Southwest, Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Sasquatch. Merge Records has the rest of the tour.

The Gorge - George, Washington

SASQUATCH! Music: Fruit Bats - Ruminant Band

It's got that old '70s rock band feel, with a steady beat, some harmonies and the classic electric guitar sounds. If you get through the somewhat lengthy intro on this track it turns into a pretty awesome song. A lot of their tunes are a little folkier, but they seem to pull both off well.

The softer stuff has been well received; NPR notes that it "earned the folk-rock band favorable comparisons to Modest Mouse and The Shins."

And surprise(!): Eric Johnson, the band's leader, has been playing guitar with The Shins since 2007. Although Fruit Bats started with their sound in 1999.

They've got a ton of great songs on their latest album, including Tegucigalpa.

A song called When you love Somebody was placed in the movie Youth in Revolt, and Starbucks picked the tune Primitive Man as a Pick of the Week (and no, I have no idea what the intro is about in that video).

Tour schedule at myspace.

Sasquatch! - The Daily Schedule

And the half-way schedule is released:

Saturday, May 29th

My Morning Jacket / Vampire Weekend / The National / Deadmau5 / Broken Social Scene / OK Go / Wale / Public Enemy / The Hold Steady / Miike Snow / Z-Trip / Brother Ali / Minus The Bear / WHY? / The Very Best / Portugal. The Man / Mumford & Sons / The Lonely Forest / Nurses / The Middle East / Patrick Watson / Morning Teleportation / Laura Marling / Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros / Fool's Gold / Garfunkel & Oates / Dam-Funk / Shabazz Palaces / Moshe Kasher / The Posies

Sunday, May 30th

Massive Attack / Pavement / LCD Soundsystem / Tegan and Sara / Kid Cudi / Nada Surf / Dirty Projectors / The xx / The Long Winters / Simian Mobile Disco / Midlake / Girls / Vetiver / The Tallest Man On Earth / YACHT / Booka Shade / Caribou / Avi Buffalo / City and Colour / Cymbals Eat Guitars / A-Trak / Fruit Bats / tUnE-yArDs / Local Natives / Freelance Whales / Rob Riggle / Mike Birbiglia / Rory Scovel / Luke Burbank

Monday, May 31st

Ween / MGMT / Band of Horses / She & Him / Passion Pit / The New Pornographers / Drive-By Truckers / Boys Noize / Camera Obscura / The Temper Trap / Dr. Dog / Neon Indian / No Age / The Mountain Goats / Phantogram / Quasi / Japandroids / Mayer Hawthorne & The County / The Low Anthem / Fresh Espresso / Hudson Mohawke / Telekinesis / Past Lives / Yes Giantess / Craig Robinson / Todd Barry / Jaguar Love

(H/T: Sasquatch! Music Festival)

SASQUATCH! Music: Minus the Bear- Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse

The band is where they are today in part because of successful song placement, landing first in an ad for a cell phone company, then getting their hit Pachuca Sunrise played during the intro and outro of NPR's All Things Considered. Some success can also be attributed to the fact that they're a pretty good band.

They have a new record, Omni, due out May4th. It will be their first album with Dangerbird Records. They'll leave Suicide Squeeze Records, which has unbrella'd Pedro the Lion, Elliott Smith and Modest Mouse, behind.

A quick aside: I’m realizing slowly that, although some bands do a great job of putting live performances online, many do not. Often I’m picking between audio or video quality, and usually both are pretty poor. Then I give up and put a "real" music video up. Music videos showing the band playing video games are great and all, but there’s something much more interesting about a real live tape.

I’m not really going anywhere with this except point out that putting a couple of purposefully done recordings on youtube seems with it. It would cost maybe a free beer for someone with a camera and go a long way in getting your sound out there.

SASQUATCH! Music: Dirty Projectors - Cannibal Resource

Like many classic “experimental-rock” bands before them, this one consists of a rotating cast that now includes twice as many former members as current ones.

The sounds is basically a back and forth between the vocal styles of Dave Longstreth, the leader so to speak, and the brighter sounding Amer Coffman.

Their range of style and aim is pretty wide -- at one point they recorded an entire cover album of Black Flag with the stipulation that the songs be performed “re-imagined from memory.”

They’ve done some collaborating with Bjork. Tour schedule is on myspace. Here's a slower tune they played in the SIRI studio.

Sasquatch! News & Notes For March 8th

Random things you may have interest in:

• Mumford & Sons are on their way to the states for a spring and summer tour.


• Here's a backhanded one for you, from the promoters of The Birds on a Wire Festival:
  

  “I always hear people say, ‘I wish I could have gone to Southwest by Southwest or Sasquatch before it became so commercial,’ and that is what we want — to create something people get to go to while it is still pure,” [said] Larson Hicks...



• This one is The Gorge news: Tom Petty has just scheduled a two-day show in George, Washington, June 10-11 with Joe Coker. Look for lots of tracks from their upcoming album, Mojo.


• Band of Horses just announced the release of their third album, Infinite Arms, which is currently being whittled down from the 27 songs to something more reasonable. It's rumored to arrive May 18th.


• Pavement, who is reuniting after a 10 year break for a select number of shows that include Sasquatch, just expanded their tour dates.

SASQUATCH! Music: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home

So that looks like fun.

There are eleven people in the band plus three "additional personnel" listed on wiki.

The lead singers real name is not Edward Sharpe, but Alex Ebert, who once led a band called Ima Robot. Edward Sharpe was the name of a fictional character Ebert created while working through an addiction program.

You can see part one and two of a video project they worked on, as well as their mostly California tour schedule on the bands myspace page. NPR also did a profile of the band, which includes one of the better "tiny desk concerts."

SASQUATCH! Music: The Low Anthem - The Horizon Is A Beltway

I know the idea here is to put up live recordings of each band when possible, but the only live version I could find looks to be about 3 years old and in someone's basement.

The low anthem is a bit of quirky four-piece from Rhode Island. They often switch instruments between songs and alternate pretty wildly from slow, soft tunes to loud rocking folk-jams.

They put a great show on at Bonnaroo in 2009 (playing an earlier spot than they planned when Delta Spirit didn't show up on time) and so we checked them out when they came to DC. It was there they played an equally energetic but rearranged version, although one I don't like at much as the original.

They ended a tour with Josh Ritter last year and are touring with The Avett Brothers now. That's a show worth seeing.

SASQUATCH! Music: The Lonely Forest - We Sing In Time

[Update: Had to put in an acoustic version, the original was pulled.]

The guitar sounds and rambling, serious lyrics remind me a lot of a more energetic Wild Sweet Orange.

This video isn't exactly representative, I don't think. They have a much bigger sound, very electric, and tap into that raging death-punk you get a glimpse of above in songs like The Secret.

They won something called the Sound Off! award in 2006. This guy thinks they will "probably be famous." Here's their tour schedule.