Video Of The Week: Fox And Bones

Somewhere along the lines of five to ten years ago, I took part in a benefit concert for the Mile-End Mission (a homeless shelter) in which all participants agreed to sing political folk songs; most chose to cover Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger. My friend John "Triangles" Stuart used to hold these every month, each time with a different theme, which usually meant new songs we had to learn.

Fox And Bones sound like they would have attended a show like that one and been turned on by the general themes of "songs of the proletariat", but with an indie rock quality to their sound, a bit more polished.

The Portland, OR couple comprised of co-songwriters Sarah Vitort and Scott Gilmore know how to write a fine song; there's a nice positivity about Better Land that rises the song up like the best songs from acts like The Lumineers, however that takes away from the depth of what one expects from "songs for the people":

The video was co-directed by Chris Bigalke and video animator Zachary Winterton.

Video Of The Week: Tom Petty

Tom Petty died last night, but because we live in a 24-hour news cycle where tweets count as "breaking news", the story was ahead of itself, reports of his demise making the rounds on social media while he was still technically alive, angering his family, friends and bandmates:

from Instagram

How sad a world are we living in? TMZ were once again the only ones to get the news right, but instead of leaving it at that, they actually released the audio of the 911 call his wife made when she found his body. For fuck's sake.

This does, as AnnaKim Violette Petty mentioned, overshadow and disrespect the man and the artist's oeuvre. We're talking about a Rock And Roll Hall of Famer (class of 2002), yet another lost member of The Traveling Wilburys (Roy Orbison and George Harrison had passed away before him, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lyne of Electric Light Orchestra fame remain), and a very successful songwriter whose career spanned five decades.

Some of the songs you may know him from include Refugee, Learning To Fly, Free Fallin', It's Good To Be King, Into The Great Wide Open, Don't Do Me Like That, Runnin' Down A Dream, All Of Nothin', Mary Jane's Last Dance, You Wreck Me, and a terrific and perfect cover of Patti Smith's So You Wanna Be A Rock'N'Roll Star.

Oh, and this tremendous piece of 1980s music called I Won't Back Down that I've sung in concert over a dozen times:

Yes, there are a few cameos in the video directed by David Leland, including Lynne (co-songwriter on most of 1989's Full Moon Fever, Petty's first official solo album), Harrison (who played guitar on it), Mike Campbell (lead guitarist of both Petty's band The Heartbreakers and on this record) and former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who does not play on the actual recording (those are actually Phil Jones' beats). Also missing in the video is Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein doing backing vocals.

Notable covers of this song include Pearl Jam's rendition from the Live At The Gorge set, but young'uns will know it best by Sam Smith stealing it for his Grammy-winning Stay With Me...

Video Of The Week: Leonard Cohen

We lost another great today, with the passing of legendary Montréal poet Leonard Cohen, who was inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

Sure, Cohen was a Montrealer through-and-through, a Jew-turned-atheist-turned-Buddhist-turned-peacenik, a bohemian ladies' man, a quiet man who loved his routine (including freshly-squeezed orange juice to start his walk around the Mile End area on Sunday mornings)...

But he was also a New Yorker through-and through, having lived at the Chelsea Hotel alongside Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin (the story of their night together told through Chelsea Hotel No. 2), a friend of Lou Reed's, who partied with Saturday Night Live cast members and its producer, Lorne Michaels.

And yet he was also at home in Europe, drinking wine, eating well, and courting beautiful women at all times of night and day, muses for eternal songs to come.

And he spent his last years in the perfect California weather, perhaps extending his life by doing so, as you want to battle cancer in the most perfect setting possible.

Many of his songs are now seen as prophetic - and not just those from You Want It Darker, the record he released just weeks prior to his passing. Now, the final words from one of his best-known songs, Tower Of Song, ring as true as ever:

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song

I don't know. As I sit here in tears writing this piece I find myself reflecting on my own life, most of it spent not just with no regard to my own future, but not even picturing myself in one; I've lived for the moment for so long - 20 of those years in the excesses of food and alcohol - that I never thought I'd outlive someone like Cohen.

Today, I choose to feature the video for Closing Time, from his 1992 record The Future, directed by Curtis Wehrfritz, featuring back-up singers Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen:


If you like the look he has in his eye, it's because his flame at the time, actress Rebecca De Mornay - who also co-produced the record - felt he needed to show more passion than he had in previous takes and opted to perform a mock striptease off-camera to seduce him.

Ever the Old World Romantic, Cohen then bent down and put De Mornay's shoes back on for her, on his knees.

Lou Reed. Hunter S. Thompson. Leonard Cohen. Most of my influences and idols have now passed.

Someone make sure Tom Waits, Renaud Séchan, Eric Clapton, Jean Leloup and Eddie Vedder still have a pulse.

Video Of The (Past) Week: Jeffrey Lewis

It's pretty hard to fathom that I haven't featured this one yet, as I watch it at least a few times per week and listen to it daily, as I have for the better part of the last decade, since 2005's City & Eastern Songs, which this track is from.

Director Mark Locke does a fine job of just sticking to the lyrics - an innocent Jeffrey Lewis annoying his idol Will Oldham on the NYC subway to the point where the ''master'' ends up raping the ''apprentice'' on empty train tracks, akin to Oldham's own song A Sucker's Evening (off of the Palace record Arise Therefore).

Sure, 2014 isn't the ideal place in which to view a rape metaphor, particularly one in which the victim then has the revelation that in the end, the music industry ''fucks'' all artists who dare share their thoughts and ideas, as a system.

Many have seen Lewis ''feminizing'' himself by being on the receiving end of the rape, and therefore associating ''womendom'' with ''weakness'', and it's fair to say that in 1500 years of Anglo-Saxon arts history, literature and politics, there is a bit of a systemic bias towards giving men more authority than women - at times, even more rights. Religion is good at that, too. But I do feel that Lewis had no such designs, even subconsciously - he's pretty good and consistent on keeping his ''penis-having'' in check.

I'll write later this week (I hope) about where I see our society heading in terms of equality and power struggles (ask me today and I'll say I think we're fucked, and provided we don't start everything over from scratch, will remain so forever), but for now, I thought I could just throw this superb low-budget time bomb out there:

Video Of The Week: Kandle

With her new video directed by Natalie Rae Robison, Kandle tackles the hard subject of violence against women and hardcore depression, and released it in collaboration with canadianwomen.org - a community-based organization that looks to help balance the bad on this planet with a bit of good.

Not Up To Me is a terrific song, and I hope she doesn't tire of singing it any time soon, but because its message is so powerful and it's so well-crafted, it could have the Jeremy (Pearl Jam) or Creep (Radiohead) effect, where the artists just can't bring themselves to perform their signature song because it stirs up too many conflicting emotions in them.

In any event, I'll be attending her show next week as she performs in this year's Jazz Festival - she probably would have fit better playing at Pop Montréal, but I'm happy I'm seeing her in July rather than September. If anything, the walk home will be less painful (mentally) in the summer heat than it would have been in the chill of autumn (and possible rainfall).

Video Of The Week: Chelsea Wolfe

When Chelsea Wolfe (#8 in my top albums of 2013) enlists Mark Pellington (Pearl Jam's multiple-award-winning Jeremy, Alice In Chains' Rooster, the fine films Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies), the end result is, of course, a hell of a sight, if a tad dark in tone.

Her dark, drone-y orchestral pop is the perfect match for Pellington's visuals, apparently taken from a forthcoming, hour-long film called Lone. But for now, it's all Feral Love, which you may recognize from some Game Of Thrones ads.

R.I.P. Pete Seeger

Legendary folk singer, songwriter and de facto activist Pete Seeger died yesterday, passing peacefully in his sleep at a hospital, surrounded by his family.

Though he started earlier than the wave of 1960s folkies that he influenced, he became the colleague of such legends as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and his impact can be felt all the way to Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine and The Nightwatchman) and Pearl Jam, because his message was the same no matter the specific battle: social justice and equality.

His grandson says he was outside chopping wood 10 days before he passed - sometimes it takes hold of you really quickly. He was 94.

Video Of The Week: Callaghan

This week's entry comes from London, originally, but has since moved to the U.S. (Atlanta, to be exact), where she recorded her debut LP, produced by Shawn Mullins, whom you may recall from his 1998 smash-hit Lullaby.

So, yeah, Callaghan dabbles in Americana-inspired folk. Unfortunately - in my opinion - her talent is best served live, or at least Mullins hasn't been able to capture her raw essence in the studio the first time around. But the rules I set forth for this series is about ''official'' videos, therefore this ''life on tour'' clip makes the cut and her live audience-filmed YouTube clips don't.

But if one director were to combine her natural live charms (and keep the music from that version in the clip), with background scenes interspersed throughout, it'd be a sure-fire winner, and perhaps a better introduction to her talent.

She could easily have the kind of breakthrough Jewel had in the 1990s; I just think she just needs to take some of the polishing out her her tunes the next time she enters the studio.

Video Of The Week: Brooke Annibale

This was going to be my Video Of The Week last week, until I heard about Divinyls singer Chrissy Amphlett's passing. I now take the opportunity to feature it this week instead:

Brooke Annibale was born in Pittsburgh but moved to Nashville as a young adult, with the idea to become a professional musician in the back of her mind the whole time.

While more folk-pop than country, her mellow acoustic sound feels at home in the city of the Grand Ole Opry and is reminiscent of Sarah McLachlan, Lauren Hoffman and Beth Orton. I'd like to see her be featured on a shoegaze track, or maybe a blues/soul/rock duet in the vein of Jack White's Love Interruption, but I also appreciate the musical universe she's constructing for herself.



Oddly enough, my favourite part of this song is the final minute, where she forgoes the cutesy varying melodies (and all-in-all Jewel-isms) and goes to the essence of her actual feelings on repetitive chords, after the final chorus.

Tom Morello Speaks Out

These past couple of years, one of the musical projects that have resonated in my heart as much as in my ears is The Nightwatchman, Tom Morello's solo project after years as lead guitarist of seminal band Rage Against The Machine and the Pearl Jam-sounding side project Audioslave with Chris Cornell.

If anything, The Nightwatchman makes up for Audioslave's lackluster last 2 records, including one which I hold responsible for the end of my purchasing CDs on a regular basis.

In an interview with Gibson Guitars' website, he talks about the origin of his Nightwatchman project, as well as the early 90s' then-emerging rock scene (with a few choice quotes about Pearl Jam's influence in later music) and the five records that influenced him the most - two of which would maybe make my own list, but I'd take Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet over It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back.