She played them all. Yep, that's all you really need to know from this hoarse, exhausted, #1 fan of Amy Ray. It's over 24 hours since the show and I'm just now getting my voice back, just now feeling like I can walk around the block with my dogs at a normal pace. Damn, going to gigs in your 40s really sucks! Amy is a month older than this old Tart and she sure didn't show it last night. Her set list was long, her band was loud and hot and well tuned and even the new guy on bass who was so very obviously out of place (he had sheet music and they kept him in the way back, he was that new!) sounded very good. Amy worked her magic in that magical venue, the Metro. I've never been so close to her, a mere 25 feet from one of my favorite singer/songwriters, I swear she smiled right at me once. I swooned. We all did.

Her music is a rocking twist on folk-indie-pop with just enough roots in early punk to keep it edgy and fresh. The songs off her new album Didn't It Feel Kinder made her both dance and cry for us last night, they're so close to the surface of her emotions, so raw yet and new. She wowed us with extended versions of "Give In" and "Put It Out For Good." She flew to the ceiling in pure delight with our appreciation when we cheered and sang along to her new songs, "Cold Shoulder," "Bus Bus," and "Stand and Deliver."

Her voice was in great shape, she hit those high notes just the way I knew she would, in a way that made you go a little weak in the knees. It's not her usual range and you can tell, but you don't mind and neither does she. It's good to stretch a bit, and I noticed she did so again when she was improvising on the end of another song. When she's usually taking the low end of the scale with Emily in the Indigo Girls shows, on stage alone she's free to wander where she wants. And as always, the guitar work is beautiful, intricate at times, heavy handed and hard at others. One of the best things about Amy Ray is the versatility of her playing, of her talent. Her first encore was, of all things, "Johnny Rottentale" played on mandolin at an incredible speed.

I'm shaking my head in disbelief still at the whole experience of it. She said very little between songs, the lyrics say it all. And we all knew them, we all sang them for her, with her. When Amy gives it away in a gig, you take it home with you for days and days afterward. Here are some tracks previously posted here and here. I've reviewed her new album already, I'll not give any more out, go buy her stuff, you should support this artist who supports so many good things that are important to the idea of a better world,... oh and she rocks too.

Amy Ray's label, Daemon Records, buy her stuff here and support her other artists


I'm gonna save Arizona for a whole post of their own. Needless to say they were amazing, and I'm kicking myself for missing the first few songs of their show.
Their MySpace page.

black heart today
she brings me spanish clemintine
i eat them by the waterside
throw the peels and taste the clean
how could i still feel so mean

take this meanness out of me

i got a black heart today
no amount of kindness can turn it the other way
even the dogs are tired of me
howling at the trees

take this meanness out of me

i got a black heart today

Black Heart Today mp3 Amy Ray Stag -- her first solo effort
buy it

Rodeo

She comes down to Georgia to dance across my kitchen floor,
Leavin’ black marks on linoleum, a country song on the radio.
I am just a rodeo calf with tender feet and sewn on horns and
Love is a kindness that I’ve never known before,
I’ve never known before.

She say’s “I’m bound to Carolina to join the kids in ‘Truth or Dare’.”
And she laughs and says its just a game when I tell her that I’m scared.
I am just a dog waitin’ at the kitchen door,
Love is a kindness that I’ve never known before,
I’ve never known before.

Make it last, make it stay
Can you hold on long enough to make this pay.

She said,” My daddy was a grifter and I was in my momma’s way,
So I drifted for a while, because I could not stand to stay.”
And she said, “Love is a kindness that I’ve never understood.”
I said, “I‘ll give it to you willingly, its something you deserve,
Its something you deserve.”

And I’ll make it last, I’ll make it stay.
If you can hold on long enough I can make this pay.

‘Cause I am just a calf with tender feet and sewn on horns,
Love is a prize waitin’ on her at the rodeo.

Rodeo mp3 Amy Ray Prom

buy it

I'm listening to Amy Ray's new album Didn't It Feel Kinder and it's good, ... it's uneven, as some of her stuff is. So I'm disappointed but also so happy because when she's good, she's excellent. And when she's not good, she's just o.k. and that's still pretty good in my book. I'm a die hard fan. I'm one of those that can sing all the songs, that can tell you all the details of the album covers, all the liner notes, all the points along my life where the songs meant what and why and how. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, I mean, I don't consider The Indigo Girls and Amy's solo projects to be the cutting edge of great music by any stretch but then again, it's not bad stuff either. Like most folk-rock out there, it's good cause it's good to me. It's good in my mind, I like the way it sounds, I like what it evokes in my memory and it's good to me in that it does good things to me. It makes me feel good about my life, it causes me to remember the good things in my life, the tough shit I've got through, the great times I've had with friends and lovers, that music has been there for all of it. So this new album is just another ring on a finger on a hand that travels with me. And eventually I'll have listened to it so many times that I won't recognize the songs that I think aren't so good at first hearing. But for now, track two,"She's got to be" is excellent.

Well that paragraph was written about a month and a half ago. It sat in my blogger draft box all this time while I kept on listening, just waiting for the right time to be posted, to be ready. And yes, I've forgotten which tracks are uneven, which aren't so good at first hearing. But "She's got to be" is still the BEST ONE, oh my god, it's good. You want Amy to sing those high notes. You want to make Amy sing those high notes just for you. Oh god if only she sang those just for you. Ok, I lie, it's not her singing you want. Making those sounds yes, in your ear, in your bed, in with you, hmmm yes. Amy doesn't sing those high notes very often you see.

Now, the music. "Birds of a Feather" starts on a rather sour note, a typical Amy note in fact, and if you've not heard a lot of her music it's rather jarring to have an album open with a song that seems to be so down, so despondent, so un-melodic in fact. But if you listen to it four or five times it shines and especially that last chorus will make you smile. It's the perfect set up for the star track of the project, "She's got to be" (did I mention yet that it's the BEST ONE?).

Amy's in love. We love Amy when she's in love. Hell, we love Amy when she's heartbroken, when she's bitterly disappointed, when she's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, and when she's sobbing like a baby because somebody took her last cigarette. But we really love Amy when she's in love. Amy in love is like a momma dog protecting her pups, like a eagle bringing fresh meat home to the nest, like pelican plucking her own breast to feed her chicks her own blood if need be (even tho that's indeed a myth). She's noble, regal, beautiful and sexy. And so is this song. Listen to it, buy it, soak up the love folks.

The falsetto is gorgeous and tender next to the more typical sounds of the chorus, the background vocals are smooth and angelic and the easy pop sounds of the guitars make this song a total hit.

"Cold Shoulder," "Who Sold the Gun," "SLC Radio," "Rabbit Foot" all sound like other songs from Amy's solo efforts, all follow formulas from other albums. But they're formulas we like. I don't mind one bit that "SLC" is the same genre as "Let It Ring" lyrically, or that "Cold Shoulder" fills the space of "Driver Education" or "Rural Faggot." "Who Sold The Gun" might be my least favorite song from the album but I guarantee you I'll love it live. Those yearning lines are hard to capture on a recording but are so damn sexy to hear in concert. And yes, it's reminencient of "Covered For You." Of course, "Rabbit Foot" is so much like "Rodeo" and that's just fine with me. I love those bittersweet songs.

Some are harder to match but just feel like they fit... "Out On The Farm" is a great song, so much like one that would go on an Indigo Girls album but I'm glad Amy saved it for this one, it's a song that deserves a solo vocal, that showcases her tone, her sound and the background vocals once again do that justice in a way that Emily Saliers accompanient changes things. There's a reason why artists do solo work when they're well known as being part of a duo.

"Bus Bus," (we'll overlook the verb conversate here) just whispers The Clash to me. Is it because I know of Amy's love for that band? Or is there something musically of it there? Readers, tell me! She proves she's not stuck in a 1990s musical style, though I doubt we'll see a Amy Ray hip hop catalogue any time soon.

All in all, Didn't It Feel Kinder is a new/old sound for Amy. How's that for a review!? New in that it's a real step away from her jangly, punk, rockabilly inspired tunes of Prom and Stag. This is a polished, much more produced, Indigo Girls sounding work, many tracks treading the line between solo and duo work. And old, in that the formulas remain the same, the lyrics revisit many themes that are constant in her music (thankfully) and with each effort Amy gives us quality, thoughful, and evocative art.

She's Got To Be mp3 Amy Ray Didn't It Feel Kinder
Bus Bus mp3 Amy Ray Didn't It Feel Kinder
buy it!

Rol, at Sunset Over Slawit posted last week about a book that is going right on my xmas list this year, Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City. One question that Rol takes from the book, is the mystery of why some girls (and women) actually like metal, or more specifically what Rol calls "glam metal" such as KISS, Poison, Thin Lizzy, Bon Jovi, etc... and I stumbled into the middle of a conversation on whether or not a particular Whitesnake video with a hot female model "having sex with a car" (as Rol describes) was sexist or not. Go see it here. I replied that some of us girls wanted to be the girl on the car, some of us wanted to have the girl on the car, and more importantly some of us knew exactly how to get the metalmen, namely by liking the music they liked regardless of the videos. So, sexist or not, we didn't really care. Scheming bitches aren't we?! Oh and thanks Rol, for a really thought provoking post! I'm not criticizing it in any way hun!

But seriously, what's so mysterious about metal? Or about any genre for that matter? Why divide the world so neatly so that The Carpenters are girly and Ozzy's for the boys? I admit, I started out listening to metal to piss off my parents like all you guys did :p Yeah, it worked for me too. Punk worked even better, I just couldn't do the satanic head trip on my poor christian mother that metal afforded me!

Now, this got me thinking, why have all the people in my life, who knew anything at all about music, been men? It's not just that certain genres of music are roped off for women, even musical knowledge is considered "a manly sport." Yeah, I know I lost some of ya there. You can smell a feminist rant coming, right? I'll try and take it easy on ya, I promise I won't go all Camille Paglia here. Just tell me when's the last time you had a real conversation about a band -- not a song, with a woman? When you go to gigs, look around? I was seriously the only woman at the Duke Spirit show the other week not wearing makeup and a low-cut fashionable blouse/dress, and I was one of maybe 5 single women there (probably the only one who wasn't "working" that night, lol!). Yeah, I'm odd that way sometimes, but this was a pretty scuzzy venue. I was there for the music (not that they weren't, of course, of course).

There's an ad in my local coffeehouse for an all women punk rock collective, they do gigs that spotlight local women's music. I usually avoid that crap like the plague. Maybe I just spent too many years in the dyke community, it was a fine place to visit but nobody wants to live in the ghetto, ya know? And yes, I understand that women don't have as much money to spend on entertainment as men, that women don't want to play by the rules of "the system" or "the man" etc... I got it. But I also see how "the industry" funnels us band after band that sounds the same, that has no female voices in the foreground and that sucks too, cause damn I love me some girly punk. Most of all, (and this is what was missing from the whole riot grrl phenomenon, in my memory) I love to see women having FUN with music and FUN with sexuality in music, for a change. Maybe I'll surprise you with a review of that local collective thing one day, who knows? ;)

Blender mp3 Amy Ray from Prom commentary on the industry
Buy it

More Rock More Talk mp3 The Butchies from Population 1975 Amy's queercore backup band for her first two solo projects, and an entity onto themselves, also known as Team Dresch
Buy it

I like Fucking mp3 Bikini Kill from The Singles great song, but honest to god, this doesn't sound like a woman who likes to fuck!
Buy it

Slide mp3 L7 from Bricks are Heavy: not a happy camper either :(
Buy it

O Bondage, Up Yours! X-Ray Spex from: The Rolling Stone Women In Rock Collection [Disc 2] mp3 * now there's a reason this is my all time favorite girly punk song! I'm just so unevolved xoxox
Buy it

*also available on Germ Free Adolescence (2005) expanded version

It's always nice when great music aligns itself with beautiful women. In the case of The Duke Spirit, I found the music first, the woman second. I'm quite proud of that! Those who know me by my rakish nature probably won't believe it but honestly, I was simply scanning the music files on the SXSW website late one night and heard "Lassoo" and whamo! like a lightening bolt this voice from Venus smacked me right down to the center of my you-know-where.

See, it's always the vocals: the actual way the voice sounds*, how it resonates and transforms the words, how it reverberates through the song - over the instruments, around the (sub)text of the melody or lack thereof (as is often found, in my opinion, in indie rock these days) and most importantly out the lips of the singer, out the very body of the person who breathes it and groans it and exudes it. In the case of Liela Moss it's a very lovely body indeed and I can't wait to witness it in action ... and indeed I will, on Thursday night! Yay me!

But don't let my goofy ramblings about embodied utterances distract you from the music of The Duke Spirit, it's freaking great too! Listen to these two tracks and prepare yourself for my ridiculously overenthusiastic report of the show on Friday, I'm sure I'll be in a stupor over it all.





photo credit: Afraid Of Ducks


In the meantime, roll these songs around in your mouth a bit, and yeah... if you're an avid blog reader you've likely heard them before, sorry, nothing new here!

The Duke Spirit: from Neptune, 2008
Lassoo mp3
Wooden Heart mp3


photo credit: CC Chapman

The Duke Spirit's Website buy their album!
The Duke Spirit on MySpace

Now why is this a good week? Yesterday's post brought me such a treasure! Amy Ray's new album, Didn't It Feel Kinder. The second track hit me with that lightening bolt described above but alas, no time to devote to it today! I'm going to soak it in for a few more days because well, Amy always evokes something very personal in me. Lucky you, eh? Goddamn, women rock!

*after a few conversations with Puppet Show, I have come to the conclusion that this is why I am seemingly genetically adverse to a lot of what's known as metal these days. The "growl" just doesn't do it for me like other kinds of singing do, even though I do relish in the girl-punk sounds of Pretty Girls Make Graves and The Butchies and others... go figure!

There's some great new music by Trapt coming out. I've been a fan of Trapt for a while now, it's a sound that combines terrific melodies with a good old fashioned head-banging beat and yet doesn't quite drive my lover mad like NIN or Puscifier or Cold does. And the words mean something, full of angst and well just plain old heartbreak, yeah I'm a sucker for that. Plus, it's not the kind of death-dirge sound of Metallica and other bands in that genre that makes me want to take a knife to my tender bits.

The single off their new album, Only Through the Pain, titled "Curiosity Kills" is the best one I've heard so far. And the lyrics made me think of another great song by my favorite all time artist Amy Ray. No, the songs have nothing in common musically. Amy has roots in punk/folk/country music and her solo efforts are in no way comparable to the hard-hitting output of a band like Trapt. But when Amy is cut loose from the Indigo Girls (no offense meant to Emily Sailers of course!) she gets to let go a bit, stretch the lyrics and turn up the amp and well, kinda butch the whole thing up some. And this song, Rural Faggot does that. It's all about how what you don't know will break your heart. But sometimes there's folks along the way to help. And yeah, it's full of angst and pain and that rawness that comes from being different in a world where being the same as everyone else is what matters.

Yeah I know, a corny ending, but hey, it's a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon here!

Trapt: from Only Through the Pain (due out soon), Curiosity Kills mp3
their website

Amy Ray: from Prom Rural Faggot mp3
her website buy it there

photo credit to Freelance Dreamer