Paul’s Songs

ME REX – song Flood from Sugar Rex 2019

The New Pornographers – Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile

Suzie Ungerleider – Baby Blues

Death Cab for Cutie – Waterfalls

Matt Maeson – Hallucinogeics

Bob’s songs

Lemon Twigs – Queen of My School

Lowest of the Low – Powerlines

Fadeawaays – She Don’t Know Why

Larkin Poe – Bell Bottomed Blues

Mikal Cronin – Feel Like

One of the larkin Poe incredible Youtube songs from their channel that Bob mentions

1. ME REX – song Flood from Sugar Rex Jan 2020

“Shouty electronic bedroom pop”

This is the video that I mentioned on the show – I love this live version of Flood

Myles McCabe is the London-based singer-songwriter behind the ME REX moniker. ME REX have now expanded to a four-piece band, featuring Rich Mandell and Phoebe Cross from Happy Accidents, as well as Myles’ Fresh-bandmate, Kathryn Woods.

Heart of Garbage also a great song

You can find them on Bandcamp → https://merex.bandcamp.com/

ME REX may only just be beginning their journey, but they are already one of the most forward thinking and exciting new bands around, coming together to create something that resonates on several levels; sparking joy, hope and reflection with a collection of songs that are achingly poignant.

The New Pornographers – Newest release – In the Morse Code of Brake Lights – 2019

Falling Down The Stairs Of Your Smile (Collected Works/Concord Records) is the song we chose for this week, but really, you could choose almost anything this band puts out.

Here is a great video on their performance, plus a very interesting interview with AC Newman (‘The weird old guy making music’.)

They have a very interesting Spotify Playlist that we mentioned on the show

Interesting, in some of the reading done in prep for this show, the new Pornographers were seen in Vancouver as sort of a ‘super group’ – yet another one in this sub-theme. The onion unravels even more!

Current members

Members’ other projects in brackets

• Neko Case – vocals (solo artist, also of Maow, the Corn Sisters, and Cub) (1997–present)
• John Collins – bass (the Evaporators and Destroyer) (1997–present)
• Carl Newman – vocals, guitar (solo artist (as A.C. Newman), also of Superconductor and Zumpano) (1997–present)
• Blaine Thurier – keyboards, synthesizer (independent filmmaker) (1997–present)
• Todd Fancey – lead guitar (solo artist (as Fancey) and of Limblifter) (2003–present)
• Kathryn Calder – vocals, keyboards, guitar (solo artist and of Immaculate Machine and Frontperson) (2005–present) Also niece of Newman Carl is in her birth family. At that time I was a teenager and playing in a band and didn’t really know I had that family … so that’s how I met Carl.”^[5]
• Joe Seiders – drums, vocals (Beat Club) (2014–present)
• Simi Stone – violin, vocals, percussion (solo artist and of Suffrajett) (2019–present; touring member 2015–2019)^[14]

Former members

• Fisher Rose – drums (Destroyer and A.C. Newman) (1997–1999)
• Kurt Dahle – drums, vocals (Limblifter and the Age of Electric) (1999–2014)
• Dan Bejar – vocals, guitar (Destroyer, Swan Lake, and Hello, Blue Roses) (1997–2017)

Former touring members

• Lindsay “Coco” Hames – vocals, percussion, acoustic guitar (the Ettes) (2014)

This song I mentioned during the show without adding the title, so I have to add it here – played with Niko Case on I’m Not Talking (2012) Great video of the song here – I’m Not Talking.

Death Cab for Cutie – “The Georgia E.P

This is a great EP. We played it first because of the songs, second because of the political work they have done for the Democrats and Stacey Abrams in Georgia.

On December 2, 2020, the band announced that a Bandcamp exclusive EP titled “The Georgia E.P.” would be released for 24 hours only on December 4. The album is a collection of covers by artists from Georgia. The proceeds will go to Stacey Abrams organization Fair Fight Action in honor of Georgia voting for Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, as well as the 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia and the 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia

Wikipedia

The fve-song collection of covers of Georgia artists helped raise over $100,000 for Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight in December.

Recorded during quarantine, The Georgia EP features covers of Georgia-based artists R.E.M. (“Fall on Me”), TLC (“Waterfalls”), Neutral Milk Hotel (“The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1”), Cat Power (“Metal Heart”), and the late Vic Chesnutt (“Flirted With You All My Life”).

Here is the story we mentioned near the end of the show about the origin of their name.

Gibbard took the band name from the song “Death Cab for Cutie“, which was written by Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall and recorded by their group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The song is a track on the Bonzo’s 1967 debut album, Gorilla, and was performed by them in the Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour. The title was originally that of a story in an old pulp fiction crime magazine that Innes came across in a street market. In a 2011 interview, Gibbard stated, “The name was never supposed to be something that someone was going to reference 15 years on. So yeah, I would absolutely go back and give it a more obvious name.”^[73]

Wikipedia (again)

EP on Band Camp

Suzie Ungerleider

“Baby Blues” 

We played this because Suzie Ungerleider (Oh Susanna) is amazing, but also, she has had a name change in the last year. She writes about this on her web page and we recount some of the story below. This is her 10th album which is pretty amazing. This album is a collaboration with Jim Bryson, another fan favourite.

The album is actually entitled My Name is Suzie Ungerleider, and comes out on Aug. 13 via her new label, UK imprint MVKA  (Eva Cassidy, BOY, Sarah Blasko)

From her website:

The song Oh Susanna is part of Minstrelsy, a tradition in which (usually) white actors perform as characters that are demeaning and dehumanizing to black people.  Foster wrote the original lyrics in “plantation dialect” meaning in the manner of how Foster (a white person) thought a black person from the American South would speak.  The racist nature of the song is most explicit, however, when a verse makes a joke of the death by electrocution of “five-hundred n—–“.   This verse, of course, is rarely sung today and therefore not widely known.  After the Civil War, Stephen Foster himself changed many of his “plantation dialect” songs into standard English. 

Suddenly those racist lyrics felt absolutely current.  Right here and right now, the lyrics conjure and make present violence against black people.  This is the power of language.  By saying something, you make it happen in the listener’s mind.  It didn’t matter to me that not very many people know that the original lyrics to the song Oh Susanna are racist.  I felt that if I were to continue to use the name Oh Susanna I would be passively accepting and perpetuating its racism.

Matt Maeson – Hallucinogeics

This artist is pretty incredible. His story is almost as interesting as his music. The song we are playing has a few videos, I decided to include this one from a live performance. It is pared down, but it really shows what a great performer he is.

There is a great article from Riff magazine you can read below. Pretty incredible life already.

Matt Maeson found the straight and narrow on a long and winding road

Riff magazine

Maeson was raised by a family of convicts-turned-evangelists, who founded a ministry that preached to other convicts, out of and in prison. When he was 5, his uncle was murdered by one of the convicts.

Some of his lyrics from Hallucinogeics :

‘Cause I carried on like the wayward son

And now through and through, I’ve come undone

And now I am just but the wayward man

What with my bloodshot eyes and my shaky hand

‘Cause I carried on like the wayward son

And now through and through, I’ve come undone

And now I am just but the wayward man

What with my bloodshot eyes and my shaky hand

From Cringe

She said I’m looking like a bad man, smooth criminal

She said my spirit doesn’t move like it did before

She said that I don’t look like me no more, no more

I said, “I’m just tired,” she said, “You’re just high”

And I said, “I saw you in the water”

And I said, “I saw you in the water”

More next week including the incredible band Alvvays.