Geof’s New Music: 16-22 Sep 2007

Okay, so the first item in this week’s adds requires an introduction: Chad at Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands bade me to go check out Arms and Legs, and when I streamed the whole record, I decided to give it a try. Yes, there’s an obvious Elliott Smith influence, and Lord knows I miss him [and am still mad that I only got into his music after he died], so … well, maybe it’s transference, but I also really like the music.

So thanks, Chad. I owe you a favor, sir.

• Arms and Legs’s eponymous album.
  
• The Decemberists’s Picaresque.
  
• 3 Apr 2001 [Seattle, WA, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine. I’ve been slurping the Live Music Archive’s Over the Rhine stash. Consider me your pre-filter, eh?
• 31 Aug 2002 [Vancouver, BC, Canada] concert bootleg of Wilco.
• 3 Jun 2003 [San Diego, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Coldplay.
• 21 Mar 2007 [Jersey City, NJ, USA] concert bootleg of The Decemberists.
• 6 May 2007 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootlegs of Derek Webb, Andrew Osenga, and Sandra McCracken. It was all one show, so I’ll listen to it all in one week.
  

Last week was hit and miss:

• Over the Rhine’s Discount Fireworks. Okay, so I’m not keen on “Last Night on Earth Again”, and it would have been nice for them to have had one more new track on there. But I bought this because I’m a completionist and wanted to see if the collection would serve as a good primer for new OtR fans, which I love to make. It does a good job, because it covers the breadth of the OtR sound—even bringing some older tunes from the days when the band was more than just Karin and Linford and whatever backing band that they wanted for that album. This is a money-making, label-deal-finishing record, and so it deserves to be judged in that light: three-and-a-half stars, just because they put “Within Without” on there.
  
• 10 Sep 2002 [Santa Monica, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco. I’d love to have a pre-FM version of this, because this recording is just … ugh. Two-and-half stars. The interview is good, though.
• 19 Sep 2003 [Salt Lake City, UT, USA] concert bootleg of Elliott Smith. Man, not a good note to end my ES bootleg run on. Two stars. Poor recording [too bassy and indistinct].
• 22 Feb 2007 [Paris, France] concert bootleg of The Decemberists. This is a solid little recording. The vocal performances are a bit off—not hitting the highs solidly—but hey, at the end of a European tour, I’ll forgive some of that. Three-and-a-half stars.
• 3 Mar 2007 [Winnetka, IL, USA] concert bootleg of Jeff Tweedy. The other Tweedy home shows have disappointed me, but not this one! It’s very, very good. Four stars.
• 22 Apr 2007 [Northport, AL, USA] concert bootleg of Derek Webb. It’s a DWebb soundboard. It’s him solo from this spring, so he’s not playing the new songs with a band, and it’s still Mockingbird-heavy as a result. But for being all that, it’s pretty good. Four stars.
  
• 26 Apr 2007 [Paris, France] concert bootleg of Feist. Again, I’ve decided that Feist is hard to bootleg, and this is pretty average, even though she’s in her adopted home of Paris. Three stars.