Defensive Modernism

Defensive Modernism in art and architecture is a reaction against the chaotic, frightening aspects associated with a modern, urban milieu (ex: Art Nouveau).

Defensive Modernist art has a tendency to reject the uncertainty of modern times, favoring a more halcyon past time.

The four songs below deal with Defensive Modernist themes:

“My Apartment” by Ben Kweller:

“Modern Day Love Song” by Bethany Sharayah:

“End of An Era” by The Like:

“Execution Of All Things” by Rilo Kiley:

Interview: Sleeper Agent

Today I spoke with Alex Kandel, the lead singer of Sleeper Agent.

The band is in Boulder, Colorado on a tour with fun. sandwiched between a tour with Ben Kweller.

After the Show: I saw you open for Ben Kweller in New York at Irving Plaza two weeks ago. Any particularly memorable shows so far on this tour?

Alex Kandel: Well, playing at Irving Plaza was amazing. A few shows stand out…St. Louis (last week) stands out because I cracked my head open on Tony’s guitar. That’s still healing…a battle wound of touring.

Ouch. So Jay Joyce produced your album. Do you like recording in a studio or playing live better?

AK: They’re both totally different worlds. I feel like a toally different person in each scenario, but I get a little homesick for the studio because we don’t get to be there as often as playing live shows every night.

When you arrange your songs, how do you figure out which parts you or Tony sing? Do you guys try different arrangements?

AK: It comes naturally. We have a general idea of how we want to trade off. It’s from the gut and based on instinct. A sign that a song is overthought is that something doesn’t click…it doesn’t have that feeling like this is the song. We have demos like that where it could be a good song but it’s not…so sometimes we take parts of demos and piece them together.

When we wrote “Get Burned,” it ended up happening in pretty much one take, in terms of song structure. Of course we messed with it a bit vocally later.

Funnily, your album has been described as “a rollicking set of barnstormers.” I think there’s a perception that young bands with energetic music have songs that are just fun, simple and straightforward. 

But, your songs are more than that – they have interesting lyrical references and wordplay – like “Pavlov’s pup” in “Get It Daddy” and “Freudian slips” in “That’s My Baby.” How aware of that dichotomy are you as a band, and how aware do you think audiences are of it?

We’re very aware of that. Tony’s/our motto is “Brevity is the soul of wit, so don’t waste my time.” We’re trying to write short pop songs, but we try to be interesting. We don’t want to write another clichéd pop song. We like old school melodies like those of The Ronettes.

A lot of our fans recognize that in our lyrics, and they like us because of that.

You made a T-shirt about getting a song on a car commercial, and now “Not Never” has been on the Nike video series. What TV shows would you want to license Sleeper Agent songs to?

My favorite show is Shameless. It’s amazing. Even on the road when I don’t have access to Showtime, I figure out a way to watch it. So, I’d want Shameless.

If you could have any band cover one of your songs, which band and what song of yours would you choose?

I want Girls to cover our song “Force a Smile.” I think that would be really cool. And I cover Girls’ songs so it would be a fair trade.

Will Sleeper Agent celebrate the 1-year anniversary of Celebrasion’s release later in the summer?

Maybe. We’re still focused on touring. We’ll hopefully be overseas by then, but I’m sure we’ll find some way to celebrate (the physical release) [which you can get at SleeperAgentMusic.com].

Is the rest of the band thinking about getting more active with Tony’s songwriting?

We’re all involved in the first record. We collaborated on parts of “All Wave and No Goodbye,” and I wrote some of “That’s My Baby.” Because we’ll have a lot more time to flush out the second record, there’ll be more writing from everyone, and we all still constantly write on our own. We’re always sharing songs and ideas, even if it’s Tony who puts a lot of it together.

When we wrote the first record, we were living in the same house. When Tony writes a finished song and presents it to us, it ends up totally different than how it started. Example: Early acoustic demos of “Be My Monster” sound totally different. Justin speeds everything up, and adds the crashing drums. It’s not Sleeper Agent without Justin.

Thanks Alex and Sleeper Agent!

Check out the band’s current tour dates at SleeperAgentMusic.com

Ben Kweller: Spring 2012 Tour

Ben Kweller is hitting the road for a Spring 2012 tour, supporting his latest album.

Check out the dates on the tour poster…I’m going to Saturday’s show.

NY Times/Ben Kweller

The NY Times just published a good article about Ben Kweller’s experience starting his own record label.

Go Fly A Kite: Musical Collage

Today Ben Kweller released a 3 minute, 43 second “musical collage” of his upcoming new album, called Go Fly A Kite, which comes out February 7th, 2012.

The “musical collage” is a collection of the beginning and ending of each of the 11 songs off the new album.

Listen on SoundCloud.

1. Mean To Me (Intro)
2. Out The Door (Intro)
3. Jealous Girl (Intro)
4. Gossip (Intro)
5. Free (Intro)
6. Full Circle (Intro)
7. Justify Me (Intro)
8. The Rainbow (Intro)
9. Time Will Save The Day (Intro)
10. I Miss you (Intro)
11. You Can Count on Me (Intro)
11. You Can Count On Me (outro)
10. I Miss You (outro)
9. Time Will Save The Day (outro)
8. The Rainbow (outro)
7. Justify Me (outro)
6. Full Circle (outro)
5. Free (outro)
4. Gossip (outro)
3. Jealous girl (outro)
2. Out The Door (outro)
1. Mean to Me (outro)

There is a new Ben Kweller album coming

A couple days ago I got this envelope in the mail:

With these stickers:

The Return of One Minute Pop Song

One Minute Pop Song with Ben Kweller is back for Season 2.

Watch “Walk On Me” and the first two episodes of season 2 below:

Ben Kweller’s Toddler Drummer

Watch Ben Kweller’s two-year-old son playing drums for him at a concert!

The Art of the Set List

A set list is a sheet of paper, usually taped to the floor of the stage, that lists the order of songs that a band intends to play during a particular concert.

Band members use set lists so that they can briefly glance down and determine what song to play next.

As we’ll see below, set lists can look quite different from one another — some are handwritten, some are scribbled messily, some have misspellings, and some are typed.

In addition to ticket stubs, set lists can be great souvenirs of a concert, and people at the front often snatch the set list when a show ends.

Some set lists include pre-determined songs for the encore, indicated below by the dotted line and the diagonal line:

Figure A:

Figure B:

As we see in the above set lists (Rooney and Ben Kweller, respectively), it’s interesting to see how an artist will abbreviate certain song titles. For instance, “ISHBAY” in Figure A is shortened for the song “I Should Have Been After You.” Similarly, “Tree” and “Sun” in Figure B are short for the songs “Family Tree” and “Sundress.”

Another interesting abbreviation is the portmanteau in the second song, called “Badd Business,” in Phantom Planet’s set list below. The question marks also leave flexibility to cater to either the performer’s whim or suggestions from the audience.

If you’re lucky enough to be at the front of the crowd (and are able to read upside down), you can know what song the band is going to play next before anyone else in the crowd. Even more useful, you can determine if you should hold out hope for an encore (or encores), as the Nada Surf set list below indicates:

One band can have variety in its set lists from show to show. How rushed a band is before the show can mean that song titles are further shortened, as they are in the first set list below.

Set lists can also be typed and display the band logo, requiring the use of a printer which may not always be available at the venue. Good examples of professional-looking set lists are from Eisley and Tegan and Sara:

Finally, the most intricate set list I’ve ever seen belongs to Kaki King. In addition to listing the songs, it has alternate guitar tunings next to each song as well as the different instruments (ovation guitar, banjo, 7 string guitar) needed for each song:

Tour: Pete Yorn & Ben Kweller

Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller are going on tour together. See a full list of dates here.