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Top Alternative Albums: The Decemberists – The Crane Wife – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

There are some groups that, on the whole, I’m a little underwhelmed with, but they have one album, usually right smack dab in the middle of their catalog, that’s absolutely fantastic. That’s the case, for me at least, with The Decemberists. I’m not over enamored with their early work – Castaways and Cutouts, Her Majesty The Decemberists, and Picaresque – and neither am I particularly fond of their more recent releases – The Hazards of Love, and The King is Dead – but The Crane Wife is a shining gem in the midst of their discography.

The Decemberists are a group that can easily come across as the smartest dude in the room who wants to be absolutely sure that everyone else knows exactly how intelligent he is; in other words, the person at the party I avoid at all costs. Lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy (at various points) majored in English, Theatre, and Creative writing, and boy can you hear it in his songs. Either he has the most astounding vocabulary of any writer I know, or spends an overabundance of time with his thesaurus. I’ve often joked that I wish I were a member of The Decemberists so I could get away with rhyming “Peloponnesus” and “Telekinesis”.

On The Crane Wife, none of that verbal peacocking is at all diminished, nor is the melodramatic tone of the music at all tempered – I mean, Nikolai Vavilov, and the words “asteraceae” (that’s the family of flowers that includes the Daisy and Sunflower, in case you were wondering) and “solanum” (the genus of plants containing the Potato and Tomato) are used in successive lines in a song about storing food in preparation for war – but somehow, in this case, it just works. The musical underpinnings and melodies are so good, it makes it easy to forgive any pretensions, and Meloy’s voice, which on earlier releases was a bit harsh on the ears, here sounds fuller and less forced.

One thing I took from this album was the fact that acoustic recordings don’t have to sound mellow or restrained – and I think that definitely comes through on “Sit & Wait“, the opening track of my new CD. Jason Rubal, the producer I worked with on the new CD, also mentioned that the second verse of “Lighthouse“, the closing track of the EP, reminded him of the Decemberists. Check it out for yourself and let me know if you hear it too!

-MMcF
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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.

For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/

Favorite Records: AFI – Sing the Sorrow – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

It may seem odd for someone whose primary instrument is an acoustic guitar, but I love big sounds. Massive percussion, huge group vocals, epic musical overtures, I’m a sucker for all of them. And when it comes to big sounds, AFI’s Sing the Sorrow album has them in spades, and that combined with amazing energy (which anyone whose spent time in a studio knows is difficult to capture in a recording) and some fantastic songwriting makes Sing the Sorrow easily one of my favorite records.

The goth-rockers had been around for a while before Sing the Sorrow (a good friend of mine had a mild obsession with their song “Morningstar” off of The Art of Drowning) at one point, but that was about all I knew of them. Then I recall hearing a DJ on a now-defunct Ohio alternative radio station mention that AFI had won some award for the song Girl’s Not Grey. I can’t for the life of me recall what the award was, and I’ve had absolutely no luck tracking that information down, but regardless, it gave me the push to check out their music a bit more. I picked up the CD at a now-defunct Ohio record store, and halfway through track one I was sold. “Miseria Cantare – The Beginning” is a huge, epic, shout-along track that sets the tone for the whole album.

One interesting point to note is that throughout Sing the Sorrow, even though I consider it to be one of my favorite records, I probably couldn’t tell you what the lyrics are to any song. I could give you a phonetic approximation, but Davey Havok’s occasionally mushmouthed delivery has led to a million misheard lyrics. In the parts where I’m left completely clueless, my mind usually concocts incredibly childish alternative words. I swear there are lyrics about “bags of pee and poo”, as well as one song were Davey repeatedly shouts, “I’m an asshole! I’m an asshole!”

Even though I make my music primarily with an acoustic guitar, I still try to work some of those “big” sounds I mentioned loving into my music. You can hear that in the percussion sounds of the opening track “Sit & Wait” off my latest record, and the layered vocals in the closing track “Lighthouse”.

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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.

For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/

Best Rock Albums: Foo Fighters – The Colour & The Shape – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

From the fact that I’m writing a series blogs about my favorite albums, you can guess that I’m a fan of the concept of an “album” – a collection of songs that are put together in a specific way, that flow from song to song and take you on a journey. The Colour & The Shape by the Foo Fighters, which I consider to be one of the best rock albums of all time, is an example of how overplaying single songs on the radio can detract from a flawless album.

A few months after The Colour & The Shape was released, “My Hero”, which I believe was the third single, after “Monkeywrench” and “Everlong”, went into heavy rotation on 107.9 The End, the still-lamented Cleveland alternative radio station. When I say heavy rotation, understand that I’m referring to the “that song was cool the first 200 times I heard it, but now I want to rip out my car stereo every time it comes on” type of heavy rotation.

I didn’t pick up The Colour & The Shape until a few years after the overplaying (and 107.9 The End’s existence) had ceased, but even now, over a decade later, I still sigh a little bit when “My Hero” starts up, halfway through this forty-six minutes of rock & roll perfection. And that’s a damn shame.

Fortunately, even that can’t overcome how great this record is.

One thing that I took away from The Colour & The Shape, when it comes to my own music, is the way it rises and falls, but never loses its cohesion. I frequently have to remind myself that just because I like loud songs, doesn’t mean that I should be loud all the time. Dave Grohl’s written some of the greatest loud songs of all time (the end of the bridge of Monkey Wrench comes to mind), but the loud tracks are given breathing room by songs like Walking After You, which I would contend is one of the greatest love songs ever written.

That kind of rise and fall is something I feel like I’ve managed to capture, albeit in about half the time, on my latest EP “A Failed Breakup“. And I’m pretty happy about that.

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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.

For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/

Favorite CDs: Receiving End of Sirens–Between The Heart & The Synapse – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

The Receiving End of Sirens are one of those groups that were amazing for one album, mediocre for the next, and then went away. I was first introduced to The Receiving End of Sirens through MTVU my senior – or perhaps more appropriately fourth – year of design school. The single “Planning A Prison Break” didn’t actually make a big impression on me at first, but I had a tendency to let the music videos roll in the background while I was working; I’ve discovered that having a narrative visual distraction while I’m working is actually helpful, as it disconnects that portion of my brain and stops my mind from wandering overmuch. After the 30th time around, I found myself singing “Warden’s calling for a lockdown, baby…” as I walked across campus, and soon discovered I had other friends doing the same. So I picked up the record.

This is one of those albums where the songs all blur together into one, big ongoing composition, and I believe that was intentional – there are melodic threads that wind their way through the entire record, reappearing multiple times, binding the whole thing into one big hour-long composition. While the progressive post-punk compositions can seem a little samey, in this case it doesn’t bother me at all. The three vocalists provide intricate interwoven melodies, counter-melodies and harmonies, with Casey Crescenzo’s earthy bellows and screams stealing the show.

For my money, it was Casey’s departure from the group to focus on his project The Dear Hunter that led to the downturn in the quality of TREOS’s music, an their eventual breakup. But Between The Heart And The Synapse still stands as easily one of my favorite CDs, and one that’s well worth taking an hour to listen to.

One way you can see The Receiving End Of Sirens’ influence on my music is that I always try to make my records to be cohesive whole – in the case of my most recent release, “A Failed Breakup“, I chose the set of songs based on the story they told – that of my loneliness upon moving to Asheville, North Carolina, and how that led to reconnecting with the girl I’d left behind in Ohio.

-MMcF
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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.

For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/

Favorite Albums: Jimmy Eat World – Clarity – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

There have been a few times where I’ve happened across a record that has some element that affects me so profoundly, I find myself attempting over and over to emulate it. The ending of Clarity by Jimmy Eat World, easily one of my favorite albums, is a perfect example of this.

The final track of Clarity, an album which is widely considered a landmark in the post-punk (call it “emo” if you’d like) genre, is called Goodbye Sky Harbor, a title whose meaning I only understood while driving into Phoenix, AZ on tour last year, and seeing the signs for Sky Harbor airport. Jimmy Eat World are from Mesa, AZ, which, from an outsider’s perspective, is the same city as Phoenix, Glendale, Scottsdale, Gilbert, or Chandler… which I’m sure is heresy to a local! Regardless, the realization that “Goodbye Sky Harbor” meant getting on a plane and leaving your hometown was one of those “aha!” moments. But I digress.

Goodbye Sky Harbor is sixteen minutes and twelve second long – a track length which, unless you’re Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or another group that makes habits of painting extended musical pictures, sounds absurdly self-indulgent, but here it works, because of the structure: Two minutes of tightly arranged, emo-pop songwriting – par for Jimmy Eat World’s course – followed by a long, flowing, slowly shifting set of looping parts. It eventually meanders its way into a spacey techno beat, which I swear is the inspiration for every Postal Service song.

I first heard this record when I was 17, and from that point onward, I tried to make sure that every release I put out had a sense of finality in its closing.

On my latest record, “A Failed Breakup“, you can see that same desire for a sense of closure, and even a little bit of that first movement/extended second movement structure in the closing track “Lighthouse”.

-MMcF

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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.

For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/

Best 2000s Albums: Our Lady Peace – Gravity – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

A while back, I started a series of blog posts on my top 20 albums. As so often happens with things like that, life got busy with recording, touring, and the other non-music-related things (they do exist, astoundingly) took up my attention and these posts fell by the wayside. However, this series is now back with a vengeance, and I’m no longer limiting myself to just 20 albums.

In the process of pre-production for my new record in February 2013, the issue of my favorite albums of all time came back into focus. When Jason Rubal, my producer, arrived in Asheville, the first step in preproduction was not listening to my songs, discussing arrangements, track orders, or anything of the sort – we spent an entire afternoon just listening to music. Anything that was influential to me, important to me, or I just really liked. Before we began with working to shape my music, Jason needed to understand where I was coming from. Comparing the songs I shared with him to the old list of top 20 albums I’d put together, I realized, unsurprisingly, that they were almost identical. Since those albums are pertinent to the music I make, it struck me that it only made sense that I should wear those influences on my sleeve.

And so, onward with one of the best 2000s albums!

Our Lady Peace – Gravity

I’m the first to admit that there’s a lot of 90s alt-rock in my music. It was where I began my journey into modern music (up until I discovered 107.9 The End in Cleveland, my musical experience was mostly limited to Classical and 60s Folk), so trying to hide it would be absurd. This album actually came out in 2002, so it’s slightly outside that range, but I still lump it in with the genre – Our Lady Peace first emerged on the global scene with Clumsy in 1997 – but I still consider this to be their best work, and easily one of the best 2000s albums.

From the hard-hitting opening track “All For You” to the soaring, sentimental “Somewhere Out There” to the stirring but somewhat overplayed “Innocent”, Our Lady Peace manage to blend a finely honed melodic sensibility with hard-edged production. Raine Maida is perhaps at his best here as well- a little of the whining tone his voice had on previous recordings is gone, without sacrificing his unique vocal character.

I’m pretty sure most of my songwriting career I’ve been trying to match the anthemic quality of Innocent. With the closing track “Lighthouse” on my new record, I think I’ve finally made it into the neighborhood.

Musical Collaboration, Improvisation, and Tour Stories – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.

Every time I go out on tour, it’s an entirely different experience. Even visiting the same towns, the time of year, the venue, the day of the week, the weather, and who else is on the bill on any given night can drastically change what kind of show it ends up being. The best changes this time, however, have been in the form of musical collaboration; some of these collaborations were planned ahead of time, but almost all were completely unrehearsed, and in several cases the result of pure improvisation. In other words, pretty risky, but they’ve turned out awesome.

The first musical collaboration of the tour, and the one that was entirely unexpected, took place in Norfolk, Virginia. I was playing at a coffeehouse called Borjo, where I’d played last year while I was on tour, and I knew that I was going to be sharing the stage with another band who was on tour. When I walked in, I saw a gentleman sitting at the counter with his laptop, and a hand drum sitting on the floor beside him. I inquired if he was in the other band, and he responded that he was not, he just didn’t want to leave his doumbek in a hot car. I half-jokingly invited him to join me on stage later, and much to my delight he did, and joined me for the majority of my set. His playing was stellar, and added an entire unexpected dimension to the music. His name’s Greg Lee, by the way, and that’s a picture of the two of us up there.

The second musical collaboration was at my show in Philadelphia. I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Beth Goldwater, an amazing singer-songwriter from the area. We’d never played together, but had heard each others’ CDs, and decided we’d like to back one another up on a song apiece. I joined her for her song The Letter (a favorite of mine), and she joined me for Remember Me. We liked the duet version of Remember Me so well we shot a video of ourselves playing it the next morning, and have some additional schemes cooking for this one!

The most recent musical collaboration was with Phil Freeman of The Lone Wolf Project. When I was mapping out my tour route, I decided I wanted to come through the Harrisburg, PA area (where I’d recorded my most recent record with producer Jason Rubal). Phil’s latest record was also produced by Jason, so though we’d never met, we’d be internet-introduced. I asked if he could be any help getting me a gig in the area, and he said that had a show that night, and suggested that I might join him on stage – playing equal parts his songs, my songs, and originals, backing one another up. We both thought that sounded like a phenomenal suggestion, and we had so much fun that he asked me to join him again the following morning for another show! That one we did completely without a net – no set lists, nothing – and again it was way too much fun.

I’ve had a few days off from tour to recharge my batteries, and hit the road again tomorrow. I can wait to see what other tour stories and musical collaborations come my way the rest of this tour!

-MMcF
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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.

For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/