Primavera Sound 2012 Wishlist

Published on thebomberjacket.com

Barcelona’s Primavera Sound is one of the best indie music festivals that Europe has to offer (if not the best). They’re able to gather some of the most interesting and talented international acts out there, as well as showcase lesser-known bands, particularly Spanish ones. It takes place in the Parc del Forum, a breathtaking stone park that is right on the Mediterranean Sea and is studded with trees (that you can even pick berries from) and modernist architecture. Bands play with the backdrop of sailboats and Barcelona’s signature cinderblock cubes (or cindercubes) that jut out of the water in every direction.

I went to Primavera Sound last year and crossed a bunch of names off my list of bands to see before I die. Among them were Sufjan Stevens, Animal Collective, Deerhunter, The National, M. Ward and Belle & Sebastian. The festival unofficially started yesterday, and officially starts tomorrow (May 30). This year has just as many heavy hitters, including Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, but I’ll get to that.

Watch a teaser below.

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Descending the Circles of Bright Eyes Hell: The Early Albums

Published on thebomberjacket.com

"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
—Carl Jung

There are videos on youtube of Conor Oberst, frontman of Bright Eyes and various other projects, from when he was in his tween years. One in particular comes to mind of a scrawny boy with a high crackling voice and round John Lennon glasses in a record store in Omaha, Nebraska, over-excitedly ranting about a record store he loved. There was this image of Conor Oberst with that trademark messy done-at-home haircut, moping in the basement of his parent’s house, surrounded by books and records, writing music and wailing through tear-stained and clenched eyelids. It’s a scene like a the lyric from Letting Off the Happiness’ “The City Has Sex,” which goes, “There’s a kid in the basement with a four track machine / and he’s been strumming and screaming all night down there / The tape hiss will cover the words that he sings / They say it’s better to bury your sadness.” It’s a charming image, but it’s one that Oberst has never really been able to shake, despite all his new sounds, solo or side projects and haircuts.

Even to this day, it seems like Bright Eyes is quickly disregarded by many as being sad emo music made by a little boy, when there’s really much more to it than that. Now, looking back at those early albums twelve and then some years later, hopefully a more accurate perspective on Bright Eyes can emerge. The real relevance of the band is much more than just well penned sorrow. The lyrics are loaded with poetry that is severely self-conscious, self-deprecating, self-absorbed and just about any other hyphenated "self" term one could imagine. Every album is an introspective adventure, an psychological journey into deeply understanding oneself and one’s emotions. It's something like Carl Jung's methods or Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,“ which relates mythological odysseys to psychology and is the basis for the Hollywood movie formula. Or it could even be like Dante’s excursion into hell in “The Inferno.” The adventure is most evident on Fevers & Mirrors, as the album's main focus is self-examination, but it’s also present on each record. The lyrics may be seem solipsistic, but that’s what makes it universal, as everyone has to face the reality of themselves in the mirror at one time or another. It makes the music into something helpful to listen to for anyone going through an emotional, existential or identity crisis…or maybe enabling those emotions is the worst possible choice. It’s always hard to decide. Yet, that’s another constant theme to Bright Eyes songs, the flexibility and confusion of truth.

May 1, 2012 saw the last round of reissues of Bright Eyes’ early releases; albums and EPs that were only previously available on vinyl compiled into a boxed set. The records represent some of Bright Eyes’ most inaccessible material and as such, this group of reissues is probably a bad starting point to dive into as a first exposure to the band. As the records get progressively easier to listen to, even going backwards through a discography mimics that inward adventure, with each one becoming another descent into a deeper circle of self-inflicted hell. So, it’s probably better to start with a more recent release and work backward. The easiest way for the likes of casual listeners to get sucked in might be from the upright pop and conscious attempt at positivity of the most recent The People’s Key or the messy full member collaboration of Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band’s Outer South or maybe when his warbling voice is blended with Jim James and M. Ward on Monsters of Folk. Whatever the starting point, it’s better to let curiosity slowly tug you backwards, and downward, after that.

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Beach Niche

Photo by Adrià Cañameras

Published on thebomberjacket.com

The sunny island of Mallorca is in the middle of the Mediterranean and is a part of Spain. It has some breathtaking beaches that you would think only existed on postcards or computer desktop wallpaper, some awesome caves (complete with dragons) and a tourist hotspot called Palma. Yet, the guys from Beach Beach said that actually living on Mallorca can be kind of boring, especially in the winter. Their solution was to start a band.


If you didn’t guess, its beach music poised to stave off the winter. Yet, their songs delve into a bit more depth than just surfing, maybe because surfing in the Mediterranean sucks. It’s great music with a subtle, charming Spanish accent, perfect to listen to from the trunk of your car while you sit around a beach fire and drink Beach Beach’s favorite, a Pomada (read on to find the complicated recipe!).


The Spanish island of Mallorca is pretty well connected to Catalonia, the region where Barcelona is. The band is also similarly connected, as their record Tasteless Peace (listen here) was released this year on Barcelona’s La Castanya. The label is also a joint booking venture and is responsible for supporting several cool bands and organizing interesting events around the city.


THE BOMBER JACKET talked with Beach boys Pau Riutort and Tomeu Mulet about their music, La Castanya, and the perfect beach drink.

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Lotus Plaza and the Liberation of Yellow Balloons

Published on thebomberjacket.com.

You stand out in the open of a plaza that’s shaped like a lotus, looking at your shoes as you let go of a handfull of yellow balloons. It’s a gray day. So much of a gray day that the sky actually seems to be green. As the bunch of rubber, helium and ribbon transcends the first layer of the earth’s atmosphere, it quickly becomes a small yellow dot in the dusty troposphere. Whenever you see this you can’t help but wonder, what does a balloon feel like when it’s let go into the sky? You can stare at it for as long as it’s visible, but you never see it pop. No matter how many times you see it, the image still sticks with you eerily, just like Spooky Action at a Distance.

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Mujeres, Mujeres, Mujeres: Putting Their Fists Down

Photo by Ivan Montero

Published on thebomberjacket.com.

Luchador Records is down the street from the MACBA, Barcelona’s contemporary art museum where you constantly have to dodge skaters who are making videos, doing tricks off of the entrance’s ramps, staircases and the ample open space of the white stone plaza. More often than not, they’re also smoking weed and drinking a few San Miguels. At the beginning of the record shop’s sparse street that only houses one other record store, a clothing outlet and a fruit stand, I stopped for just a minute to read a Spanish poem scrawled on the wall called, “Ways to Kill.”

I was going to interview Mujeres at the store the bassist co-owns and that is their secret lair of sorts. Upon entering the place I saw a bunch of records on the walls that I surprisingly recognized, which was a nice change for being in Spain, and it immediately reminded me of DIY music spaces I had come across in the US. There were zines, random art projects like boxes of rolling papers with poems written on each paper, cassette tapes of local bands, patches for the “Pizza Army” and even one floppy disk of what undoubtedly couldn’t have been more than one song. What was more, as the band led me to the back space, past the huge Japanese arcade game, where we would do the interview, they told me that they had shows there every once in a while.

Besides being a great bopping rock and roll band with wavey surf riffs and fuzzified garage intensity, they have the potential to be an influential force for the future of Barcelona’s DIY and “indie” music. They explained that there weren’t many bands like them in the city and it’s true that on any given night there aren’t a ton of places to go see music or even music to go see. If more groups pop up with a mentality like Mujeres, places like Luchador would be perfect nesting grounds for music collectives. Either way, the spot is a cool one to visit and Mujeres is a band not to miss live.

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VIDEO: Greg Mullen :: Happy Birthday

A classic favorite from Jamaica Plain that is now discovering the heartland in Austin, just released a video for a new song "Happy Birthday." In his journey through the Texan wilderness, he discovered a lone Prada shop on a dusty road and it spoke to him.
Expect a new record very very soon with the Cosmic American Band (tentatively)!

Click here to read a review of his last amazing record, The Hungry Ocean.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Mullen/326374501774
http://gregmullen.bandcamp.com/album/the-hungry-ocean

Watch the video below the jump.

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