Worth getting up for in January: Girl in a Coma, Red Collar, Spider Bags, Rat Jackson, Kathleen Edwards, Matt Pryor live; tribute shows; frozen samosas from Trader Joe’s; red patterened drop-waisted dresses; new pants; Bones coming back on TV; Justified; Onward, Soldiers’ new album; the Extra Hot Great mini-episode of names that Benedict Cumberbatch does not answer to (MINIGARDEN CUCUMBERPATCH); new episodes of Sherlock; Andrew Scott, in general; hanging out in the studio with Effingham and Magnolia Collective; trading photos for Bulls’ jerseys; doing photoshoots in record stores; flannel sheets; naps. Always naps.

Short and sweet this month. Didn’t process much new stuff, but getting ready to dig in. February will be big!

Estrangers — Black Ballroom: a debut release from a Winston-Salem band, this is fuzzy and catchy garage rock, similar to what the Smith Westerns are doing. It shimmers and swings, and the distorted vocals with the clean drumming and the fuzzed out guitars are all phenomenal counterpoints to each other.

The Beautiful View — life is beautiful: oooh, oooooh, a 2012 review! This is crunchy garage rock with smooth production and indie rock sad boy vocals; it’s all weirdly compelling and I had a desk dance party to it at work. If a garage rock renaissance is in for 2012, I’m down. And honestly, okay, how could I not love an album with a track called “Nothing Like The Joy Of A Southern Woman” on it? These boys know where it’s at.

Christopher Paul Stelling — Songs of Praise and Scorn: gothic and eerie orchestral folk-pop; staggering songwriting; one of the more haunting voices I’ve heard in a while. If you like Josh Ritter’s quieter, creepier story-songs, you’ll love Christopher Paul Stelling.

Courtesy Tier — Holy Hot Fire and The Resolution: fuzzy-guitared bathroom-vocaled garage blues; both the EP and the full-length are shivery and creepy in a really fascinating, romantic kind of way. If you like the Black Keys, you will like Courtesy Tier.

John Moreland & the Dust Bowl Souls — Everything The Hard Way: more country than Two Cow Garage, less punk than I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch, this 2011 debut LP from Moreland and his band is staggering, musically, and lyrically not quite as strong but definitely penned by someone who is finding his feet, and fast, when it comes to songwriting. If you dig cowpunk, they’re a band to keep an eye.

Cloud Nothings — Attack on Nothing: true story: I was listening to a 1970 Captain Beefheart album before this album kicked in on the playlist, and I was 3 tracks in before I realized the album had changed. It’s pure experimental ’70s rock and roll, hardcore screaming and sad acoustic ballads fused together in single songs, and I listened to the entire thing with my mouth open, gaping. I need them to tour because I can’t wait to see this album live, I think it’s going to blow my face off.

Some Dark Holler — self-titled EP: true to their name, this first release from Some Dark Holler is a kind of noir-ish country-flavored folk; rasping vocals and strong fiddle parts, boot stomping for percussion and sweet harmonies. Lots of traditional influences with a just a hint of something new.

I love this photo; it’s such a perfect quiet moment with Stephen and Joah Tunnell, and Joah’s daughter Madeline, amongst the furor of TRKFest 2011. Madeline is growing up as the daughter of two musicians, as the niece of two musicians. Her mother spends a large chunk of the year on the road with about-to-break Lost in the Trees, playing french horn and accordian and everything else. I know so many musicians who are also parents, or parents who are also musicians, I felt a kinship with Oscilloscope Labs’ The Other F-Word immediately, even though I lack children of my own. (I can barely take care of myself, so it is for the best that I do not have a child.)

The Other F-Word is the story of punk rockers, many still performing today, who now have families, and wives, and children — the through-line is former Pennywise lead singer Jim Lindberg, who after 17 years with Pennywise left the band to spend more time with his three (adorable blonde) daughters. It’s cut with interviews with plenty of other musicians — most of whom I have to admit I could not identify either by sight or even sometimes by name — but it opens and closes with Lindberg, who wrote the book that the documentary came out of. I loved Lindberg; Pennywise’s music is not to my taste, but I thought Lindberg was funny and charming, and, above all, a great dad. It’s clear from his first moment on screen that he adores his daughters and his wife unreservedly, and that is does cause him genuine pain to be away from them on the road so long.

So it wasn’t a surprise, in the film, to find him leaving the band at the end of the movie, but it was a surprise, the path the movie takes to get to that point. The Other F-Word does nothing extraordinary in the documentary genre, but it certainly has its share of extraordinary moments of humanity, which is the best thing about documentaries. I wasn’t surprised, for example, by how great all these tattooed, pierced, mohawked fathers were with their children, but I was utterly charmed by it — such fierce looking men, many of whom have made their careers out of utter chaos on stage, being so tender and conscious with their kids.

It’s a long story about responsibility, and how the past doesn’t have to repeat; one of the most moving segments was a long string of interviews about how the fathers of punk rockers were often absent and generally abusive, and how all these men have struggled with the responsibility of growing up and taking care of their families and being a different sort of father than what they knew growing up. The film takes on the trauma of losing a child, the pain of spending years as an addict and knowing that, for your children, you have to clean up (Jack Grisham moved me to tears in several places), and how tiring a tour can be as you get older (Lindberg has a great line about surviving on “Ambien and hair dye” on tour that made me laugh out loud).

A documentary about punk rock fathers, one might expect it to be loud and full of curse words and tattoos, and it is; but The Other F-Word is also quietly charming, and absolutely, fiercely loving. Every single one of the musicians filmed loves their child(ren) with a complete certainty and unwavering devotion. It’s sweet without being saccharine; it’s honest without being exceptionally brutal. It isn’t all sweetness and light, but it isn’t all darkness and mohawks and busting guitars and jaws. It’s life, this movie, and it’s the lives of men who don’t necessarily know what they’re doing with their kids like they do with their music but who are, goddamnit, going to try their absolute best to be better than their own parents were.

It’s moving, and it’s fascinating, and it’s highly, highly recommended.

The Other F-Word is available on DVD starting tomorrow. You can check that out here.

Last night I got to Durham too late to see the Save Our Arts show with the Beast, Mount Moriah, and Megafaun (sold out! Good on them) so I trundled back to the Thrill and spent the evening hanging out with Jeremy Blair and Effingham, who are recording their first full-length in the Cowboy’s studio. (The Cowboy’s house has the best light in the world.) A bunch of the kids in Magnolia Collective came over and did backing vocals; and then everyone rumbled through a sloppy, hilarious, brilliant cover of “Lucille”.

I love studio work so much.

More behind the jump; even more here.

There’s nothing more fun than an amped up crowd that’s at least as excited for a release as a band is; or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, both Wilmington’s Onward, Soldiers and the crowd at the Pour House on Thursday were in fine form for the band’s release party for their sophomore album, Monsters. I wrote about the album a few weeks ago, but it’s even better live — they opened with “Watery Grave” from 2010′s Ghosts In This Town, and then went right through the new disc in order (save “Cinder Blocks”, which is as they made it the perfect show closer).

(Every band should have a perfect show closer, and a perfect encore song; Onward, Soldiers has both in “Cinder Blocks” and “Let The Time Roll On”, which was the first song of the encore.)

Monsters sounds as complex and sincere and sad live as it does recorded, but this band is so much fun live, the center of them with the wildness of singer Sean Gerard Thomas and drummer Kevin Rhodes (who drums with not just his full body, but possibly the full bodies of audience members, too), the sides with the stillness and rootedness of bassist Jarret Dorman and lead guitarist Lincoln Morris. What this show confirmed for me is that Onward, Soldiers have the musical power to break, and to break big, and that’s because they’re better live than they are recorded, and they are great recorded.

Any band that can put together as knock-out an album as Monsters and follow it up with a release show — and I know, historically, from seeing them that they’re always that good live — that’s over the moon, that’s a band that has good things coming. And this is a band that deserves them.

The full set, including a bunch of Churchkey mainstays Hammer No More The Fingers, is here. (I didn’t get any of J Kutchma’s solo set, but man, he sounded great.)

When Lisa at Sneak Attack got in touch with me about covering Matt Pryor and the Where’s the Band? tour, I have to admit: I was a little smirky about the tour. Besides Pryor, I made the snap judgment that it was lead singers from candy pop punk bands, it would be full of teenagers, and I would probably spend my time rolling my eyes a lot. Then I remembered:

• Once the Alpha Site drove to Roanoke on a work night to see Fall Out Boy (and it was a goddamned great show)
• Once the Alpha Site flew to Chicago to see Panic at the Disco on the pretty. odd. tour (and it was a great show)

So really, I don’t have a single smirky leg to stand on. That’s the thing about music: if you love it, it’s not bad. Or worth making fun of. People get to love what they love, and frankly, I still love Pete Wentz. (He saved my life once. That’s another story entirely.)

So I turned off my smirk, fell flat on my face in love with Pryor’s new (released yesterday) solo album May Day, and went out to shoot this show.

First I have to say: whether or not you loved the New Amsterdam, whether or not you loved the Get Up Kids, if you love deft, intimate, heartbreakingly raking songwriting, you need to pick up May Day. It’s sharp and clever and viciously sad and cruel and beautiful, and there was not a track on it that I did not absolutely adore. There were a few 4-star tracks in my iTunes. There were mostly 5-star tracks. May Day is an early contender, with the Onward Soldiers album I wrote about earlier this week, for my album of the year. It is the best break-up album ever, and it made me happy and sad all at once, and it was even better live.

Second, though, I was just staggered by all four songwriters who led up to Pryor last night; Evan Weiss, of Into It. Over It., was charming and funny, and writes in that way that I associate with some of my beloved Midwesterners — story songs about specific events, sly sense of humor — which is appropriate because though he’s from Jersey, he lives in Chicago now. Anthony Ranieri, of Bayside, reminded me of no one more than he reminded me of Dave Hause, and that’s the best compliment I can give because we all know that I think everything needs more Dave Hause. (This tour could have used more Dave Hause, too. Pocket-sized punk frontmen from Jersey! MORE DAVE HAUSE.) His songwriting’s dark and shivery, and his off-kilter voice and disarming stage presence were a delight. Ace Enders, who fronts the Early November, was clearly beloved to the crowd, which was polite and attentive all night, was hilariously self-deprecating and as good in his screamy moments as he was in his quiet ones.

And Chris Conley of Saves the Day, with his lisp and his ‘Bama bangs and his pink Chucks, played Saves the Day’s entire acoustic EP, and absolutely blew me away with his songwriting. “Jessie & My Whetstone”, the third track off the acoustic EP, made me cry, and when he followed the EP up with a disquieting cover of “Eleanor Rigby”, I was completely sold. (And you all know what I think about Beatles covers. (I hate them.) I loved this one.)

Finally: Matt Pryor. He’s charmingly pudgy, he was the only one of the five who brought a beer on stage, he wore a vest and Chuck Taylors (and pants, you idiots), he had me laughing from the first minute. He went through New Amsterdam songs, Get Up Kids songs, songs he’s written for his kids (ALL CHILDREN’S ALBUMS ARE VALID ART, DAMN IT), and songs from May Day. He made fun of the fact that the crowd was young enough to be his children. (Frankly, my Doc Martens, which will be 17 this year, were older than the average age of this crowd. If I had been indiscreet in high school, some of these children could have been my children.) He was absolutely great. I adored every minute of his yet.

It was a fantastic show. I only smirked at jokes. I found some musicians I had never given a thought to before, and I discovered that I really like their songwriting. That’s what a good show should do. This show did it.

Full set here.

Kathleen Edwards — Voyageur. Out 1/17, Zoe Records.

When I fell in love with Kathleen Edwards, between Back to Me and Asking for Flowers, it was on the strength of her songwriting: I am tired of playing defense and I don’t even own hockey skates, or asking for flowers is like asking you to be nice. And after that, it was on the strength of the wild, wide open arrangements — the guitars ringing out and the imperfections in the sounds, sometimes.

The thing is, I think that Voyageur is, in fact, a very good album — it’s Kathleen’s strongest songwriting (i don’t need a punchline from “Chamleon/Comedian” is staggering) ever, but. But. I don’t necessarily think that the arrangements — the production of the arrangements, even, I don’t think it always, in every case, suits Kathleen’s songs. It’s hard for me to write that and feel objective, because I’m been pretty vocal about the fact that I am, ah, Not Fond of the music that Justin Vernon makes as Bon Iver. Not his songwriting — I think he’s a bit of a songwriting genius. I just fucking hate that sound of his music.

And I hear those fingerprints all over Voyageur, and it’s a bit hard for me. I love the songs; “Empty Threat” and “A Soft Place To Land” are both stunningly perfect examples of why Kathleen Edwards should have been famous long ago, as they’re exactly in line with the things I’ve always loved about her. I love the spaces in the songs where the wailing guitar comes through, or where the production serves the song, and there are places it does that: like on “Change The Sheets”, where the muted electronica and simple drums, the shivering wordless background vocals, they’re there to show of the wail of Kathleen’s amazing voice.

I think that Voyageur is a great album; I know it will never be my favorite album that Kathleen has made. Objectively, it is exactly as shimmering as Asking for Flowers; but it doesn’t have the sound I want. I respect, absolutely, the choice of the artist to change the way they sound, to grow and mature and move in different directions. I do. But this album, this album doesn’t suit me quite the way I’d hoped it would, and that’s subjective, which I’m also allowed to be.

Does this mean I’m not thrilled to see Kathleen at the Cradle a week from tomorrow? Oh, hell, no. I am off the rails excited about that, you can’t even know. I think that Voyageur is great, like I said, and just because it is not my great doesn’t mean that Kathleen shouldn’t be selling the place out. Cat’s Cradle, 1/31, doors 7, show 8, $21/$23. Hannah Georges opens. You should be there, because Kathleen is supremely talented.

Onward, Soldiers — Monsters. Out 2/21, Winoca Records, unless you’re in Raleigh, in which case out 1/26, at the Pour House.

The Alpha Site has had a copy of Monsters in my car for a few weeks now, and when we were driving home from somewhere last week, we were talking about why it’s good. It’s not original, shep. said, but they also don’t sound like anybody else, which is why they’re good. Which was the best description of the Wilmington, NC, quartet that I could have thought of myself; taken individually every slice of music on this record isn’t necessarily new. But Onward, Soldiers either puts them together in a new way, or a surprising way, or the song that lies over the familiar music is sharp and clever. Sean Gerard Thomas is one of the best songwriters in the state of North Carolina, and his writing, which was catchy and interesting on debut LP Ghosts In This Town is visibly more adult and subtle on this disc.

It’s the variety of sound that pulls me in, after Thomas’s lyrics; opener “Telling Nobody” is fiercely dark and full of lush piano runs, while “Cinder Blocks” is lyrically heartwrenching against a chorus that will stay in your head for days, with your brain unaware of just how sad the song is, at its heart. It’s an album about moving on, and loss, and where on some songs that’s evident, the best — like “Cinder Blocks” — are the songs where you almost can’t tell the song is devastating under its hook-filled guitars and driving drums. “Highway Calling” has a cowpunk feel to it; “Monsters” is a sweetly noir-pop love song, in a strange way. “Cry” is as close to country as Onward, Soldiers gets. No two songs sound alike; no two sets of lyrics are similar in content or structure, except for that run of loss.

It is, by far, my favorite album that has been released in 2012, by about a mile. If you’re in the Triangle, Onward, Soldiers celebrates the release with Hammer No More The Fingers and J Kutchma this Thursday, 1/26, at the Pour House. Doors 8PM, show 9PM. $10. Be there.

I read a bunch of Continuum’s 33⅓ books! Now I am going to talk about them. Behind the jump: Music from Big Pink, Exile On Main Street, Horses, Highway 61 Revisited, Radio City.

Pink Moon — Amanda Petrusich: one of my favorite things about this series is the flexibility of form in the books; you can take any tack you choose to illuminate your record. I loved this because I knew very little about Nick Drake, except that Pink Moon was a deeply culty album amongst all the musicians I’ve ever known — split between Petrusich’s history of Drake and his music and interviews with musicians and artists about how they discovered Drake and what he and his music meant to them, it’s a perfect balance to explain this album. (I love Pink Moon, too. I heard it for the first time in the Cowboy’s living room last March.) (Also, the internet in the form of Amazon tells me that people hated this one, but I thought that it was charming, if a bit overwritten.)

Music from Big Pink — John Niven: Niven calls this story about the Band, their battles and fights and demons and dreams, “faction”, that is, merging fact (what happened) with fiction (the life of his fictional protagonist). I learned in many years of fandom to call it Mary Sue Real Person Fanfiction, but I won’t quibble with him — Niven’s self-based hero befriends the members of the Band and tells the story of the group, in flashbacks and here-and-nows, especially the Woodstock period surrounding the recording of Music from Big Pink. It’s occasionally embarrassment squicky, but it is also a testament to a deep love for a seminal album, written by someone who couldn’t be there when it was made, and so tells a story where he could be.

Exile on Main Street – Bill Jankovitz: this was fabulous; it isn’t just a look, in depth, at the music of Exile, though it is partially that, and I was fascinated to listen to the album again with fresh ears and much deeper knowledge of the influences and the arrangements that inform that album. But it’s also a companion to A Season In Hell, which is the deifnitive book on the recording of Exile, and Jankovitz’s book is full of stories about everything that made up Exile — the Frank photos on the cover (did you know the cover wasn’t a mosaic, but a single photo of a wall of photos in a tattoo shop? NEITHER DID I), the bit players in recording, the Keef and Mick stories. It was a well-researched, passionate love letter to a great album (though, still, not my favorite Stones record, and there’s no 33⅓ on Sticky Fingers) and I couldn’t put it down. Definitely the best one I’ve read thus far.

Highway 61 Revisited — Mark Polizzotti: well-researched and well-written, and recommended if you don’t know much about Dylan, this album, or the tenor of the folk/rock scene when this record was made and released. I do, though, because there are plenty of books out there that I’ve already read, and I am not particularly interested in the details of how badly Dylan treated women, because that just makes me depressed. A good read, but not as compelling for me as others have been. (Positively 4th Street, if you’re wondering, about Dylan, the Farinas, and Joan Baez, as recommended reading.)

Horses — Philip Shaw: oh, man, you guys — I love Patti Smith, I love this album, and there was a lot good in this book, lots of moments that made my heart shiver and ache, but it also occasionally got all lit theory-ish on me, and, well: I spent my sole lit theory class in college writing poetry about the back of my friend Adrian’s neck. So that’s how I feel about Lacan, you know? I liked the parts of this that were more about Smith making art like a wild woman than I liked the bits that were about feminist theory and whatever shock value Shaw could drag out of Smith’s work. Because it kind of seemed like Shaw wrote this more to shock than Smith even made art to shock, you know? And, hell, Smith made art to shock a lot of the time. So that bugs me in some way in addition to being uninteresting. Dudes shouldn’t get to co-opt art made by women for their own shock value.

Radio City — Bruce Eaton: part Big Star, part John Fry, part Ardent Studios, part Memphis, part soul and R&B, part the South in general, parts Chilton and Fry and Hummel and Bell, this is all history, in Eaton’s narrative breaks and the staggering oral histories and interviews he did, and it is a love song to Big Star and how they changed the world. If you love Big Star, if you love Alex Chilton and Jody and Andy and Chris, you need to read this one. The best I’ve read so far.

When I Grow Up (Catherine Wiley)

I want to be the waitress snapping gum,
who leaves an orange crescent on the thick
white cup, calls the six a.m. men sagging
at the counter “Hon,” even when I know
their names. In the rumpled wallet photos,
their kids’ hair moves up, then over, ears;
tuxes lead to uniforms tight around the neck.
I’ll break after the rush, share a smoke
out back with the busboy, save scraps
for cats who hiss and whip their tails.

I want to be the one to find the newborn
swaddled in a quilt so worn its patches
have been patched, blue cord stiff, eyes squinched
against winter sun. I’ll take it up without surprise,
open it like a package in the kitchen
where the cook hums “Stormy Weather,” slaps
the patties down like prayer. I’ll grease the pan,
watch him slide the baby in the oven,
set the timer for some years. The new child
will come out done to perfection, smell
like cinnamon-baked apples, stay in our
kitchen always, forget the need to cry.