“While it’s easy to cast [Ashworth] as the lonely boy in front of a keyboard, the truth, at least in my eyes, is that he’s often hardly there at all, a transparent gateway into the lives of people you’ve never met feeling things you thought you had to suffer through alone”

In Bloomington is a recording of a full-band Advance Base show from December 11, 2015, presumably in Bloomington. The date and locale aren’t the important part of that sentence though, rather the ‘full-band’ descriptor – what the press release describes as a ‘Dream Band’, assembled for two nights only. The line-up features players from Okkervil River, Shearwater, Mike Adams at His Honest Weight and Sun Kil Moon, as well as Ashworth’s previous project Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. To give them their full due, Ashworth (himself responsible for the Rhodes, autoharp, loops & vocals) is joined by Mike Adams (drums & Mellotron samples), Nick Ammerman (bass), Matthew Barnhart (guitar & tambourine), Edward Crouse (piano) and Howard Draper (lap steel guitar & tambourine) to flesh out the humble solo efforts into things far more exuberant and rich.

The setlist draws mainly from Nephew in the Wild but also contains three tracks from 2012’s equally great A Shut-In’s Prayer (an album which we described as “a tangle of hopes and nostalgia… melancholy without melodrama”) and even a rather nice rendition of Etiquette stand-out/eternal comfort, ‘Bobby Malone Moves Home’. As we’ve mentioned already, the full-band set up elevates the songs to another level, the communal effort managing to inject a certain amount of joy into even the most lonely characters, even if it’s just the small wonder of being alive.

In Bloomington is set for release on the 8th July both digitally and on vinyl, the latter coming with packaging illustrated by Dan Black of Landland. You can pre-order it now via Orindal Records. Those of you who live in North America will most likely have a good chance to catch Advance Base on tour this summer, with a whole host of dates lined up with some pretty cool people. Check out the list below:

June 01 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall &
June 02 – Pontiac, MI @ Pike Room at The Crofoot &
June 03 – Columbus, OH @ Double Happiness &
June 04 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop &
June 21 – Eau Claire, WI @ Ambient Inks
June 22 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag
June 26 – Gimli, Manitoba @ Real Love Summer Fest
June 27 – Duluth, MN @ Red Herring Lounge
June 28 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club %
July 11 – Chicago, IL @ Subterranean ?
July 13 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
August 16 – Chicago, IL @ The Hideout *
August 17 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
August 18 – Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR Pub *
August 21 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 *
August 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Silent Barn *
August 26 – Portland, ME @ Apohadion Theatre *^
August 27 – Bar Harbor, ME @ Lompoc Cafe *
August 28 – Montreal, Quebec @ Casa del Popolo *
August 29 2016 – Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House *
September 10 – Houston, TX @ The Satellite #
September 13 – Fayetteville, AR @ Nomads Music Lounge #
September 16 – St Louis, MO @ Foam #

& w/ Yoni & Geti
% w/ Air Traffic Controller
? w/ Told Slant, Bellows & Spencer Radcliffe
* w/ Hello Shark
^ w/ Lisa/Liza
# w/ Mike Adams at his Honest Weight

The post Advance Base unveils new live album, In Bloomington appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The title is taken from The Pharmacist’s Mate by Amy Fusselman, where she is describing that almost miraculous nature of music. She sums up by saying:

“And how even though the vibrations are invisible, I can feel them in the air. I can feel them, they are there, they are as there as I am.”

A song is a strange thing. The way in which the writer captures it and builds it up to what we find on our records and CDs is unique to each artist. A whole host of changes are possible from that first spark of inspiration, be it a certain lyric or series of notes. What we hear on studio albums may be an evolved version of the original. It may have been sped up or toned down, altered to sit with the other nine or ten songs with which it shares the album. Conversely, what we hear during live performance may itself be the evolved state, an shift of empahsis or tone to better suit the context.

Whatever changes occur, live songs are different to their recorded counterparts, and this mix contains songs that are different and/or special when performed live. Sometimes there are obvious differences from the recorded track (such as the frenzied ending to ‘Wolves’ by Phosphorescent) and other times it is subtler, increased emphasis on just a word or two. Sometimes there is nothing obviously different apart from some sense of  purity, something organic in the single take delivery.

I’m sure even the most seasoned concert goer will be able to point to two or three moments where a live song somehow transcended normal experience, becoming something so inherently personal it’s hard to believe others were in the room. For me, great art is about the trading of emotions to some empathetic goal, the artist allowing the listener/viewer into themselves to see something pure, something to which everyday labels and descriptions do an injustice. In truly great art, seeing inside another is not fascinating in a some voyeuristic way but instead because it stirs a recognition in the listener. The indescribable feelings within us are given voice, they are painted for us by the artist and shared so that others can see. In this way, the song becomes as much about us as it is about the artist (something which much prove difficult for musicians, which is another debate entirely).

Adam wrote about his choices for the mix in his own blog post, so be sure to go and check that out too.

Hopefully the tracks below contain some sort of spark, that indesribable magic that Fusselman describes.

I Can Feel Them In The Air (Wake The Deaf Side):

1. A Few Kind Words (Live at the Queen’s Hall) – Meursault
2. Tapes (Live at WMSE) – Conrad Plymouth
3. When My Time Comes (Live at the R&R) – Dawes
4. Dead Letter & the Infnite Yes (iTunes Session) – Wintersleep
5. Lately (Live on KEXP) – BOAT
6. Something, Somewhere, Sometime (Daytrotter Session) – Ben Sollee
7. Last to Swim (Weekender Session) – Strand of Oaks
8. Medication – Damien Jurado
9. Mountain Song (Live in Munich) – Evening Hymns
10. Red (Live at Schubas) – Okkervil River
11. Allahu Akbar (Daytrotter Session) – Emperor X
12. The Twist (Quietly Now) – Frightened Rabbit
13. Wolves – Phosphorescent
14. Blood Bank (Live at Glastonbury) – Bon Iver
15. Wasp Nest (Black Session) – The National
16. Jeanne, If You’re Ever in Portland (Daytrotter Session) – Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
17. Down in the Valley (Live on KEXP) – The Head and the Heart
18. Wake (Live at the Bowery Ballroom) – The Antlers
19. First Night (A Positive Rage) – The Hold Steady
20. Robots (Live at Shorefest) – Dan Mangan

I Can Feel Them In The Air (Songsfortheday side):

1. Years/Cleo’s Song (Daytrotter Session) – JBM
2. Grown Ocean – Fleet Foxes
3. Ghost of the Beast – Kelli Schaefer
4. Ocean Open Wide – Hoots & Hellmouth
5. First Sight – These United States
6. Nobody But You – Langhorne Slim
7. Yellow (Piano Version) – Coldplay
8. Blackout (a capella) – Pickwick
9. Everything Trying (Fuel/Friends Chapel Session) – Night Beds
10. I Won’t Be Found – The Tallest Man on Earth
11. To Sing For You/Brand New Colony – Ben Gibbard
12. Kathleen (Live from Dublin Castle) – Josh Ritter
13. Outfit – Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit
14. Acuff-Rose – Jeff Tweedy
15. Catapult – Counting Crows
16. Evening Kitchen – Band of Horses
17. Always on My Mind – Iron & Wine/Calexico
18. Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen
19. Since I Fell For You (ft. Mike Noyce & Justin Vernon) – Eau Claire Memorial Jazz I
20. I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me) – Jay-Z

You can find both mixes here as a collection.

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