Craig Finn is a god. Seriously. When I’m in my adoring mood (as I am at this moment) I can honestly say that he is the best writer of the decade. The lyrics that he delivers in the Hold Steady albums & b-sides are phenomenal, and his previous work with Lifter Puller is also nothing to sneeze at.

 

Add the wisdom and song writing to Finn’s excellent half-speaking-half-singing voice **ignore his extra-boring looks** and think of the energy and charisma that can be found in songs like “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” or “Massive Nights”. Now try to claim that he ain’t all that. Can’t do it, right?

 

Finn showed us that he can turn dirty bar rock into a pretty fun thing and that he can rap like the best of them (in a P.O.S. single that’s embedded at the bottom). Now, I found an old project of his, the Brokedealer, and realized that he can also be an amazing front man for some pure electronic beats. It makes sense.

 

The Brokedealer is a collaboration between Craig Finn and Matt “Mr. Projectile” Arnold. Around 2002 they have released two unnamed EPs, that are hard as hell to find – you can’t buy them anywhere and even the illegal ways of getting music aren’t that helpful.

 

I have managed to find the first EP via a members-only bittorrent site, and a link to a weird site with two other songs was sent to me by Lead_Ninja – a last.fm member that I nagged into telling me where he got them from (thank you Lead_Ninja and thank you last.fm!).

 

The Brokedealer are making simple old electronics – the music is far from blowing the mind, and the spirit is so not up to date that it’s ridicules. But still, Finn is nailing it, once again. He just speaks over the beat - you know… they call it “Spoken Word” and it’s got a very preachy feel to it – but it’s just so right on the money that I can’t understand why he isn’t calling up Hot Chip and demanding a collaboration that will fit his potential.

 

For now, all we have are these rare songs – feel free to send us the ones that we don’t have, if you are lucky enough to own them.

 

Download: The Brokerdealer - Sophomore Slump

Download: The Brokerdealer - The Dead Ones Look Like Dolls

 

Jeffrey Lewis is one of my favorite artists – I wrote about him too many times by now, so there is no point in me explaining again why he's such a superior singer / songwriter. All there is to know is that he is amazing, and now, after watching him on BBC's "The Culture Show", I understand that I'm not alone.

 

If you are not convinced, listen to the man Jarvis Cocker, who, as I learned from "The Culture Show", thinks Lewis is the best lyricist working in the USA today.

 

Check out the video and let me know if you agree.

 

Ever since I picked my favorite 2007 album, some questions about The Good Life have been bothering me. That's why I'm so happy that the amazing Ryan Fox found the time to answer those questions and allowed me to get my peace of mind back.

 

 

You've joined Tim Kasher and The Good Life in 2001. I personally think your presence made the transition of the good life from a side project into an established band. In which point of time do you think it happened if you see a difference at all?

 

"About the time I joined was indeed the transition from solo project to band effort. Tim had recruited some people to tour with him for the first album, but 'Black Out', which we recorded in 2001, was a kind of turning point where it became a band. We still get tagged as a side project sometimes, which usually doesn't bother us. But it can be a bummer to see it in print because it comes off as a disparaging thing, like we're this lesser entity. The Good Life definitely feels like a band in the way we collaborate and work together, but it is different in that we have long stretches when we aren't playing together. But that's kind of nice, too, that the band operates on its own slow schedule and everybody has time to pursue other things, musical or otherwise, in the interim".

 

I'm sure that by slow schedule you mean slow when off tour, because your recent tour was pretty intensive. How was it? Which show was the best?

 

"We hadn't been on tour for a couple years, and it was great to get back out on the road and play for people every night. We played some places I hadn't been before and revisited some favorite spots. There were lots of shows I really liked for various reasons. In Philadelphia we played - for the 4th or 5th time - in the basement social hall of this church that has shows all the time. It was about 100 degrees in the room and probably 115 on stage. My hands slipped off the keyboard it was so humid. After the show, the floor was wet, like a layer of condensed sweat. It was kind of gross but I thought we played well and it felt healthy to sweat out some poison".

 

Sweating in Philadelphia, It's probably because it's always sunny there. How come, in your opinion, so many good and talented musicians came out of Omaha, Nebraska? Do parents there feed their children differently?

 

"I don't know what exactly to attribute it to. Lots of people here have been dedicated to their music for many years, and it's great that the world started to take notice a few years ago. I'm sure there are plenty of other cities with equal talent but perhaps Omaha is different in that there's not a particular sound or style, but it's still a spirit of collaboration. If there were some supermusic diet force-fed to Omaha toddlers, it's been brainwashed out of us".

 

 

Someone should make a movie about this place. Tell us a bit about Tim Kasher's screenplay, which your last album 'Help Wanted Nights' was originally written as its soundtrack.

 

"A guy's car breaks down in a small town and while he's stuck there he gets enmeshed in the lives and loves of the townsfolk. It's mostly set in a bar and involves just a handful of characters. Tim is working to get the movie made and has met with various people who could make it happen, though nothing is set in stone yet. To make an album can be quite the undertaking, but it seems that making a film is another beast entirely, with the costs and amount of people involved".

 

Well, sounds like it's worth the effort. If you could collaborate with one artist, dead or alive, who would it be?

 

"Hmm... Leonard Cohen? Maybe he could've used a different collaborator in the '80s when he put out some of those saxophone and synthesizer inflected - or: infected? - records. Tom Waits would be a fun one. How about John Lennon"?

 

 

What do you think about the way music and internet integrates? How does the internet affect you?

 

"I think it's a positive thing that the internet allows so many people to access so much information, music, etc. I still prefer word of mouth, my friends' recommendations and the random exposure of being somewhere a song is playing and thinking 'yes!' and having to ask who the band is. Sometimes the internet makes me feel flooded in music and like I can't really check anything out but can only stream a few crummy-sounding mp3s. But I've discovered things online that have prompted a trip to the record store: Stars of the Lid's 'And Their Refinement of the Decline', Papercuts' 'Can't Go Back' and Grizzly Bear's 'Yellow House' are a few that I've really gotten into".

 

Speaking of the web, I gotta ask, you know... being from 8hands and all... Are you a member in any online communities or social networks?

 

"The band has a Myspace account but I don't have one myself, though I've had them for a couple temporary bands I've been in. I think I still have a Friendster account that's been long inactive. I should get in there and make sure I'm not unknowingly sending out 'OMG! Macy's gift card' comments to people. The band also has a Virb account".

 

And Finally, What would you do if you had eight hands?

 

"We made a t-shirt last year that has an octopus riding a unicycle with two tentacles and drinking a six-pack with the other six tentacles. I guess if I had eight hands I'd wish for six more arms to put them on".

 

Download: The Good Life - Heart Broke

Download: The Good Life - You Don't Feel Like Home to Me

Download: The Good Life - A New Friend

 

After Hefner broke up, Darren Haymen did a lot of forgetable things. But now he's back - sharp, witty and charming as ever. It’s probably because he is kinda doing Hefner songs again.

 

Let me start off with an off-topic explanation – I know that lately we haven’t been updating the music blog as much as we used to. I’m sorry about that. But let me assure you that soon enough we will be right back on track! What can we say? 8hands is growing, and you can expect a lot of surprises from us in the near future – site wise and app wise. Things will just get better round here! Now, let’s start talking about da man, Darren Hayman.

 

 

Most of you will probably know Darren Hayman from the astonishing work that he did while he was the lead singer of Hefner. If you ever heard anything by Hefner, you probably fell in love with Hayman’s endless geeky charm, his perfect voice, and of course, his way with words. He had this magical ability to deliver purely cynical thoughts, without a trace of anger or bitterness.

 

 

But not everything about Hefner was perfect. They had three brilliant pop-folk-rock studio albums and a ton of b-sides before they have decided, like the rest of the world in those 2001 days, to try their luck with synths and electronics. They brought us ‘Dead Media’ – one hell of a boring album, and probably the cause of the Hefner’s threesome going their separate and unknown ways. The only one I’ve tried to follow was Darren Hayman.

 

At first he went to a project called The French – another electronic outfit, which released a decent album, but didn’t leave any real marker except from that one “Wu-Tang Clan” song (can’t find it to put it here legally for ya, but look for it or buy it. It’s an amzing song). Sadly, it kinda went down the hill from there.

 

 

Hayman started to put out lots of solo releases: eps, 7 inches, even an album – alone, all by himself, recorded at home without a backing band. That’s when I got it! Apparently, Hayman isn’t the bedroom-singer-songwriter we thought he was. When he was alone, the songs didn’t sound right, too much was missing. Around the beginning of 2006, I’d lost hope and stopped trying. I thought to myself, “We will always have Hefner”, and popped ‘The Fidelity Wars’ in the stereo. Only god knows what made me google Hayman’s name a few weeks ago.

 

I found out that by the end of 2007, Hayman released a new album, with a band! The band's name is Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern and the album’s title is just the same. And how is the music? Awesome! Haymen is back to guitars, back to what he does best, back to… doing Hefner!

 

 

I mean… I love electronics, and I appreciate it when musicians try out new stuff. I really do. But when it comes to Hayman, I just want him to deliver those great lyrics over some beautiful catchy and melodically soft rockn’roll, and that is exactly what happens in Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern. So, if you ever had a soft place in your heart for Hefner (and I assume you did, after all, you are not robots!) you will love this new album. Just trust me on this one.

 

This time, Alice opens up her heart and picks her album of the year, "Help Wanted Nights" by The Good Life.

 

When music writers publish their top albums lists every December, I guess they take into consideration issues such as innovation, the amount of influence album may have in the future or size of impact any album had on all music lovers out there.

 

I'm sure that assembling a list of top albums is not exactly an easy task, but somehow, even though there are thousands of album releases each year, and despite the fact that many criterions need to be accounted, still most lists suffer from an unfortunate resemblance to one another.

 

 

I bet most people explain it by wrongly assuming that some albums are "better" than others. The way I see it, music is not an exact science and therefore cannot be measured in terms of best or worst album. But hey, I ain't no party pooper, and the purple octopus ordered me to pick the best album this year, so as always, I obeyed.

 

There were many albums I liked in 2007, but the album of the year has to be the one by The Good Life.

 

 

Help Wanted Nights was released on Saddle Creek Records and it contains 10 beautiful songs that share the same lyric theme as they all talk about short term relationships, the kind that is most likely to end before they really evolve. Most songs are telling a story of an unequal relationship where one side is more interested and more caring than the other.

 

The former Good Life album, 'Album of the Year', was all about breakups and endings, and the current album feels almost like the next episode of the same series. I'd like to think both albums tell the story of the same man, which during 'Album of the Year', had gone through a terrible breakup, and now, on 'Help Wanted Nights', he is trying to find love again. Luckily for us, the guy is going in all wrong directions and there is constantly a sad feeling in the background.

 

The real story behind the album, as I read somewhere, is that it was actually written as a soundtrack for a screenplay Tim Kasher wrote. You see, this guy, the front man of the band, is so great with words that he can manufacture not only the most beautiful lyrics available but screenplays as well. So far there are no real plans for producing this screenplay, but if it will get produced eventually, I'm sure it'll be a great movie.

 

In the meantime, I highly recommend you to go out and buy yourself the album that made my year and let yourself get into a world where emotions are expressed in the best possible way.