popwreckoning

Jukebox the Ghost, the trio behind the catchy,though slightly crazy, “Schizophrenia” is offering fans two unique opportunities.

The first opportunity is the launch of ‘the College Application.’ College students or people living in college towns can head to jukeboxtheghost.com to enter their name, email and school to try and get Jukebox the Ghost to pay their campus a visit on a spring tour.

Signing up also brings fans opportunity number two: a free download of the bands Covers + B-Sides. These future cover renditions ranging from Ace of Base to New Order. There’s also the original track “Ghosts” featuring the amazing singer Jenny Owen Youngs (who has her own pretty impressive cover of “Hot in Herre“).

If you’re not in college, you can still get the download. Just pick a school – perhaps your alma mater or favorite sports team.

And if this is your first introduction to Jukebox the Ghost, be sure to check out their fun, pop album Everything Under the Sun.

Standing in front of a empty front room, Jenny Owen Youngs opened the night beckoning the crowd to move forward. In an almost biblical way, the seats and tables parted and the room came to her. “Thanks for understanding you guys. You guys are fucking awesome already,” she said with a smirk. “Let’s get this thing started.”

But then again, why the hell wouldn’t you want to be up close where you can see Youngs’ for what she’s worth?

With an energy and stage presence unique to only her, you never really know what you’re going to see. With a hyper meets awkward, yet in your face collection of twitches and tells, the show shifts and twists around like an A.D.H.D. kid bored as fuck of his math homework.

Her sets are no different. Starting out at a sprint before calming it down from the sets opening two songs, “Led to the Sea” and “Clean Break,” both from the latest release, Transmitter Failure, Owen’s threw it back to Batten the Hatches with “Voice on Tape.” Though extremely different in technicality and structure from the album version, which featured a lot of voicemail samples and playful judgments by Regina Spektor, “Voice on Tap” also transcends fluently to stage as well. This, most likely is thanks to her in your face larger than life personality that shows she can hold her own in both stage and album. Those stories that capture your heart as a listener, become true to life when heard straight from the mouth.

Her lyrics stand out live, with a simplistic way about them that makes it seem like she’s talking directly to you. Unlike a large handful of indie darlings, she’s not afraid to put her problems out there, stating them in plain English, unpolished or touched up for charming. They’re real, translatable and the same bullshit you deal with every day. This rings true in her new songs, ——– and the extremely blunt a la tongue in cheek hit “Fuck was I.” She states, “the skillet on the stove is such a temptation/maybe I’ll be the lucky one that doesn’t get burned/What the fuck was I thinking?” Seriously, who hasn’t struggled with that before?

The thing that I find amazing about Owen is that regardless of her heavy handed content, her songs and her show manage to be fun. She’s absolutely not there to bring you down. She jumps and shifts around the stage giving those in attendance no choice but shake their ass instead of slit their wrists. Her cover of Motion City Soundtrack‘s “The Conversation” is a perfect example of this. Highlighting her ability to balance having a good time and clocking in to her job, she does a great job of not taking herself too seriously while approaching serious subjects. Jenny Lewis, you should take notes.

Led to The Sea
Clean Break
Voice on Tape
Secrets
*New Song*
Fuck Was I
The Conversation (Motion City Soundtrack Cover)
Last Person
If I Didn’t Know
Start/Stop

Wednesday 10:00 a.m.
The alarm screams frantically for me to crawl out of the comfort of my studio hotel bed and drive downtown to collect the remainder of the PopWreckoning team working South by Southwest. I instead hit snooze nine times and let them fend for themselves.

Wednesday 12:47 p.m.
As I make my way down the halls of the Austin Convention Center with the immediate goal of collecting my staff, I become distracted by a small entourage near the pack of the level one expocentre. Of course, I do my best Nancy Drew impression, sneaking around tables and chairs to get to the bottom of the cluster. To my surprise, my detective work yielded not only my first, but also my second celebrity spotting of SXSW 2010. To my delight, both Erik Estrada and Verne Troyer, a.k.a. Mini-me, were gathered with their management, planning their campaign for the Starkey Hearing Foundation. I add their pair of earplugs to the fifty in my photography bag and move on.

Wednesday 12:35 p.m.
I sneak up the northern most staircase in the convention center, making my way to the third floor. This lobby, unlike the one on the first and second floors is empty. Its electrical plugs are unused and its lounge chairs are vacant. I grab and fill three just because I can.

Wednesday 4:17 p.m.
I make my way south to the PureVolume House forty-five minutes early in hopes of snagging free Taco Bell tacos. Instead, I receive a chance meeting with co-host of our ATN showcase and Big Picture Media president, Dayna Ghiraldi, who also was doing press for the PureVolume House. She walked me past the line waiting outside the venue where I was greeted by a fairly unimpressive forty minute set from Los Angeles, California-based Warpaint. I was kind of surprised to find myself apathetic to their music due to the fact that they possess several elements of music that I’m drawn to. I generally prefer female vocalists, Rough Trade Records and a good chunk of what Paste Magazine tells me to enjoy. However, I instead found Warpaint drab. The PureVolume House crowd, however, which consisted mostly of 14 and 16 year olds, seemed to disagree with me, eating up the group’s set like all the tacos they eliminated before I could get there. Following Warpaint, PureVolume hosted the wonderfully catchy Miniature Tigers. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, the group brought with them the mood friendly east coast movement mixed with a witty, undeniable charm. The crowd seemed into it and this time I agreed.

Wednesday 5:30 p.m.
While exiting the PureVolume House, a concert goer young enough to be my daughter rushes through the venue door with the speed of an Olympic sprinter, arms flopping and her head spun backwards, focused on her friends outside. Her body, still in motion and facing forward slams into my camera at NASCAR speeds. Rather than stopping or apologizing, she mumbles “oh my god” and runs to the stage. I, however, spend the afternoon searching for a Wolf’s Camera.

Wednesday 6:40 p.m.
In tonight’s performance, the role of tacos will be played by buffalo wings. They however will not be free.

Wednesday 8:00 p.m.
I make my way to the Central Church across town to catch the epic cello player Zoe Keating. Her work with loop pedals allows her to build an orchestra by herself, using different pitches and levels to create depth, while clicking the bow against the cello body to design percussion. The natural construction of the church made the venues acoustics perfect for this sort of a performance, though the lighting left a little to be desired. While her performance was great, I bailed from my pew to catch the Brooklyn Vegan party across the street, where Dawes was halfway through their set.

Wednesday 9:15 p.m.
It’s not difficult to realize how out of shape you are at SXSW. I come to this conclusion on my 1.5 mile walk to the Belmont for a rooftop meet and greet surrounding our showcase. While I understood the need to be there, I could not be more bored. Realistically, I have no one to meet or great. I do my 45 minutes and head for someplace more entertaining.

11:00 p.m.
For the second time in two hours I walk a little over a mile to catch an event. However, this time my final destination lands me two rows back from Jenny Owen Youngs, the spunky female artist who also happens to be one of my favorite musicians. Seeing her in the 18th floor lobby of the Hilton continental hotel was interesting. While her performance was spot on her normal range of entertainment and sarcasm, her sound levels were rocky, thanks in part to a shady combo of an iffy sound man and playing in a hotel lobby. But, regardless of technical difficulties, her set still was the crowning moment of my Wednesday. I headed back to my hotel content to crank out reviews.