Case Western Reserve University has produced a litany of local notable music acts: adult-contemporary pianist Jim Brickman, mash-up master Girl Talk and operatic soprano Brenda Miller Cooper (it’s true — we had to look that last one up).
Now members from the Chicago-based Mittens on Strings have joined the ranks of musical Case alums (mandolin player/vocalist Alex Preston and bass player/vocalist Jonathan Schenke were both onetime roommates of Girl Talk’s Gregg Gillis and both graduated in 2004).
The band’s post-graduate work includes their full-length debut, Let’s Go to Baba’s, which is being released on vinyl today on the Mittens’ own SOUNGS label and will be made available digitally through a pay-what-you-want model on the SOUNGS website.
The album is full of iridescent, laid-back folksy rock. From listen one, you can tell Mittens members majored in the bygone narratives of Neil Young and Lou Reed, studying up on the fuzz folk atmospherics of Sparklehorse and Lambchop as extracurriculars.
Let’s Go to Baba’s blasts off with “M2,” which sounds and feels like the lo-fi sunshine of the Magnetic Fields, mixing the rural roots rock of bands like the Sadies with the pop sheen of the Pernice Brothers. From “Big Brother” to “Vacation,” this 12-song set is a warm amalgam of guitars, cello, drums, mandolin, bass and four different vocal leaders (led by Preston’s laconic deadpan draws).
The whole album is full of little nuggets of fool’s gold, with tunes about lonely birds, lumbering giants and flaming pigs. It’s the kind of clever music you’d expect from the Case ranks, with an innovative business model to boot.
Download it for free if you like, but we suggest you give the guys a little donation, so they can make it back to Cleveland for a live spot before the end of the year.
And check out the world premiere of their new video above. —Keith Gribbins
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2009.
I’m more than a little disappointed in what we (30somethings) are given to sift through in this “new” music world of 2009. Immediately upon watching this video, I’m thrust into a world filled with 1994’s catalog of DGM releases that went straight from 120 minutes to the montly BMG flyer pushing overstock, cutouts and albums that to this day still hold down used bins across the nation (see Sugar’s “File Under Easy Listening.”) The year 120 minutes was fed more and more major label crap to stick between noteworthy acts (i.e. BUZZ CLIPS) and acts like BUSH were considered innovative. Irony has found a new low-budget home in the green screen background that cant decide if it’s mocking early screensavers or attempting to push the Animal-Collective-Envelope to a level they’ve already walked away from and abandoned as stale. We only see one man in this clip, and this man has the mullet that we all laughed about over 10 years ago when Wesley Willis continually called him a jerk. A decade and a dead man later, Case Western’s answer to why it costs as much as it does is this? “business model to boot”??? Has this generation given up on learning from past mistakes? Shall we? They Might Be Giant’s are writing songs for Dunkin Donuts and doing informative kid’s albums now.. Do we need to hear a lackluster, drowsy, bored to tears rendition of how a preschool might have heard, interpreted then performed “femme fatale”? I couldnt listen to more than 15 seconds of “Big Brother” without harming my computer and breaking my promise of never allowing myself to be in another position where I’m caught listening to the next kids’ who just discovered Pavement.. The difference here is Death Cab For Cutie knew, and I stress past tense, knew how to write a song when they were quoting and/or ripping off Lou Reed.. I’d expect this album to be sitting unreleased in the band’s practice space for the next 25 years just as is the fate of the next Better Than Ezra record.