Ah, yes-the sweet sounds of autumn.
From the hacking of those damned with allergies to the crunching of dead leaves to the screams of longboarders as they're flung from their oversized death-traps, it's true: The sounds of fall are like music to our ears. Let's indulge, shall we?
For those of you hitting the road and getting out of town, it'd be a good idea to start by picking up some road/plane music before you leave. In order to do that, you probably have to hit up a record store. Luckily, Salt Lake City is home to an abundance of noteworthy local music purveyors who cater to your every collegiate need. Best places?
Take a look
-Graywhale Music Exchange (248 S. 1300 East) on campus has reasonable prices and a solid used CD/DVD collection. If you find what you're looking for in Graywhale's used racks (which usually isn't too hard), you can save yourself anywhere from $5 to $10 an album-not bad.
-Orion's Music (2100 South 1100 East) started out as a hole-in-the-wall in Park City catering to the tastes of privileged ski-town brats with extensive hip hop and indie rock sections. Nowadays, Orion's is a hole-in-the-wall in Sugarhouse, catering to artsy coffeehouse suburbanite hipsters with extensive hip-hop and indie-rock sections.
Prices are par for the local music course, Orion's staff is remarkably knowledgeable (if not a tad bit haughty) and the listening stations are almost always unoccupied. Bonus: Get you java fix while you're waiting for your music-Orion's is literally connected-at-the-Hip to Sugarhouse Coffee, a bomb local brew house that has gotten much cooler (and less sketchtacular) since the industrial-goth scenesters migrated to the Coffee Break on 400 South (vampires are nocturnal, so they need late-night hours, duh).
-If you can't find what you're looking for at Greywhale or Orion's, then head over to Virgin Megastore at the Gateway (12 S. 400 West), which has everything. Period.
Granted, Virgin is corporate, but even the meaning of life can be found there (located somewhere between Sparklehorse's Good Morning Spider and TV On The Radio's Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes in the Rock/Pop section). Virgin doesn't have the best prices, either, but its selection is impossible to beat without selling your soul and, for location (literally right off the end of the University/Delta Center TRAX line), it's hard to beat. Bottom line: When there's a record you absolutely just need right now, Virgin is usually the best bet in town. Sad, but true.
Speaking of right now, the last few weeks have yielded new releases from a few familiar faces.
In the mall-punk alternative mega-genre, Ogden-bred pop-punk behemoths The Used and hazy-eye haters Taking Back Sunday both have new albums out, neither of which compare to Saves The Day's latest release, a collection of b-sides, rare cuts and previously unreleased material entitled, Ups and Downs.
Hip-hop has seen both Young Buck and Lloyd Banks of 50 Cent's boys-only-club, G-G-G-Unit put out respective solo material that scared the Gangster into pre-teens everywhere-even some critics are showing their love. Legendary emcees Talib Kweli and Nas have new albums that won't disappoint, to say the very least. Shyne's new album will remind listeners to stay out of jail, and how can we forget those 36-chamber charmers in the Wu-Tang Clan, who just put out the most notable (and most amazing) live hip-hop album since The Roots' dropped Come Alive.
Not from the hood? We'll let it slide this time-how about some new indie rock? There's a genre that's hard to go wrong in right now: Everyone from the pensive Midwesterners at Connor Oberost's Omaha sound factory, Saddle Creek Records, to the not-so-modest mice running the wheels at Portland's influential Sub Pop Records seem to have the next big things lined up and ready for the next 10 years...and we aren't complaining one bit.
Lesser-known indie artists to look for include Earlimart, Rilo Kiley, The Only Children, the aforementioned TV On The Radio and The Helio Sequence, all of whom are valuable record-collection commodities. We recommend not missing any of their offerings.
But, if you're anything like us and spent all your Fall Break loot on music before you even had a chance to step one foot out of your dorm room for vacation, fear not-being landlocked (Great Salt Lake: Bog of Eternal Stench, not body of water) for your Fall Break isn't such a bad gig, either. You can always steal some unneeded text books from your friends and spend the 'earned' cash on catching quality live shows all weekend long. Road trips are overrated (keep telling yourself that...), so get down with the funky live ruckus:
-Taking Back Sunday, Fallout Boy and Matchbook Romance play on Oct. 6 at the Utah State Fairgrounds. Taking Back Sunday recently released their long-awaited sophomore flop, but the band's live show is still full of egocentric victimization sure to make all the teenage girls scream. All the bands playing this show are popular pseudo-underground emo-punkers (a very popular genre in Salt Lake City), so get your tickets as soon as possible, lest you miss out on the heartbroken moaning and groaning
-Also on Oct. 6 is a smaller, more intimate show at Kilby Court showcasing bands like Her Space Holiday and Daedelus starting around 7 p.m. Kilby is the best venue in town because no one knows it exists-so take advantage of the indie music hotspot now, before it gets bought by Wal-Mart and turned into a parking lot or something.
-Another quality show goes down at Kilby on Oct. 7, too. Sub Pop Records' (the guys responsible for first signing Nirvana, The Shins and The Postal Service) own The Helio Sequence will flatter fans' eardrums with their own upbeat brand of indie synth-rock. The Helio Sequence sounds like Frou Frou and The Elected, with sunshine melodies and rain-soaked choruses that mesh together to create an entire (and entirely enjoyable) musical weatherscape.
-Also on Oct. 7, world-renowned magician and longtime Las Vegas celeb David Copperfield will make the first of several appearances at Kingsbury Hall. Rabbits will disappear from hats and elephants will turn into banana splits-for more information on Copperfield and the tricks up his sleeve, read the companion article in this very same section.
-If you still can't decide between the two, we say go for the wildcard pick of Oct. 7: Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers will play Park City's Club Suede, and $10 will get you in the doors. Clyne used to be the ringleader of surf-bound desert rockers The Refreshments-solid show? No question.
-Oct. 8 is officially the most morbid concert night of the extended weekend, with The Bloody Lovelies playing at Club Halo, while Bleeding Through, It Dies Today and Martyr AD all rock-macabre at Lo-Fi Café.
-On Oct. 9, Rhett Miller and his Old 97s will rock In The Venue with some sweet guitar riffs and songs about drinking. Miller is a bona fide musical savant, and the fact that The Old 97s are still making impressive music after all the years and all the booze is a testament to the fact that Miller and his boys are more than just a flash in the proverbial alt-rock/folk-jam pan. Check them out tonight with Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion.
egreen@chronicle.utah.edu
fkamer@chronicle.utah.edu
