Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

I think Hearts Of Oak is generally rated a lot higher by people besides me, though.

Shake the Sheets > Hearts of Oak > Tyranny of Distance > Treble in Trouble > Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead EP

The new EP is called Sharkbite Sessions, and I haven't heard it yet. There are also a few early 7" I haven't heard.

Many people will disagree with my ranking, though.

Shit, that new EP is 'iTunes only'.

I really like Shake the Sheets! It's the first rock album that I'm really into this year.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41dE4YCNQKL._SS500_.jpg

The Brutalist Bricks is the sixth album by the Washington, D.C. rock band Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, to be released March 9, 2010 by Matador Records. All songs written by Ted Leo.

1. The Mighty Sparrow
2. Mourning in America
3. Ativan Eyes
4. Even Heroes Have to Die
5. The Stick
6. Bottled in Cork
7. Woke Up Near Chelsea
8. One Polaroid a Day
9. Where Was My Brain?
10. Bartolomeo and the Buzzing of Bees
11. Tuberculoids Arrive in Hop
12. Gimme the Wire
13. Last Days

If it's better than the last one, it's gonna be good.

2010 is already better than the last 2 years put together. But I mgiht be only saying that because I'm drunk.

love everything this guy does, but the songs he'd been playing live over the last year or two didn't seem particularly exciting. Whiney's super positive tweet review has me getting a little more amped to hear it, though.

not crazy about this one. best trax are "bottled in cork," and, errr....

this is definitely good! really only "the stick" and the acoustic one don't land after several listens. band is in top form. ted gets a little classic rocky on some tracks but whatever. "where was my brain" would have been one of the best tracks on that last thermals record.

Full album is streaming at the band's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/tedleo

He's going to be playing in Cleveland next week and I have to miss it because I'm having hernia surgery. >:-(

I have a couple of Ted Leo's records on my iPod and I find myself really enjoying most everything I hear come on. His voice is very distinct.

2010 is already better than the last 2 years put together. But I mgiht be only saying that because I'm drunk.

u r drunk.

I really don't think of myself as the sort of person who likes Ted Leo, but yeah this new album is pretty wonderful. Lots of it reminds me Squeeze, one song reminds me of Styx. Both good things.

Yeah, the new one is absolutely fantastic. Right now I'd rank it third behind Hearts of Oak and Tyranny of Distance, but the more I play it the more I think it will sneak up to second place. Surprised at the "meh" reviews on Pitchfork, Popmatters, and a couple other places. I feel like this is a big improvement over the too long and frustratingly inconsistent Living. Plus I absolutely love the line about modern architecture from which the title comes.

most of the reviews have been a lot less "meh" for this one than they were for the last 2, which I liked a lot more. still struggling to get into this one, can't see any way this isn't by far his weakest album to date (even with a lot of crap and padding Living still had a few of his best songs). what are the best songs on The Brutalist Bricks for you guys?

really loving their cover of "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" right now: http://www.avclub.com/articles/tears-for-fears,38869/

"Bottled in Cork," for one.

This new album is just brilliant. Maybe his best since Hearts of Oak?

http://www.buzzgrinder.com/2010/ted-leo-retirement-2011/

When I interviewed Ted Leo before the release of The Brutalist Bricks earlier this year, he seemed a bit apprehensive — yet guardedly optimistic — about his future in music. Yes, the thought of retiring from life as a full-time musician was looming, but it wasn’t imminent. However, that seems to have changed in the intervening months.

In a recent interview with Joseph Lord of Louisville’s Velocity (the story is only in print at this point), Leo seems to have pretty much decided that 2010 will be his last of making music as a full-time livelihood. He just doesn’t see it as a sustainable model for himself and the Pharmacists — and drooping record sales (which was also a theme of my chat) is the driving factor in the decision. Per Leo:

People don’t think record sales matter to musicians. If you’re selling less than 10,000 records, it probably doesn’t matter. And if you’re selling more than 100,000 records, it probably doesn’t matter. But if you’re selling somewhere in the middle, it can make a huge difference.

It’s a losing proposition for us at this point. It’s something we can’t keep doing. It’s a simple, unfortunate fact. In our particular case, it is totally tied to a downturn in record sales.

And while his talk seemed to hint at part-time rock and roll antics in 2011 and beyond, other statements were worrisome.

I’m going to be totally honest with you. By next year, there’s no way I’m going to be able to be on tour like I have been these last few years. There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep writing and recording and playing music.

http://www.tedleo.com/2010/07/07/regarding-the-rumors-of-retirement/

the fuck is 'buzzgrinder'?

Even Heroes Have To Die is a fucking perfect summer jam

I heard one of this dude's albums after a lot of recommendations. Unfortunately, I thought it was

http://i.imgur.com/nATiR.jpg

which album? they're not all created equal imo

KInda helps if you dig chunky power pop chord progressions and not a great deal of variety. He's not innovative or hugely unique, but still very, very far from being a dud. The brutalist bricks is the only one I've heard and it's pretty solid.

Hearts of Oak, I think. xp

a lot of people liked 'hearts' but it took me forever to warm up to. i think 'tyranny' is the best and 'shake the sheets' excellent if a little too rigid. i don't know about 'bricks', he's starting to seem burnt-out. (on the one before that, too.)

yeah Hearts is kind of his breakthrough/most popular but imo it's one of his weakest.

huh

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/aimee-mann-and-ted-leo-join-forces-as-both-20130906

hm

I was just wondering what this dude's been up to. kinda worried his 'moment' (Bush II) might have passed; Bricks was solid, but Living remains such a sweeping, exhaustive catharsis that I wouldn't have blamed dude for calling it quits afterwards

(I also challops for Living as the best record -- it's got maybe 5 or 6 minutes of filler? in an hour+ of whip-smart socially conscious rock -- way more listenable than any Clash record in 2k14)

like, if you don't think that "CIA" & "The Toro and the Toreador" & "La Costa Brava" & "Colleen" are all, in their own way, career highlights, I don't even know what to say, except that you obviously never *needed* this music in the same desperate, trying-to-surface-for-an-instant-between-waves way that I did

i did cane 'costa brava' but i think the generally frayed and exhausted sound of the record made jess's review hit a little too close to the mark at the time for me

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10018-living-with-the-living/

course when i look back at mah private files and find that i couldn't scrape together 10 albums worth of records to make a year-end list for in 2007 or 2008, or just didn't have the enthusiasm, maybe it's just that i couldn't find enough to give me what i needed

whip-smart socially conscious rock

'bomb repeat' rubbed me the wrong way, i guess by then i lacked the patience i used to have for the disagreements and flaws one has with albums

I never got the "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb" hate... it's a little smug but I think that smugness is redeemed by openness elsewhere on the album, like the first verse of "Annunciation Day"

anyway my point is that, in spite of the extended outros & the momentum-killing cod-reggae & the contradictions?-what-contradictions, I don't think of it as an album that's "too long" because when I was listening to it obsessively (this actually didn't happen until 2011-12 btw), I cherished every moment I spent with it

I'm with Bernard, Living is a really great album. The conventional wisdom on his catalog, that that album was a letdown and the wildly inconsistent and poorly recorded Hearts Of Oak is his best, always bugged me.

They have a track "Milwaukee" that's on soundcloud

it seems to me like he's really gotten a bum deal in the cosmic scheme of things, if he had been doing this work more squarely in a period just before the pitchforkification/nprization/whatever of indie rock, when he would have been counted more as a punk and when the alt-punk-rock-counterculture tradition of critics had more clout, maybe the music-listener's-syllabus wisdom about him could have stabilized long enough to enter consensus (before there stopped being 'consensus').

A lengthy and excellent Stereogum feature profile on Ted Leo, answers all of the (harrowing) questions about what Ted Leo has been up to and what happened between the release of The Brutalist Bricks (March 2010!) and now:

http://www.stereogum.com/featured/ted-leo-is-like-you/

New album due shortly.

What a great piece, very much of a (well) piece with that recent Nick Cave profile. I had no idea about so much of this. I was so happy to chip in to the Kickstarter, because my limited dealings with Leo (a couple of interviews, a couple of friends in common) have been very positive. He seems like a super dude, and to know he's been carrying all this baggage around ...

That's a great feature. It sucks what a tough time he and his wife have had over the last few years. I love this guy and I'm so glad he's back.

Love Ted -- I've seen him play 4 or 5 times. I did get burned out on him after Shake the Sheets and never bothered with The Brutalist Bricks (which, after reading that piece, makes me regret it). Intrigued to check out the new album.

New one is really good so far! If there's any downside it's that the mix is weirdly muddy and I also really wish he had a bunch of extra money to pay some big name producer, like Justin Meldal-Johnsen, to polish up these great tunes and get him on the radio and/or radio equivalent.

The video for the first single from the new album is filling me with a ridiculous amount of joy right now.

https://youtu.be/ieNMITLhtVE

saw them last night (and as a bonus ran into Ted while he was buying lunch at the logan's circle WF earlier in the day, impromptu). I really like the saxophone addition! It's very Bruce. I was really glad to see his stage banter is as dry and hilarious as ever.

I find the album a bit of a slog unfortunately

Saw them when they stopped in Boston last week -- they played for a solid 2 and half hours. The highlight was definitely when Ted did a mini-set of solo stuff (but that might just have been because the sound person was so bad that all I could hear during the full band numbers was the bass and the floor tom). And I have to agree that his stage banter still slays.

The new album has really been growing on me. Not quite Hearts of Oak level greatness, but definitely the equal of Shake the Sheets or Brutalist Bricks.

Yeah, I've been enjoying the new album a lot too. William Weld In The 21st Century is just devastating.

Thinking of seeing him next month for the first time.