Just noticed that I haven't seen much Sombies talking about Ted Leo, who is in my opinion, one of the best artists and songwriters of the last ten years. I know he's got at least a few spots on my top 50 of the last decade. New album The Brutalist Bricks is out on Matador on March 9th.

Hasn't been much to say about him lately. Looking forward to this, though.

I'm looking forward too, even though Chrono thinks it isn't cool to anticipate a new Ted Leo release.

Why's that? I did find his last one, Living With The Living to be disappointing when compared to his other releases. Though listening to it recently on a walk home, I was still pretty blown away by it. Still an exceptional standalone record.

Chrono's too busy getting Jersey Shore news updates to care about Ted Leo.

Only cares about New Jersey Italian-Americans of a certain stripe.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing these 13 tracks of “snappy pop” and “straight-up punk.”

Love this guy. Thought Shake the Sheets was underrated. Looking forward to this, though I didn't give Living With The Living as much of a chance as I should've. Probably one to revisit.

Anybody gotten into his Chisel stuff? Is that an avenue worth exploring?

I know that I do enjoy the Chisel stuff that I've heard and it's basically the blueprint of the poppier stuff he's done with the Pharmacists (though the first TL/RX album is largely an experimental affair, with some weird dub influence.) I've only heard a few songs here and there, but they were excellent so I'm willing to bet that the albums are worth checking out.

I actually have a folder of the band Citizen Arrest's demo tape which had Ted Leo on vox and I'm pretty sure is from 1989. It's pretty standard thrashy hardcore fare, but I love it. Can upload if anyone's interested.

Personally, I thought Living With the Living was Ted's best work. He added a nice bit of song diversity and sprawl, without sacrificing the pacing. Though it's not nearly at the level of London Calling, I thought it was inspired by the same spirit. The last two songs are as good as any album closers from the 00s. He's never going to be accused of having the most original sound, but to me he makes up for it with his enthusiasm, and solid songwriting. I've heard The Brutalist Bricks is going more in a heavy direction, it'll be interesting to see how much that is the case.

Yes and yes.

I'm looking forward to the new album. LWTL has some great songs. "Sons of Cain" definitely deserves to be on a Ted Leo primer or best-of mixtape. In retrospect, the fact that I heard half of the album live before the album came out really affected how excited I ended up being about it. The whole "it's kinda all over the place" sprawl of it seems more charming now, whereas I thought it was a jumbled mess three years ago. Actually, LWTL would probably be a good introduction to Leo for most people because of that.

Also, everyone who has not yet seen Leo's Misfits Tribute Show needs to do so.

Yeah, that was cool.

Damn, I am getting on this.

Sounds like this guy finally did something worthwhile.

^ it IS fantastic.

Great Ghosts, I am highly intrigued, and anticipate hearing that awesomeness. I know nothing about Chisel.

Definitely looking forward to this. I listened to Living with the Living a lot when it came out but I don't think it stood up to t he others. I really just didn't like how it sounded though the songs were good.

Fuck, they just did a bunch of Earth A.D. songs in a row.

Good job, Ted Leo. You're living my dreams in these videos. I can even forgive you for not playing "Bloodfeast."

i can totally get behind this tread. LWTL is his worst solo album for my $, but still not atrocious by any means. as per usual, useless rockers sentiment about that album and the man in general are entirely OTM. excited to hear this when it comes out and even more excited to see him my b-day weekend!

I came in here specifically to post links to these videos. Oh, man...I would have killed to be there, even if it was just a bunch of dudes playing pretend and living out my childhood fantasies. On Halloween, no less! Better live than pretty much anything The Misfits ever actually did, too. More than one person who can play an instrument. So great.

First video, and you can go from there...



Amazing. Watch and know joy. Crowd is fucking ace, too. Dudes know their shit. One of my worst live music-related experiences of last year was seeing some poor opening band bring it with "Where Eagles Dare," right around Halloween, and I was the only person who flipped out. We commiserated, after the set. Audience sucked. Disheartening.

Anyway. Sorry. I am close to The Misfits.

These live clips are my only Ted Leo-related experiences (apart from an hilarious TMT headline from a few months ago: "Ted Leo Announces Brutal New LP, Considers Ripping A Swine In Half To Celebrate, Ripes Soy-Based Swine Substitute In Half Instead"). Do I bother continuing? Multiple, wildly divergent opinions requested.

Well, he doesn't sound anything like the Misfits. He writes pop songs with elements of punk and reggae with a lot of melody. Lyrics are often political, and there probably isn't an insincere bone in his body. I like him.

good description.

think Billy Bragg meets The Clash

idolatry, at least check out Tyranny of Distance and Hearts of Oak. his ones past that are still really really good, but those 2 are certainly my favorite things he's done solo.

He's a frequent caller on The Best Show, and has a much better sense of humor than one would assume from hearing his music. -Which I like, though I'm not sure I can muster the enthusiasm to get any more descriptive than to say that it's mostly pleasant, but not super grabby to me. Other than "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone" and "Ballad of a Sin Eater", I probably couldn't identify any of his songs by name.

If you ever catch him live this is also extremely apparent. I'm excited for the new album. He's been one of my favorites since I saw the Rude Boys video on MTV2 as I was drifting off to sleep one night way back when. Gonna see him next month in Philly again.

OTM. great description of his sound...there's so much billy bragg in ted's music, particularly in his guitarwork. tyranny of distance is a top 15 record of the past decade for me personally.

A lot of Billy Bragg influence (and he's covered him too). Theres also a lot of dub and reggae influence in the earlier stuff and I think a decent amount of hard rock influence (stuff like Thin Lizzy comes out a lot on Hearts of Oak).

And yeah, Tyranny's a fantastic record. Top 15 of all time for me.

oh shit yeah... good call on the Thin Lizzy

Ted used to joke that at his shows that people yelling 'Jailbreak' was his version of 'Freeeeeeeeeebiiiiiird" at shows

I think a big stumbling block for a lot of people is getting past his somewhat unoriginal sound. It's easy to play spot the influence, and in many cases the original influences did it better. For me, that was how I felt when I first heard Hearts of Oak. What changed my mind was seeing him live and the Shake the Sheets album. At that point I didn't care about hearing a Pogues influence here or a Fugazi influence there. In a way, it's the same way people can like The Black Crowes or Oasis. And like I said earlier, Living With the Living is easily in my top 10 of the decade. There's only a slight lull towards the end of the first half of the album, but everything else kills.

Also, Chris Wilson was born to play drums for this band. The dude is a monster live!





Kelly Clarkson/Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover!

It's always disappointing to see Leo dismissed as some derivative indie rock guy or some stereotypical political old punk rocker. Even though the Bragg/Clash influences aren't way off, they don't do justice to him. As with most artists, as long as you're derivative of more than one or two things, you can mash it up and make it your own. You can listen to a Leo record and hear Springsteen, Bragg, Costello, Fugazi, The Jam, Thin Lizzy, The Pogues, The Who, etc. It also helps that, as Falconi pointed out, Leo has a great sense of humor and history and he'll be the first one to tell you that he's "ripping [name here] off" with a riff.

He's also just one of the good guys; a genuinely nice guy and "punk rock" in the best way. And again, he'll gladly be the first to make fun of himself for sticking to his punk rock ethics. I saw him the night after the '04 election. He did not proselytize or rant about Bush. He played one of the most inspired, great sets I've ever witnessed and when kids would yell out about what a shitty day it was, he'd yell back things like "Don't give up". When he got to the "it's alright...it's alright.." part in "Little Dawn", I was embarrassed to find myself getting choked up. He did mention his own personal frustration with the election during the show (perhaps partly because people wanted or expected him to), but for the most part he let his songs speak for themselves.

True... i certainly wasn't trying to pigeon-hole Ted, you're right that his influences are much more vast.

UR has a shocking ratio of staggeringly OTM and touching posts : ordinary posts. terrific little blurb there.

Yep, very touching, very nice to hear.

just got a promo of this today... very solid so far

I'm certain I have way more "hey this album's pretty good" posts than "touching" posts, but thanks.

Anyway, this thread has inspired me to watch those Halloween YouTubes again and listen to some Leo and some Collection I. Thus, good thread.

I got this today too. Really strong on first listen.

sent the promo today as well. interested in hearing it. I'm not much of a fan, but I'm always interested in trying.

bummer that Touch 'n Go is pretty much done...Leo being on that label was cool.

Gonna have to give some of these suggestions a try, at some point. Thanks, kids.

Not the type to get jealous like this, but I am totally jealous of the folks with promo copies.

idol, you need tyranny of distance, and hearts of oak and shake the sheets are about 98% essential as well. so good....

Just got the promo but haven't listened just yet. Saw him last summer though, and all the new stuff he was playing kicked ass. I didn't love Living With the Living, save for a handful of songs, but all the same, I'm excited to hear this.

It took me a while to warm up to Living with the Living, but now I consider it as essential as anything in his catalog. It's sprawling and yet very consistent. The second half of the record kind of loses some people, but Some Beginner's Mind, C.I.A. and The World Stops Turning are great tunes that get lost in the shuffle.

This has 3-4 of his best solo songs to date (meaning: they sound like Chisel). I really love "Bottle" and "Last Days," in which he finally gives in to his inner Green Day. But the lyrics on this thing... oh man. By far the worst he's come up with. The opening verse of "Ativan Eyes" makes My Chemical Romance sound like Bob Dylan. "Mourning in America"? Really? And the couple of hardcore songs on here are pretty stoopid.

yeah, i'm also of the opinion that his lyrics have taken a bit of a slide as of late. he was better at writing personal songs (ala parrallel or together) or wordy head pieces (bridges, squares) than he is at writing earnest, heart on sleeve, springsteen lite efforts like "even heroes have to die"



man, CIA is indeed great.

living w/ the living is not a bad record by any means, but it's overlong, and simultaneously too sprawling in its influences/approach and too same soundy. i think the record's key problem is that even though there are a variety of influences on display through the songs (ie there's the reggae song, celtic folk song, straight up punk song, etc.), they all sound really similar because the instrumentation/production/effects are virtually identical on every track. the reason why ToD and HoO work is that the production and instrumentation are very rich + varried. listen to the differences in guitar tones between songs like under the hedge and stove by a whale on ToD, or the differences between the keyboard based "the high party" and the drums'n'vocals "ballad of a sin eater" on HoO. they are just much more sonically interesting albums than LWTL. shake the sheets works b/c it takes the best parts of LWTL (political dissent, sonic singularity) and condenses it into a very lean, mean package. as much as i like STS, i think that this band should have remained a quartet w/ the keyboardist. the 2 guitars that they employ live still doesn't make them sound that different from the typical guitar/bass/drums trio combo.

eh. there's no song on here as good as Timorous Me, Rude Boys, The Great Communicator, or Stove by a Whale

"of" his best. Not his best. But I'd put a few of this on his fictional "best of."

fair enough.

i dig it so far but only in the context of the last 2 records at this point.

if this thing is an improvement over the last two records to solace's ears, color me very f'in excited.

it's DEF better than the last one, but Sheets had a few fantastic songs i thought.

Yeah, it's most like Sheets in some ways, in that it's his punkiest. Somewhere between that and Hearts.

One thing's for sure: he can't make a good album cover to save his life.

great to hear that its between sheets and hearts. punkiest = terrific. excited excited excited!

Completely disagree. I like the covers for TOD, HOO, STS and the new one.

I'm still completely perplexed by the choice of singles off of the last album. "Colleen" and especially "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb" should not have been singles. I'm no A&R guy, but "Sons of Cain" and "Who Do You Love?" are totally the single candidates for that record.