Fleet Foxes’ J. Tillman, Lambert vs. Shakira, Crooked Vultures on camera

J. Tillman (Courtesy photo)

Josh Tillman may be the most productive indie musician you’ve never heard of.

Well, you may know that he’s the drummer (since last year) for Seattle folk-rock darlings Fleet Foxes. On his own, though, performing as J. Tillman, he’s quietly recorded and released (at times self-released) six albums in as many years.

“For me, making an album and putting it out is, for whatever reason, just part of the whole process. I like seeing things through,” Tillman said. “With my first two albums, there were only 100 handmade copies of each, and my third album came out only in Europe. Then my fourth album, there were only 1,000 copies, only available online.

“It’s more of the subscription thing, for people that like my music. It’s not something I was putting out into the public sphere, for everyone having to decide whether or not it’s good. It existed solely for myself and for the handful of people that listened to it. So now I guess it’s a little bit different of a ballgame, although I would hate to have to start adhering to that.”

Tillman now has adhered himself to Western Vinyl, also home to Dirty Projectors, which has released his latest two albums, “Vacilando Territory Blues” and now “Year in the Kingdom.” Part of his enhanced profile _ he headlines the Casbah on Tuesday, Dec. 1 _ is no doubt due to his joining his friends in Fleet Foxes: “That was obviously why I was put on this earth,” he said, “to be in this band.” (Tillman is touring with Pearly Gate Music, known to J. as brother Zach.)

Foxes Casey Wescott and Christian Wargo were among the 11 musicians collaborating on “Vacilando.” But it’s Tillman’s music that’s attracting the attention, inviting comparisons to Neil Young’s desolate “On the Beach” and “the beautiful, stark bleakness of Nick Drake” (Q magazine).

By contrast to “Vacilando,” which was written and recorded in fits and starts, Tillman spent two weeks in the studio almost single-handedly crafting the sadly beautiful “Year in the Kingdom,” playing such instruments as hammered dulcimer and recorder (Jenna Conrad performed the string arrangements).

“The central idea there ended up being the fact that there was no central idea,” Tillman said of “Vacilando.” “By the end of a year-and-a-half, I had all this material that was all so drastically different. So once I embraced that, and embraced the fact that it was so ramshackle, it started to make sense. Whereas with this album, I think from the get-go I had a vision of what I wanted it to do. It’s definitely a lot easier and a lot more fun to make.

“I tend to look at all the albums together, as more of a narrative arc. Certain albums exist really only to set up an album that’s going to come after it, or to subvert the idea of an album that came before. It’s something I kind of see from a distance, as opposed to needing each album to be a better album than the one before.”

Unafraid to ponder weighty topics such as “The Age of Man,” Tillman’s languid, introspective music causes some to find him depressing.

“Not everybody is going to understand what I do,” Tillman said. “A lot of people read Nietzsche and think, This guy is miserable. Or somebody like Schopenhauer. Some people read that and they just boil it down to something superficial.

Crooked Vultures (Photo by Steven Friederich)

“Whereas I read Nietzsche and I’m encouraged. It bolsters my whole existence, I identify with it so strongly.”

Event info
What: J. Tillman, Pearly Gate Music, Joel P. West
When: 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 1
Where: The Casbah, 250 1 Kettner Blvd., Middletown
Tickets: $10 ($12 day of show); 21 and up

Beowulf vs. She Wolf: When Shakira decided to do some final tinkering on her new album, “She Wolf,” she probably didn’t figure on going head-to-head with the debut by Adam Lambert, that “Beowulf of vocal acrobatics” (™ SDNN’s very own Kelly Lin). Fortunately, she makes a mostly smooth transformation into that new-moony creature, the dance diva, while her lyrical howlers remain endearingly quirky — on the musically inexplicable (Alanis Morissette meets Cat Stevens) “Gypsy”: “I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me.” In particular, the four songs deftly co-produced by The Neptunes are, to cite the title of one, “Good Stuff,” and Shaki gives a bon foreign-tongue-lashing on “Mon Amour”: “Read the big sign at the airport/Bienvenue from hell, mon amour.”

Dave Grohl with Crooked Vultures (Photo by Steven Friederich)

More of them animals: Steven Friederich, who photographed the Green Day tour opener for us, sends along some shots of Saturday night’s Seattle show by Them Crooked Vultures, the rock supergroup featuring Foo Fighter Dave Grohl (back on drums), John Paul Jones (the Led Zeppelin bassist, not the just-returned guided-missile destroyer) and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Alain Johannes. Check out more of his work at www.stevenfriederich.com.

Mikel Toombs writes a weekly music column for SDNN.

Tags: adam lambert, Casey Wescott, Christian Wargo, Fleet Foxes, J. Tillman, SDNN, Shakira, Steven Friederich, The Casbah

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