Years of vicarious experience. Empty and emptied towns. And the Handsome Family, Alasdair Roberts, Mark E Smith, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Leonard Cohen, Gravenhurst, Tom Waits, all of whom are much better than me.
Sounds Like
Cornell Daily Sun, 4/4/2007
Pedro the Lion Alum Wows Cornell
April 4, 2007 - 2:00am
By Emma Banks--------------------
"There’s something magical about a singer with nothing but an acoustic guitar. Without a backing band, an artist is in their most vulnerable state, their music and soul totally exposed. Two “naked” artists, David Bazan with Paul Buccholz, performed at the Fanclub show at Hans Bethe House on Friday night. Both sets were brilliant, revealing the raw power of acoustic guitar coupled with smart lyrics and strong vocals.
Cornell’s own Paul Buchholz, a grad student in German Literature, started off the night with a short set of intelligent songs about broken hearts, headless horsemen, global warming, and displaced wolves. Buchholz’s performance was tender, heartfelt, and enlightening. Between songs, he made the crowd laugh with charming statements about his songs, while poking a little fun at himself. His stand out performance was on a track called “Hot Air Balloon,” a song about global warming. His lyrics contained some good black humor: “You probably shouldn’t have children/‘Cause it will all be over soon,” reminding us in an unpreachy way of the importance of protecting our Earth. Buchholz’ intelligent lyrics, cozy vocal style, and skillful guitar work provided the perfect opening for David Bazan.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Buchholz -
Headless Horseman
by Casey Westerman, The Ithaca Times, 1/10/2007--------------------
Cornell graduate student Paul Buchholz played a few shows downtown last fall, and this seven-track disc functions pretty well as an audition for his live performance. Everything here is just vocals and finger-picked guitar; it's demo-quality, with some endearing recording infelicities that don't detract from Buchholz's deft wordplay.
Lyrical themes here include the self-aware agonies of a brainy young man (key line: "he grows his facial hair / like everybody can"), ecological collapse (the folky "Hot Air Balloon" is an extended metaphor for global warming), and the aggravations of heartbreak (from "Midnight Scare": "when you cast me off so rudely / when I was on stage, you booed me").
Buchholz is pretty fearless about moving outside his vocal range's comfort zone, with interesting results - he's portentous on the low notes and wistful on the high ones. The wordless chorus of "The Three Wolves" is a deadpan nasal hum. This stuff works because, for all its strangeness, it's delivered seriously. It's sincere parody on the level of the lo-fi Mountain Goats albums; it's also like stumbling across the best performer at a good open mic night.
.. Hi there Paul Buchholz first of all we'd like to say thanks for being our myspace pal. We wanted to make sure you knew the reason incase we suddenly vanish off of your friends list. The movement we've started for indie artists has grown significantly and consumes all of our time these days. We seldom sign into our myspace account and this is making several people believe that we are ignoring them. We are not ignoring anyone, we wanted everyone to know that. What we're doing has become so busy we just don't have the time for myspace any longer, so in all honesty we are probably going to just close our myspace account.
Many people wanted to use us in the future so if you were one of those people you can click the link below to visit our profile which wlil provide you with more information and also give you the link to our website! I wish you the best of luck in your music career. Thanks again for being our myspace pal.
Hi, I wanted to thank you for helping me reach the final stage of the ZigZag live competition. Thanks to your support, the CMJ slot looks closer then ever.
To win, I need your vote one last time. Please check my profile and see the flyer, it has all the instructions + the link for voting. You can also click here to get directly to the link.
You sounded great last week. I missed part of your set because I had to go out and get a bottle of milk for Mink. He walked with me, so it took a little while. Kathy and our friend Kim liked your music very much as well. I hope you have a good break. See you when you get back. Say hi to Adriana.
you're probably speaking of my old noise band, three fight pap smear. well, after the release of a 12-minute homemade cassette and two shows at nottingham co-op, we called it quits.
i joined up with dirk from the gorrilla handjobs. (you know, the guy who breaks things and screams?) we've begun to problematize the notion of a noise performance. we're still breaking and setting things on fire. but instead of playing the co-op circuit, we're damaging private property. we're called the crystal knockers, but clay from 23 productions seems to think that's too controversial.
actually, things are really fucked up with the noise community right now.
Once, just north of Ithaca, me and my girlfriend at the time and her sister (who attended Cornell) were driving to a lake to swim. A roadlock existed. We were stopped, they checked my license, and informed me that it had been suspended due to an underage drinking ticket. Since my car was manual transmission, and my girlfriend (who had a little manual experience) had no drivers lic. on her, her sister - with NO stick shift skillz - had to drive away, under my emergency tutelage. New York State cops SUCK SHIT. I took over as soon as we were out of eyeshot. That's my Ithaca story - hope you're doing well there. Believe me, the 8th Note still has cardboard coffee...-Nato
I saw this in Florence this summer and immediately thought of the great impact that your music has had on my life.
