It was a last-minute decision for me to see Dead Meadow last night (May 3). Good band. I’ve seen them once before, opening for Sleater-Kinney at the Riv, and I’ve been enjoying their recent album, Old Growth. Live, this trio delivers pretty much what you expect if you know their recordings: Drony, heavy, psychedelic rock, with lots of pounding drums and bass and long, spiraling guitar solos. I’m most familiar with the last couple of Dead Meadows records, and the songs from those sounded strong. Clearly, a lot of the fans at the Abbey Pub were eagerly waiting for the older songs that I don’t know, and when Dead Meadow launched into some of those songs at the end of the show, they were met with enthusiastic applause.
Constantines and Oakley Hall
A belated concert report… I saw a double bill of the Constantines and Oakley Hall last week (April 24) at the Empty Bottle. It felt a little strange, since the first time I saw both of these bands was back on Jan. 15, 2005, when Oakley Hall was opening for the Constantines at, yep, you guessed it, the Empty Bottle. I loved both bands when I saw them in 2005, and I’ve expecting big things from both. Somehow, neither band has gained quite as large of a following yet as it deserves, but they were still going strong last week.
Still going strong in Oakley Hall’s case meant playing with an incredibly shrinking lineup. I’m not sure what has happened, but Oakley Hall was down to just three musicians for its show at the Bottle, with guitarist-singer Pat Sullivan remarking that the group has been losing members as its tour goes on. Hopefully, that’s just a temporary thing. Some of the Constantines supplemented the Oakley Hall lineup. The result was a less lush and more ragged version of Oakley Hall,, with Sullivan and Rachel Cox switching off on vocals and playing off each other’s guitar lines. Oakley Hall is better with the full band, but this night brought the more aggressive elements of its songs into sharp focus. “Lazy Susan” sounded especially good.
The Constantines have an excellent new album out today, Kensington Heights, which pretty much offers more of what fans have come to expect from this Canadian band after its three previous records: Tough, tense, anthemic rock. The band put on a pretty solid show, although it was not until the last batch of four songs that the group really caught fire, whipping up a frenzy with its guitar riffs and concluding the night with a cover of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” My only disappointment was that the Constantines did not play my favorite song off the new album, “I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song.”
Kelley Stoltz at Empty Bottle
I already raved here about Kelley Stoltz and his great (but too short) performance at SXSW, and his excellent new CD, Circular Sounds, so I won’t go on and on again… but he put on another really good show last night (April 21) at the Empty Bottle. For my money, Stoltz is one of the best songwriters right now, and his live set was loose, good-natured and more rocking than you might expect. Stoltz’s records show a various ’60s and early ’70s influences, but last night the influence I picked up the most was the Kinks, which is not a bad influence at all…
The set got a little shaggy at the end, with covers of the theme to “Midnight Cowboy,” a Link Wray song and the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing.” It was all in good fun. I enjoyed the opening sets by the Syllable Section and Sharks and Seals, though I’ll have to hear more of their music before forming an opinion about it. And it was so dark at the Bottle last night, I’m not going to bother posting my grainy shots of the opening bands.
Laurie Anderson at the Harris Theater
Laurie Anderson’s in a category all her own. What exactly is she? Pop musician? Classical? Performance artist? Monologuist? Some combination of all those, I suppose. I saw her for the first time last night (April 16) in a Museum of Contemporary Art concert at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, and it was just as unusual of an experience as I expected.
On this tour, Anderson is performing a piece she calls “Homeland.” Given her history of commenting through her music on the strangeness of the modern world, it’s not surprising that she would be doing music and monologues now commenting on terrorism, war, security, insecurity, all of those peculiar things and moods that are in the air these days. Anderson’s performance pieces are not exactly coherent, single works of art. They certainly don’t stick to lyrical or music themes as consistently as, say, an opera. In a way, they’re what used to be called concept albums. So last night, it felt mostly like Anderson was presenting a new set of songs, with a few common themes running through them.
Anderson’s music sounds a little less electronic and little more classical than it did when she first became known in the 1980s, but there’s still a certain ’80s sensibility to the keyboard sounds and soft breathy electronic palette of her music. At a few points, Anderson and her trio of backing musicians sounded a lot like a Peter Gabriel record – or was that Peter Gabriel imitating Laurie Anderson back in the day? I’m not sure who influenced who more.
Anderson’s never been a great writer of melodies, assuming that she has even tried. When she sang last night, the slight tunes were pleasant enough to carry the audience along, although we’d be hard-pressed to hum any of it afterward. When she spoke – sometimes in that altered voice that sounds male – Anderson delivered the evening’s most memorable moments. She referred to the models on billboards as the “underwear gods” and imagined them descending onto the streets of New York. And in one bit that combined her humor and political insights, she acted out an archetypal scene from old Western movies – the man rushing into a tavern and exclaiming, “There’s trouble at the mine!” – and turned it into a metaphor for the state of affairs in our country today.
Caribou at Empty Bottle
Caribou’s album from last year, Andorra, was a wonderfully trippy set of psychedelic songs. I love the layers of weird stuff going on in the background (or sometimes, foreground) of just about every track. I saw them live for the first time last night (April 11) at the Empty Bottle, and it was quite a show. The most notable thing was the drums. They were noticeable even before Caribou started playing, when the group set up its equipment in an unusual arrangement with two drum kits at the front of the stage. On one side, Caribou frontman Dan Snaith sang, played keyboards and guitar and periodically sat down at the drums for some incredibly driving double-drumming rave-ups. All the while, a projector was shining patterns on a sheet hanging behind the band, as well as the band itself. The combination of charged rhythms with psychedelic sounds was terrific (although the mix might have sounded better if I hadn’t been standing so close to the drums).
The opening act, Fuck Buttons, played lively electronic music with a few real drum solos thrown on top. The music was decent enough to get you dancing, though it got to be monotonous after a while.
This was my first day shooting pictures with a new camera. See my photos of Caribou.
Bon Iver at Lakeshore Theater
The recent debut album by Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, is one of my favorites of the year so far. (And some may count it as one of the best of 2007, if they were lucky enough to get a copy of it when it first came out as a very limited release last year, before Secretly Canadian picked it up this year for a well-deserved re-release.) Bon Iver, a.k.a. Justin Vernon, came to Chicago on Thursday (April 10) for two sold-out shows at the Lakeshore Theater, a nice sit-down venue that used to be the Broadway movie theater years back. It was a perfect venue for the sorrowful, beautiful, largely acoustic music of Bon Iver. But while I was expecting that side of my music, I wasn’t quite prepared for how much the songs would rock when Vernon and his two backing musicians cranked things up. Vernon sings in a falsetto filled with longing. His songs are a little bit folkie, but they remind me more of the acoustic ballads that a 1960s or ’70s rocker might have recorded, with some melodic phrasing worthy of the great power-pop acts from those days.
Vernon sat down the whole show, switching between various guitars (most of them pretty old-looking), and when he’d played every song from his album, he told the audience that’s all there was and left without an encore. In his between-song comments, he seemed genuinely appreciative of the warm reception he received.
The opening act, Josh Scott, also sang a lot of falsetto notes, aiming at times for Jeff Buckley territory. His vocal delivery was impressive, and most of his songs were pretty good. A few might have benefited from backing musicians and fuller arrangements. One thing I have to give this guy credit for is having a very winning and humorous personality. His dry remarks between the songs had the audience laughing pretty hard at times.
See my photos of Bon Iver and Josh Scott. (Thanks again to Kirstie Cat for loaning me her camera.
Tift Merritt at Schubas
I’m still getting to know the new album by Tift Merritt, Another Country, but my lack of familiarity with the new songs didn’t detract at all from my enjoyment of the Merritt concert Friday (April 4) at Schubas. I loved her 2004 album Tambourine, and Friday’s show featured plenty of the older songs. If anything, the new songs sounded livelier with the live backing from her band, with more of that Tambourine country-rock sound. Merritt deftly switched between guitar and piano, but of course her beautiful voice was the main attraction. (She’s beautiful, too, which doesn’t hurt – but how painful was it for me to watch her without a decent camera, thinking what lovely photos I could have taken.)
During the encore, the crowd hushed down for a really lovely moment when Merritt sang “Good Hearted Man” by herself on piano, transforming the soulful studio track, which features horns and backup singers, into a pensive and pretty ballad. Throughout the night, Merritt was charming whenever she spoke with the crowd, scoffing good-naturedly when some fans loudly whooped at the slightest guitar chord. She seems down to earth, someone who could become a huge star but who really enjoys playing before a small crowd at a place like Schubas. She’s spent some time lately in France, and she closed with a song in French, “Mille Tendresses,” leaving us all with our spirits lifted a little bit.
The opening band, the Everybodyfields, played a strong opening set of country rock with male and female harmonies, a perfect fit for the main set by Merritt.
Jens Lekman at Logan Square
Catching up on some recent concerts I saw… I decided at nearly the last minute to see Jens Lekman last Monday (March 31) at Logan Square Auditorium. Even though the show was supposedly sold out, some tickets were available when I checked Monday afternoon. I really like Lekman’s early collection Oh You’re So Silent Jens and some of his other recordings, but last year’s album Night Falls Over Kortedala drifted too far into cheesy lounge-rock territory for my tastes. Still, I always hear such great things about his live show, so I decided it was worth seeing. And he did put on an awfully good show. Maybe having the string players live on stage keeps the cheesiness factor at a minimum. And Lekman has such a nice, quirky personality.
One of the opening acts was a strange Swede going under the name Honeydrips, who sang along with a laptop playing backing tracks. The dude strapped on Jens’ guitar but never actually played it, and whenever one of the songs entered an instrumental passage, he just stood there, barely nodding his head in time to the music. It was funny for a while, sort of like an extended Andy Kaufman joke, but the shtick got old pretty fast. And the music was just OK.
Plants and Animals at Schubas
Parc Avenue, the new CD by the Montreal trio Plants and Animals stands out in the pile of new music I’ve been listening to lately. I knew the songs were good when I was listening to the CD over the last couple of weeks, and hearing them played live last night (April 3) at Schubas just reaffirmed my opinion. Somehow, I pictured this band having more than three guys (maybe it was that cover photo showing the musicians surrounded by various other people).
There’s a cool sense of shagginess to the songs. Plants and Animals has a tendency to repeat one catchy line a bunch of times, but the band also takes its songs in some unexpected directions just when you think they’re about to end. When I first heard the closing track on the CD, “Guru,” I wondered what was up with the long instrumental jam that sounded almost, um, Pat Metheny-ish. OK, I was off with the Metheny comparison, but there is something jazzy about it. Hearing Plants and Animals do the song live last night, it struck me more like the modal guitar improvisation of “Eight Miles High” stretched out over several minutes, and it made sense alongside the other Plants and Animals songs.
It was a strong showing by yet another Montreal band. What’s in the water up there? Keep the bands coming, Quebec.
I haven’t replaced my stolen camera yet, so for now I’m stuck with my old point-and-shoot camera (an Olympus Camedia D-40 Zoom), and it took me a few minutes to remember how to use it. The lights at Schubas were pretty red last night, so I went with black and white for most of the shots. Photos of Plants and Animals.
A photo experiment with Cat Power
I spent some time this week (too much time, really) tinkering around in Photoshop with one of my old photos. I’ve been meaning to try something like this for a while, and now that I lack a camera (a new one is on the way soon), my mind drifted toward experiments.
I took one of the photos I shot recently of Cat Power, split it up into 96 squares of equal size, and edited the squares independently, without worrying about whether they would match the adjacent squares. Then I reassembled all of the pieces. Click here to see the final photo.
I also arranged the squares into a film. If you’re expecting a Cat Power concert film, you’ll probably be disappointed … think of this of an experimental film. It runs about a minute and a half. Click here to watch the film.
In the City of Sylvia
The Gene Siskel Film Center’s annual European Union festival is ending, and, alas, I managed to see only a few of this year’s films. One of them was the remarkable In the City of Sylvia (En la Ciudad de Sylvia) by Spanish director José Luis Guerín. This profound film is about voyeurism, but not the Peeping Tom variety of voyeurism that drove the plots of films such as Rear Window and A Short Film About Love. Rather, this is the sort of voyeurism that happens in plain sight, strangers watching and studying one another’s faces in streets and cafés. Is that a universal game? I know it’s one I play all the time – looking over at people in a bar or restaurant and wondering what their stories are, wondering what sort of relationships they have with each other. Sylvia captures the mindset of watching strangers with a natural sense of realism and some subtle humor.
The entire film is little more than a depiction of a nameless young man with a sketchpad (Xavier Lafitte) looking around Strasbourg for a woman named Sylvia whom he met once in a bar six years earlier. After spending a long time watching the various “elles” at a café, surreptitiously sketching their faces, he fixates on one particular woman (Pilar López de Ayala), believing she is Sylvia. As she gets up to leave the café, the man follows. A long chase unfolds, with the man awkwardly hesitating about approaching the woman but persistently walking behind her. In a very understated way, the chase becomes dramatic and suspenseful. Finally, almost an hour into the film, comes the first scene with any real dialogue lasting more than a few lines.
Although the humor in Sylvia is never as brash as anything Jacques Tati did, the film did remind me of Tati’s films occasionally, especially Tati’s Playtime. In addition to its visual gags and a wonderful sense of the camera as a subjective viewpoint, Sylvia features subtle layers of sound. Overhead conversations, mostly in French, drift by, almost always on the periphery of the main character’s hearing.
In the City of Sylvia is one of those rare films in which little seems to be happening, and yet so much is happening under the surface. It’s a provocative exploration of the way people view the world around them.
The Siskel Center’s EU fest also included a companion film by Guerín, Some Photos in the City of Sylvia, but classifying it as a film may be too generous. It’s a collection of still photos Guerín took in Strasbourg and other cities, when he was apparently going through a real-life situation similar to the one depicted in his movie, searching for a woman he’d met long ago – in this case, 22 years ago. Guerín sure seems to enjoy photographing women from behind as he follows them down European streets (assuming that the protagonist, if you can call it that in this minimalist piece of work, is actually Guerín). Some Photos is completely silent, with Guerín’s words occasionally flashing on the screen, and so it seems more like a slide show than a movie – more like an extra feature that would belong on the eventual DVD of In the City of Sylvia. Even as a DVD extra, it would benefit from some sound or actual narration. It may be worth seeing as a sort of sketch for the actual movie that Guerín made, but the way it has been assembled is simply too plain.
Boneyard Prayer at Redmoon
Some Redmoon Theater shows are outdoor spectacles, some are cloistered dioramas. Even on a smaller scale, Redmoon shows always feel like a spectacle. The latest, Frank Maugeri’s Boneyard Prayer, is more of a poem than a story, more of a sketch than a painting. At an hour long, with a spare story, it’s a show that’s almost entirely emotion and mood with little in the way of characterization or plot. And boy, is it grim – right from the first moment, when we see a woman laying a dead infant in a grave. The story of how that baby died is revealed later, a gut-wrenching tragedy.
Like many Redmoon shows, Boneyard Prayer stars puppets alongside the human actors. In this case, the puppet of a man seems to be a surrogate of sorts for one of the actors, who stays close to it throughout the show. The same goes for the female puppet and actress. It was somewhat confusing at first. Do the puppets represent the same people embodied by the actors or another set of characters? The literal meaning proves to be unimportant, however.
Charles Kim’s original music is lovely, a good fit for the play’s melancholy mood. The final moments of Boneyard Prayer include a beautiful scene of hopefulness, achieved by a trick of the scenery that I won’t spoil. Sitting through Boneyard Prayer is a little like attending a wake. The play will send your thoughts drifting off toward the loved ones you’ve lost in your own life. It’s not a deep play (and it is certainly not a show that everyone will enjoy), but it is an affecting one.
Boneyard Prayer runs through May 11 at Redmoon Central, 1463 W. Hubbard St., Chicago (the only theater I know that must be entered through an industrial parking lot). www.redmoon.org
Citay, Cryptacize and Rock Falls
Two of the bands I wanted to see at SXSW but missed, Cryptacize and Citay, were in Chicago last night (March 29) for a show at the Hideout. The night started with a local act, Rock Falls, which is one of those “bands” that is basically one singer-songwriter, in this case is Annie Reese. She has a new single out (yes, an actual vinyl single) on the Cardboard Sangria, and one of her labelmates, Dan Schneider of the wonderful Singleman Affair sat in with her last night on guitar and banjo. Rock Falls play some awfully nice folk music, leaning toward the old-fashioned style that blends a bit of country with the minor chords and swooning melodies of the Great American Songbook, and Reese crooned it all in a lovely voice.
Cryptacize, an Oakland band on the Asthmatic Kitty label and includes former Deerhoof member Chris Cohen, plays an oddball sort of naive folk rock. Think of Mo Tucker singing “I’m Sticking With You” for the Velvet Underground and mix in an early Pixies guitar riff and some, well, how about the Tinklers? OK, few people are going to get that reference. Think campfire songs deconstructed. Cryptacize plays its songs in pieces. First a little drumming. Then the drumming stops and there’s a little bit of autoharp and singing. Then there’s a loud burst of guitar. Then there’s some drumming. And sometimes, it all comes together. But for the most part, it feels fragmented. It’s disconcerting and will probably drive some listeners crazy, but I loved it. When Cohen and Nedelle Torisi brought their voices together in the whimsical “Cosmic Sing-Along” for the final song, it was highly charming.
Citay, hailing from San Francisco, played music that sounded downright prog, with extended instrumental sections (not really solos, though) that included more than a little bit of Yes or King Crimson. The band’s attitude and vocals, however, sound much less pretentious and much more natural than you’d expect. I’m not sure if the epics were quite epic enough, but Citay was pretty interesting.
Schubas quadruple bill
A couple of months ago, I was excited to hear that the Ruby Suns and Throw Me the Statue were playing on the same night at Schubas – and they weren’t even the headliners. They were two of the three bands on a bill headlined by Le Loup. And then Schubas expanded the lineup even more, adding a fourth band, Bodies of Water, and putting them at the top of the bill. It almost seemed like a mini-festival when the show finally came on Friday (March 28).
I had seen Throw Me the Statue and the Ruby Suns recently at SXSW, but was glad to see both bands again. If I’m not mistaken, Throw Me the Statue played several songs different from the ones I saw them play in Austin, with a little more emphasis on the quieter tunes featuring keyboards, Melodica and xylophone prominently. As I mentioned before on my blog, the Ruby Suns set I saw in Austin was marred by extraneous noise and time delays, so it was great to actually hear a real set by them at Schubas. Ryan McPhun and his two bandmates are really too small of a crew to pull off the layered arrangements on their new album Sea Lion. This band could really include some five or six musicians doing all of the various parts, but instead the Ruby Suns use looping pedals to create a fun but occasionally ramshackle pop music with Beach Boys harmonies, some lovely flute solos and even singing in the Maori language. I like the way McPhun drums standing up at the front of the stage, injecting the drumming parts in some portions of the songs and then switching to guitar. For a guy who grew up in California before moving to New Zealand, he certainly seems to have picked up a Kiwi accent.
I was less familiar with Le Loup and Bodies of Water, but I listened to the most recent records by both bands before seeing Friday’s show and liked what I heard. With seven members, Le Loup plays music that is surprisingly lean and stripped down in some ways, but with lots of percussion in the big climax. Bodies of Water is a simpler four-person band, but that’s not to say their music is simple. At many points, all four members (two men and two women) were singing together, and the harmonies were out-of-the-ordinary and compelling. As with some of the bands I saw recently at SXSW (including Megafaun and Noah and the Whale), Bodies of Water shows influences from folk music that go beyond the typical Bob Dylan influence to older sources.
My trusty old camera was stolen last week (while sitting in the trunk of my car during the Boredoms concert, which I was unable to bring it into), so at the moment, I’m without a camera of my own. However, my friend and fellow photographer Kirstie, aka Kirstiecat, loaned me her camera for a while. Thanks to Kirstie for that generous favor. I was a little out of sorts when it came to photographing, however, so I can’t say I’m all that pleased with my shots from this show or the one on Saturday at the Hideout, but here you go anyway… Photos of Le Loup and Bodies of Water.
Boredoms make some holy noise
Boredoms, the revered Japanese rock ensemble, played one of the shows of the year last night (March 26) at the Congress Theatre in Chicago. The thrust of the music was primitive and tribal, but it was sophisticated in the details. You could let the powerful drumming, the beautiful but incomprehensible war cries and the throbbing electronics wash over you. The band might seem to be playing with wild abandon, like animals let loose on their instruments. But listen more closely and it was as smart as a symphony, with the three percussionists playing complex, overlapping patterns.
The stage was out on the venue’s floor, with Boredoms playing “in the round,” fans on all sides. The setup was a little awkward, but it worked, and the centerpiece of the stage was an assembly of seven guitars into a sort of tower (four guitars pointing left, three pointing right), which Boredoms’ main singer, Eye, periodically hammered at with a pole.
As dominated as the show was by noise, one of the most remarkable moments came early in the night, when all the drumming and sounds abruptly stopped, and all of the musicians paused, their bodies poised to bang away again. The band paused and paused. It was the sort of moment when fans at some concerts will assume that a song is over and start clapping, but everyone at the Boredoms show knew that this moment of silence was part of the music. The vast room was deadly quiet, no one making a sound, except an intake of breath. I could feel the audience recognizing something special in the moment. And then the hammer fell and the drumming resumed with more force than ever.
The first of the opening acts was the Human Bell, another act on the Thrill Jockey label, who played a nice set of their instrumental rock, which is built around short, repeating motifs played with intensity. The second act was Soft Circle (aka drummer Hisham Bharoocha), whose music I was not familiar with. From my vantage point back in the middle of the auditorium, the mix was muddy and the music, mostly electronic loops with live drumming, seemed nondescript.
Post-SXSW, the music goes on
After all those SXSW photos and reviews, I haven’t had much energy to write lately, but I did manage to make it out to some concerts. In fact, against my better judgment, I had a ticket to see the Magnetic Fields March 16 at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, just a few hours after my plane from Austin landed. I say it was against my better judgment just because I feared I would feel like a zombie after five straight days of non-stop music. As it turned out, I didn’t feel all that drained, and this turned out to be a fabulous show I would have hated to miss.
The Magnetic Fields were playing six shows over three days at the Old Town School, and I saw the first show on the final night of their visit. Unlike the feedback-drenched Jesus and Mary Chain sound of their new album, the aptly titled Distortion, the concert featured Stephen Merritt and his group performing in a sort of string quartet meets folk-rock band format. That’s actually how I prefer my Magnetic Fields music, though I wouldn’t mind hearing them do a few louder songs in concert sometime. They played an excellent selection of songs from Distortion plus of course some oldies from 69 Love Songs and other records, with lots of dryly witty banter between Claudia Gonson and Merritt (Gonson does most of the talking, leaving Merritt to respond with grumpy one-liners). Shirley Simms on vocals (and Sally Timms, who guested on one song) added to the beauty of the songs. I did not take photos at this show, but kirstiecat has photos from one of the March 14 shows.
On March 17, rather than doing anything Irish for St. Patrick’s Day, I saw Norwegian singer Hanne Hukkelberg perform a lovely set of her quirky songs at Schubas. I’ve only listened to her music a little bit, but I’m definitely going to spend more time with it now. See my photos of Hanne Hukkelberg. I also enjoyed the opening sets by Boat, who played a sort of folk chamber music, and Haley Bonar, whose music is more traditional singer-songwriter alt-country. See my photos of Haley Bonar and Boat.
On March 19, I went to see the reunited British punk band the Slits at Subterranean. When I walked in, the second of four bands that night was about to start. The guitar-and-drums duo Shellshag played a chaotic set. It was fun at moments, and I sensed some good melodies in the songs, but the loose, shambling quality of the performance distracted me too much. I felt like a sober person watching drunk or stoned people having fun. Sometimes, watching people having fun is fun in and of itself. Other times… well, you just feel like you’re not in on the joke. The next band up was Old Time Relijun, who have enough of a following that they might normally be the headliners. After seeing them live (but not really knowing their records), I have to say: Meh, I guess that just ain’t for me. But hey, the fans liked it. They loudly urged the band to do an encore, but it was time for the Slits. Now, the Slits are a band I know mostly by reputation. I have heard and enjoyed their 1979 record Cut, but I can’t say I’ve paid much attention to the Slits. Singer Ari Up and bassist Tessa Pollitt are back together now as the Slits, playing with three much younger musicians as their backup band. Up has a goofy stage personality that matches her gold pants and long dreadlocks, and for most of this show, the fun was fairly infectious. After a while, though, the concert devolved into too much between-song goofing around. The guitarist complained, “I’m bored,” at one point – a joke, no doubt, but she had a point. And the second half of the concert focused too much on the Slits’ newer reggae music than its old punk rock for my tastes. Still, I have to give these ladies credit for bringing back the Slits. See my photos of the Slits, Old Time Relijun and Shellshag.
After a concert-free weekend, I was at the Empty Bottle on Monday (March 24) for a late show by British Sea Power. I missed BSP a few times when I was in Austin, and I definitely did not want to miss them again. They really tore down the place with strong versions of tracks off their new record, Do You Like Rock Music? (I take it that’s a rhetorical question) and some older songs. The concert captured what I like best about British Sea Power’s records, that tension between the ragged edges of their punkier tunes and the grandeur of their epic numbers, with transitions and segues that shouldn’t work but somehow do. At the end of the show, the members of BSP were on top of amps, on top of audience members, and on top of one another – and there was no need for an encore to follow up that dramatic climax. (Besides, it was pushing 2 a.m. on a Monday night.) See my photos of British Sea Power. One of my local favorites, the 1900s, opened for BSP. I’ve said enough about them in the past, so I’ll just say they played a strong set including one new song, and I was glad to see them again. See my photos of the 1900s.
SXSW Recap: Saturday, March 15
I started out the final day of SXSW at the SX Seattle Party, over at the Palm Door, a cool room I’d never seen before. THROW ME THE STATUE played a strong set of tunes from its debut album Moonbeams, which recently came out on Secretly Canadian. I interviewed the band’s singer-songwriter, Scott Reitherman, for the February issue of Paste magazine. It’s a really good record, but the one thing I was wondering about was how it would translate in concert. Throw Me the Statue started out as a one-man home-recording project, with Reitherman playing almost everything, but now he’s formed an actual band. It was an unqualified success at this show, with a loose, hard-rocking sound that didn’t obscure the lively, smart nature of Reitherman’s songs. PHOTOS / Download “About to Walk.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon at the French Legation Museum, where the Press Here publicity firm was hosting a “garden party” with a stellar lineup. The first act I caught was NOAH AND THE WHALE, whom I had seen a little bit the other night. Seeing them a second time confirmed my sense that this is a band to watch, with some nice folk influences outside of the usual kind of folk you hear in rock. Lead singer Charlie Fink recounted running into Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. He was amused by the fact that Gibbons carries around a stack of photographs of himself, to hand out to autograph seekers. English singer-songwriter LAURA MARLING sang harmony vocals with Noah and the Whale, and then she played a set of her own. Marling performs with an oddly blank expression and little obvious emotion, but her songs were pretty. PHOTOS
I’m not sure what to make of LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION, aka Dev Hynes, who played next. I do like his debut album better than the music of his old band, Test Icicles (which his press material accurately describes as “aggro-punk/electro-noise thrashings”), but so far, the songs aren’t really sticking with me. In concert, Hynes played his songs with an acoustic guitar, giving them a bit of a folk-pop flavor, but with a meandering quality that sounded more like Stephen Malkmus. It wasn’t bad, but I felt ready for the set to end by the time it did. PHOTOS
Next up was another great set by SONS AND DAUGHTERS (PHOTOS), followed by J MASCIS bending strings and shaking his acoustic guitar with impressive force. (I had the unusual vantage point of watching Mascis over the top of his amplifier, which was facing toward him, with the tubes on the back facing out toward me and the audience.) PHOTOS
The next set was a rare opportunity to hear THURSTON MOORE AND THE NEW WAVE BANDITS play songs from Moore’s excellent 2007 solo album, Trees Outside the Academy. Like the album, this performance showed how strong Moore’s songwriting and guitar playing are even when you turn down the feedback and put it in more of an acoustic format. His band included Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, guitarist Chris Brokaw, violinist Samara Lubelski and bassist Matt Heyner, and Moore showed a good-natured sense of humor as the band set up and he dealt with a drooping microphone stand. He jokingly did an impression of Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmeister, singing up into the mike – “We’re doing this one Lemmy-style.” And he introduced the band as “Bromance,” defining the term as two dudes who really like each other. PHOTOS
I’m a huge fan of M. Ward, so I was looking forward to seeing and hearing his collaboration with actress Zooey Deschanel in the band SHE & HIM, who were next on the Garden Party bill. Deschanel’s good looks and movie-starlet status drew a lot of attention at SXSW. I hadn’t yet heard their album when I saw the show on Saturday, and I came away with the impression that the ballads were a little too simple or sleepy while the more retro-rock numbers featuring more prominent guitar licks from Ward were cool. Deschanel has a good voice, with a crystal-clear tone, not much in the way of vibrato. Now that I’ve listened to She & Him’s Vol. 1 a grand total of one time, I like what I’ve heard. Deschanel’s understated music with Ward reminded me of Dusty Springfield’s classics. It remains to be seen whether this album will merely be a pleasant diversion or something that grows on me with repeated listens, but I’m sure I will be listening. PHOTOS
A singer about as far away from Zooey Deschanel as you can imagine is the legendary JANDEK, who released dozens of homemade recordings in obscurity and built a cult reputation as one of rock’s most reclusive eccentrics. He has played a few concerts in the last few years, but my first time seeing him was this SXSW gig at Central Presbyterian Church, part of a showcase for Signal to Noise, a magazine where I’m a contributor. Standing at an angle from the audience, Jandek took his position in front of a music stand, a tall, thin figure dressed in a dark suit and hat. A group of several musicians (who were apparently given only vague instructions about what to play) built an amorphous and improvised swell of banjo, pedal steel, violin, guitar, drums, upright bass and female backup vocals to accompany Jandek’s singing, which drifted along in quasi-country dirges. I did not realize until after the concert was over that the drummer, who was wearing a straw hat and occasionally using fly swatters for drumsticks, was none other than Will Johnson, the lead singer of Centro-matic. At the end, when the audience gave Jandek a resounding round of applause, he continued facing away from the crowd and after pausing for a moment, disappeared. I walked outside, thinking I might try to see an M. Ward show down the street, only to see that the line was long, and walked back to Central Presbyterian for the next show. While I was out on the street, I overheard a guy talking about the Jandek show he had just witnessed. “That was amazing,” he told his friends. “There were parts where it was like I was on mushrooms.” PHOTOS
The next set at Central Presbyterian was by CHRISTINA CARTER & SHAWN DAVID McMILLEN. Earlier in the day, Thurston Moore had dedicated a song to Carter, an old friend of his who is best known as the singer for Charalambides, and sure enough, Moore and some of his bandmates were in a balcony at the church now, watching Carter play with McMillen. I find Carter’s music mesmerizing, though I can imagine that many listeners would be impatient with its slowly drifting melodies. There’s a stillness at the heart of her music, which I could feel very strongly at this performance, probably the best one I saw Saturday night. But while I normally associate stillness with peace, I also feel something unsettling in Carter’s quiet musical meditations. PHOTOS
I spent the next hour wandering in search of something. I ended up for a time at the Soho Lounge, where the Get Hip showcase featured a lineup of garage bands. I liked the energy of the two bands I saw, MONDO TOPLESS and THE UGLYBEATS, and under other circumstances, I might have stuck around to hear more. PHOTOS Back on the quest, I stopped into the Dirty Dog Bar to see NEVA DINOVA, a band on the Saddle Creek label. Unfortunately, the two or three songs I heard seemed pretty generic (not a quality I normally associate with Saddle Creek) and possibly even boring.
So I ended up in the final part of the hour over at the Park the Van/Daytrotter showcase at Emo’s Annex. I stayed put for the rest of the night, noticing how the last three bands, THE TEETH, THE SPINTO BAND and DR. DOG, all shared a similar sense of joy and energy. All three bands had a tendency to cartwheel around on the stage during their shows. I’m not so familiar with the music of The Teeth, but their performance was pretty impressive. The Spinto Band’s album never really clicked with me, but they have a few outstanding songs, and their set was very lively. PHOTOS OF THE THE TEETH AND THE SPINTO BAND.
Dr. Dog have been one of my favorite live bands since I saw them open for M. Ward a few years ago at Schubas, and they were my top band of SXSW 2006. I still don’t think they’ve released a studio recording that reaches their full potential, but their records are filled with some wonderful songs featuring sophisticated harmonies and chord changes that remind me of late-period Beatles as well as the Faces and Beach Boys. In concert, the band raves it up by cavorting across the stage, but it never loses sight of the little melodic subtleties that make its songs so attractive. Bassist Toby Leaman seemed distracted or even angry at some problems with hearing his monitor, but he never let that get in the way of putting on a smashing performance. The members of Delta Spirit joined them onstage for the clarion call of the final song, “Wake Up.” Singing a song with that title at the end of the night (and end of the festival) may sound paradoxical, but I couldn’t think of a more apt way to end the week. PHOTOS
OK, that wraps up my SXSW recaps – though I’ll probably have some other random thoughts trickling out of my brain. And I do plan to follow up on some of the bands I saw or heard about.
SXSW Recap: Friday, March 14
For me, Friday started with a noontime show by MAGIC BULLETS, which I just happened to walk into at the Red Eyed Fly while killing time before the Spin party down the street. The band, from San Francisco, was pretty entertaining, with the gangly lead singer jumping around the stage with unabashedly geeky moves. PHOTOS
The Spin party at Stubb’s had a strong lineup – except for those first two bands. I won’t dwell long on how much I hated SWITCHES and BEN JELEN, other than saying both acts seemed like complete musical dreck as far as I could hear. The free food and beer alleviated my pain somewhat. The rest of the afternoon was excellent, starting with THE WHIGS, whom I’ve written about here before. The Whigs whipped through their songs with all of their usual vigor and closed with “Half a World Away,” a quieter, keyboard-based song that reveals their ’60s influences clearer than the loud rock numbers. Good show. PHOTOS
THE RAVEONETTES followed, playing their trademark feedback-drenched chilly pop. I like the Raveonettes pretty well, but they aren’t the most dynamic band onstage. They do a decent job of duplicating the records, but they don’t elevate the music to a higher level. At least, that’s my experience after seeing them twice. It was nice to actually see them in bright light this time, aiding my photographic efforts, though they are really a band meant for the darkness. PHOTOS
VAMPIRE WEEKEND are one of the buzz bands of the moment. I guess I should have seen them back when they were playing a small venue like Schubas in December, before they landed on the cover of Spin magazine with the headline “THE YEAR’S BEST NEW BAND…ALREADY!?” The answer to that question is clearly no, in my opinion. It’s not that I don’t like Vampire Weekend, but they’re merely a good band getting hype more fitting for a great band. I enjoyed their set at the Spin party, but it just confirmed my feelings from the record. Vampire Weekend is doing some interesting things, taking African-style guitar figures and incorporating them into pop music. That’s not a completely original idea, of course, but it’s refreshing to hear these influences emerging in a new indie-rock band – expanding the palette, so to speak. But Vampire Weekend does not exactly make exciting music. It comes out pleasant, but a little bland. Young musicians often deliver the most impassioned and creative performances, but in this case, these guys seem a little too young and inexperienced to make everything that they could out of this music. There’s just not enough roughness or passion in it. Give them time, and they may eventually become a great band, if the hype doesn’t kill them first. PHOTOS
The Spin party closed with a searing set by L.A. punk-rockers X, who played their classic tunes at full blast and never let up. These oldsters showed the youngsters how it should be done. PHOTOS
PAUL METZGER started the evening at Spiro’s with a mesmerizing set of his experimental banjo music, bowing and plucking a banjo with 12 strings plus who knows how many drone strings. It was unusual and enticing music, and there was something surreal about watching Metzger play while bathed in green light, with sunlight and sidewalk noise coming in from the door just a few feet away. Download “Bright Red Stone.”
KELLEY STOLTZ took the stage after Metzger, playing a terrific set of songs from his superb new Sub Pop album, Circular Sounds, plus at least one older track. Stoltz draws on a lot of influences (Syd Barrett, Kinks, Beach Boys, Thunderclap Newman, to name a few) but puts them together in a style that’s distinctly his own. The songs rocked live, and Stolz demonstrated a sharp sense of humor in his between-song comments. The set (which could have gone on much longer with any protest from me) closed with a Velvet Underground/Feelies-style rave-up. This was another one of my favorite SXSW shows. PHOTOS
The Creekside EMC, a room at the Hilton Garden Inn, was the location for one of the strangest shows I saw at last year’s SXSW (Brute Force and Daughter of Force), and I got a weird feeling as I entered the room again. There were no chairs set up this time, just high tables decorated with candles. It felt more like some corporate meet-and-greet than a SXSW show. Despite the odd atmosphere, the room hosted a good show by the Brooklyn folk-rock duo KAISERCARTEL. Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel switched instruments a few times, with Kaiser handling most of the guitar and Cartel spending most of the set behind drums. Their music felt honest and direct, a little bit like Ida at times. I was thinking that the show was merely pretty good until they got to “Season Song”, the lovely song I’d heard on sxsw.com. And then the two of them closed their set with one of the entire festival’s most remarkable moments. They walked out into the crowd and serenaded us with their last song, unamplified, approaching individual audience members (including me) and looking straight into our eyes as they sang. Other musicians have done this sort of thing before, but there was something so intimate about the way KaiserCartel pulled it off that I felt myself on the verge of crying. PHOTOS
Back at Spiro’s, EVANGELISTA was taking the stage. I admit that I really didn’t do my homework in investigating what I was about to witness. I had merely heard the song “Evangelista I” on sxsw.com and liked it, thinking it reminded me of God Speed You, Black Emperor or Silver Mt. Zion. As it happens, musicians from those bands have played with Evangelista, though I’m not sure who all of the players were at the Spiro’s show. All that really mattered was the woman in the middle of the stage, Carla Bozulich, former member of The Geraldine Fibbers. (Nels Cline used to be her guitarist before he joined Wilco.) The show by Evangelista was more of performance art piece than a rock concert, including Bozulich singing into some sort of toy microphone, Bozulich jumping up and down a lot, and the cellist using his instrument as a drum. There were some good songs, too, but I feel like I did not get the full picture of what Evangelista is capable of. The way Bozulich introduced the last piece was telling: “This is out last thing that is like a song.” PHOTOS
Like the Ruby Suns on Thursday, England’s FANFARLO suffered through difficult conditions Friday night at the Wave Rooftop, earning another medal for performing well in a bad situation. I was drawn to this show by the song “Fire Escape”, and there was a lot of positive buzz in the crowd when I showed up. Some people who had seen Fanfarlo playing at a party earlier in the day said they were one of the festival’s best bands. But at this moment, the band could not get its keyboard to work. It may have been their own equipment failing, or maybe the venue’s, but in any case, the show got started 15 minutes late in a short time slot, and then the band gamely decided to play whatever it could despite the lack of a crucial instrument. It did not help that one of the sound guys continued fiddling with the keyboard throughout most of the set. The lead singer wryly remarked, “We’re getting your keyboard fixed while we’re playing, which is a little like getting your car fixed while you’re driving.” And so the set was a little rough, but thankfully, Fanfarlo’s keyboardist also plays violin. I liked what I heard, and the band was nice enough to hand out free copies of a CD featuring their recordings to date – EPs available only in Britain, I believe. I’ve had a chance to listen to the CD several times since, and it’s growing on me. I don’t know that Fanfarlo is doing anything especially groundbreaking with its music, but it’s great stuff, very melodic and upbeat. And I get the impression that the songs would really take off in concert – if the equipment is working. PHOTOS
A little while later, FLEET FOXES played over at the Sub Pop showcase at Bourbon Rocks. The group’s most distinguishing feature is the four-part harmony vocals. I wouldn’t confuse Fleet Foxes with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but they have a similar theory at work behind the way their songs are arranged. It was nice, and I suspect this is a group that I’m going to like. PHOTOS
I ended the night at the Light Bar, a peculiar venue that seems more like part of the Austin singles scene than a SXSW showcase. Anyway, a cool band from Athens, Georgia, KING OF PRUSSIA, was playing at the back of the room, with violin and female harmonies giving the songs a bright sound that reminded me a bit of Headlights. The band’s own description compares King of Prussia to The Who, Magnetic Fields, Belle & Sebastian and The Lilys. I’ll have to reserve judgment on how valid those comparisons are, but I look forward to hearing more. PHOTOS / Download “Misadventures of the Campaign Kids.”
SXSW Recap: Thursday, March 13
In between the Lou Reed and Steve Reich interviews at SXSW, I stopped by the day stage, hoping to catch a set by the Barcelona band Les Aus, whose mp3 file on sxsw.com attracted my attention. As it happened, Les Aus was running late because of travel delays, so MAZONI, another one of Spain’s Catalan-language musicians, substituted for the group. He gave a decent solo performance, including a Catalan translation of Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm,” playing electric guitar in a style that was more reminiscent of indie rock than Spanish guitar. PHOTOS
Later in the afternoon, I arrived at the Rhapsody party at the Mohawk Patio in time to hear a few songs by CUT COPY through the fence while I was waiting to get in. Not my cup of tea. The reason I was there was to see SONS AND DAUGHTERS for the first time. I love this Scottish band’s records, and they did not disappoint as a live act. There’s so much tension in every song, with an almost perfect combination of guitar, bass and drums with female and male vocals playing off each other rather than trying to blend together. Vivacious singer Adele Bethel is clearly the star of the show, but all four of these Sons and Daughters make vital contributions to the band’s raw sound. There’s just a smidgen of rockabilly and country (an influence reflected in guitarist Scott Paterson’s pompadour haircut) and a bit of X. In the middle of their song, “Johnny Cash,” the band dropped in a bit of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Sons and Daughters were not a discovery for me at SXSW this year, since I was already familiar with their recordings, but they were probably my favorite band. I caught them again on Saturday at the Press Here Garden Party. PHOTOS
Latitude 30 hosted UK-themed parties all week long, including a show Thursday afternoon featuring New Music From Wales. CATE LE BON sang some nice acoustic songs, including a couple in the Welsh language. And then came THE VICTORIAN ENGLISH GENTLEMENS CLUB, who really kicked out some striking post-punk rock tunes. And, from my viewpoint at least, the female two-thirds of this co-ed trio were pretty hot, which didn’t hurt. The drummer was in a fancy pink dress, hiking the skirt up as she straddled her legs around her bass drum. The bassist had a stunned look on her face much of the time, as if her own pounding bass notes were knocking her out. And, oh yeah, there’s a guy in the band, too, singing and playing guitar. I hadn’t heard anything other than a myspace track from this band before seeing the show, but I’m definitely interested now. PHOTOS
From Wales to New Zealand… The New Zealand Music Commission was hosting a barbecue at Brush Square Park. PIG OUT played some intriguing electronic dance music – intriguing, for me, because of the actual drumming – but I didn’t hear enough to decide what I thought. And then came one of the most disappointing moments of the week, the show by THE RUBY SUNS. The disappointment had nothing to do with this band, which has a wonderful new album, Sea Lion, out on the Sub Pop label. The music from the Japan tent next door was blaring so loud that it was hard to hear the Ruby Suns, even standing right next to the stage. The party was running late, the Ruby Suns didn’t get much time to play, and the delicate layers of their sunny pop were buried under all of the din. I did hear enough to know that I like this band, and I’m looking forward to seeing them give a proper show March 28 at Schubas in Chicago. If nothing else, the Ruby Suns deserve a medal for putting on a serviceable concert under very trying circumstances. PHOTOS
HORSE + DONKEY kicked off Thursday evening at B.D. Riley’s with some cool, drony garage rock anchored by melodic, repeating bass lines. It reminded me of their fellow Austonians, the Black Angels. PHOTOS / Download “dot dot.”
Walking down Sixth Street, I stopped at Friends long enough to hear a few songs by NOAH AND THE WHALE, a folkie band led by London’s Charlie Fink. I later caught a full set by the band, at Saturday’s Press Here party, and I found their music to be pretty charming. PHOTOS / Download “2 Bodies, 1 Heart.”
The Wave Rooftop was crammed for a show by Kansas City rockers THE LIFE AND TIMES, who seemed to be giving it their all, despite the fact that they openly wished they had cooler lighting. PHOTOS
I purposely avoided seeing Chicago bands at SXSW this time, thinking I have plenty of opportunities to see them in Chicago, so why see them in Austin? But I happened upon a show by EZRA FURMAN AND THE HARPOONS at Spiro’s and caught most of their set. Furman was wearing a yellow T-shirt with the slogan “I DID IT FOR THE MONEY” and singing his impassioned folk-rock with full-on fervor. I chatted a bit with Furman’s manager, Mitch Marlow, who told me that Furman had played “Heroin” and “New Age” that afternoon at the Fader Fort’s Lou Reed tribute. Reed himself was at the event, and he snapped some photos of Furman as Furman was performing. PHOTOS That Spanish band, Les Aus, was scheduled to play down the street at the Red Eyed Fly, so I stopped in there but discovered that the schedule had changed. VERACRUZ was playing, and I have to say the band didn’t do much for me. The post-punk guitar sound wasn’t bad, but the vocals were mediocre.
One of the musicians I hoped to see at SXSW was Bon Iver, aka singer-songwriter Justin Vernon, whose new album, For Emma, Forever Ago, is top-notch folk rock (think acoustic Big Star rather than Nick Drake), but I kept missing him. (Oh, well, at least I can see him April 10 at Lakeshore Theatre in Chicago.) While I missed Bon Iver, I did see MEGAFAUN, which includes Vernon’s former bandmates in DeYarmond Edison. I’d heard these guys described as a sort of avant-garde jazz versions of bluegrass. Now, what’s that going to be like? The description turned out to be more accurate than I’d expected. Sure enough, Megafaun plays songs with a strong vein of old-time folk running through them, but they also break out into some bizarre, atonal instrumental breaks. That doesn’t sound like it would work, but it did. They reminded me a bit of Califone, Akron/Family and the more experimental moments of Wilco. But what really won me over were Megafaun’s sing-along choruses, which sounded so old-fashioned that I’m thinking Stephen Foster and Civil War-era music might be the big influence here. The guys in Megafaun stormed up into the crowd from the darkened stage at the Hideout and roused the crowd to join in song – one of my highlights from all week. PHOTOS
NORTHAMPTON WOOLS, an experimental duo consisting of Thurston Moore and Bill Nace, followed Megafaun at the Hideout. This is the sort of music that involves a lot of scraping and tweaking of guitar strings, building from tinkly noise to a wall of feedback. The droning was almost too much to take after a while, but it was certainly intriguing to see these two guitarists experimenting with their instruments without any constraints. PHOTOS
I ended the night back where I began, B.D. Riley’s, with another drony garage-rock band, DARKER MY LOVE. I didn’t realize until later that some of the players in this San Francisco group had played in the past with The Fall. They put on a strong show, a perfect bookend to the earlier set by Horse + Donkey. PHOTOS / Download “Summer Is Here.”
Steve Reich at SXSW
One of SXSW’s stars, Sonic Youth guitarist THURSTON MOORE, interviewed another star, composer STEVE REICH, Thursday afternoon at the Austin Convention Center. It was interesting to see Moore in the role of an interviewer; he was genuinely curious, asking some probing questions while making it all seem like the friendliest of casual conversations. Some interesting facts about Reich emerged from the talk. For one thing, Reich used to live in the same house as Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo, and when he moved out, he left behind four of the Farfisa organs he had famously used in his music.
Reich mentioned a few of the pieces of music that influenced him to become a pioneer in the repetitive pattern-based style usually known as minimalism. One influence was the John Coltrane album Africa/Brass. Reich loved the idea that Coltrane could create such interesting music while staying for a long time on the same chord. He recounted a jazz player asking, “What are the chords?” and getting the answer, “E … No, it’s just E.”
“If you want to make glorious melody and raucous melody, you can (use just one chord),” Reich said. “Harmonically, you can stay put.”
Another surprising influence was the Junior Walker song “Shotgun,” which has one bass line repeating throughout. “You’re waiting for a B section,” Reich said, “but guess what? There’s no B section … Stay put harmonically.”
William Carlos Williams and other poets sparked Reich’s interest in using the spoken word in his compositions. “When we speak, we almost sing,” he said.
Reich also liked the drumming of Kenny Clark, whom he saw playing with Miles Davis at Birdland. Reich liked the way he seemed to be “floating on his cymbal.” He remarked, “I didn’t know if I could achieve that – that floating.”
Reich also recalled seeing the book Studies in African Music by A.M. Jones. Seeing the complex drumming patterns analyzed on the page was an eye-opener. Finding the “1” beat that’s standard in Western music was all but impossible. “Where’s 1? That was really a shocker.”
In his early years, Reich worked odd jobs to support his composition. He was a cab driver, mailman and social worker, and he once ran a moving company with Philip Glass. Although Reich said his reading of philosophers did not influence his music much, he did say, “I used to read a lot of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he said, ‘Get an honest job.’ So I did. I think.”
Lou Reed at SXSW
The bleary-eyed SXSW masses (or least the badge holders) dragged themselves from their hotel rooms bright and early Thursday morning to receive words of wisdom from none other than LOU REED, this year’s keynote speaker. Before he took the stage, we heard some interesting music, including a piece by Steve Reich, who would be speaking later in the day, performed by the SOLI CHAMBER ENSEMBLE. It was good morning music, though I wonder how many of the SXSW regulars would like this kind of stuff?
Anyway… Reed came out and spent about ninety minutes taking questions from producer Hal Willner. Like most SXSW keynote speakers, Reed had an ulterior commercial motive for appearing – in his case, the need to promote his new film of the album Berlin being performed in concert. True to his reputation, Reed was somewhat surly. A cell phone in the audience rings. Reed: “What is that? Jesus.”
Asked about the influence that Andy Warhol and other visual artists had on his songwriting, Reed says Warhol’s style inspired its musical equivalent in the Velvet Underground – “repeating a line over and over.”
Can music change the world? “It could change an individual and make them feel not alone in their belief.”
On the subject matter that the Velvet Underground covered with its lyrics: “It was an empty continent.”
On how to write songs: “I never understood how they get written … I don’t even know why it works.”
On his strengths: “I have a B.A. in dope but a Ph.D. in soul … The thing I’ve got is instinct. Thinking won’t get me where I want to go. It’ll get me to the store where it’s sold.”
On deteriorating audio standards, due to the popularity of mp3s: “People have got to demand a high standard … Or the other thing is to say, ‘You’re being elitist. Only people with money can afford the good sound, so fuck you.’”
Reed’s favorite movie of late: The Bourne Ultimatum.
Reed’s favorite new bands: Melt Banana, Holy Fuck (“Or is it Holy Shit?” he says), Dr. Dog, Joan As Policewoman. “One of the things you look for in a young group is that energy, and I just love it.”
On record labels asking musicians to sign over their publishing rights: “They are always going to say they want the publishing, and you are always going to say no.”
SXSW Photos
OK, so I’m a little behind on writing about SXSW 2008. That was, like, last week, wasn’t it? I’m finally caught up on editing my photos. As I file this, pictures are uploading.
You can see a complete directory to all of the various galleries of photos I shot at SXSW 2008, at: www.undergroundbee.com/photos.htm#sxsw2008
Or just follow the links below to the band or musician you’re looking for.
The Hard Lessons
The Hands
Portugal The Man
Explorers Club
Curumin
Frightened Rabbit
A.A. Bondy
Akron/Family
Van Morrison
Birds of Wales
Beasts and Superbeasts
Afenginn
Scary Mansion
Okkervil River with Roky Erickson
Monareta
Southeast Engine
Centro-matic
Lou Reed
Mazoni
Steve Reich
Sons and Daughters
Cate Le Bon
The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club
Pig Out
Ruby Suns
Horse + Donkey
Noah and the Whale
The Life and Times
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons
Megafaun
Northampton Wools
Darker My Love
Magic Bullets
The Whigs
The Raveonettes
Vampire Weekend
X
Paul Metzger
Kelley Stoltz
KaiserCartel
Evangelista
Fanfarlo
Fleet Foxes
King of Prussia
Throw Me The Statue
Laura Marling
Lightspeed Champion
J. Mascis
Thurston Moore and the New Wave Bandits
She & Him
Jandek
Christina Carter & Shawn David McMillen
Mondo Topless
The Uglybeats
The Teeth
The Spinto Band
Dr. Dog
SXSW recap: Wednesday, March 12
I started out the day around noon at the Red Eyed Fly for THE EXPLORERS CLUB from Charleston, S.C. Now, there are bands that try to sound a little bit like the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson or Pet Sounds, but these guys go all out. I’ve heard their new record, coming out in May on Dead Oceans, the new label affiliated with Secretly Canadian, and it sounds exactly like the Beach Boys back in their mid-1960s hey day. And sure enough, that’s what Explorers Club sounded like in concert, too. The group leans a little more towards the early Beach Boys period than the later orchestral-pop stuff. I wonder whether the world really needs a group that mimics the Beach Boys so closely, but I can’t deny that it was a lot of fun seeing these guys, and I am enjoying the CD, too. They closed with a cover of “Johnny B. Goode.” Download “Do You Love Me?”
The mp3 of “Esperanca” on the sxsw.com site from Brazilian singer CURUMIN was one of my favorite discoveries. Just judging from this one track, this singer (aka Luciano Nakata Albuquerque) has the potential to become the next big thing out of Brazil. His afternoon set in the Emo’s Annex tent was a little disappointing, however. Accompanied by an electronics/keyboard player and a bass/keyboard player, Curumin stayed behind him drum kit and sang from there (a miniature four-string guitar was sitting at the front of the stage, and I assume he planned to come up and play that later, but the set was truncated and he never got the chance). I think he tried to hard to get the audience to participate by signing a Portuguese phrase when he should have just concentrated on delivering the goods. The audience was mildly interested but still in that early-afternoon phase where people aren’t ready yet to dance or clap and sing along to a foreign musician they’ve never heard before. Anyway, this short set didn’t amount to much, but I’m really looking forward to hearing more from Curumin.
I didn’t really have anywhere to go after Curumin, so I just stayed in the tent and watched the next band, FRIGHTENED RABBIT, about whom I knew nothing. This Scottish band turned out to be really good, with some very strong and impassioned rock. (Interesting, they had a three guitars and drums lineup, with one of the guitarists doubling on keyboards, but no bass. I think.) The one studio song I’ve heard by Frightened Rabbit isn’t as good as the live show, but this is another one to watch for sure.
Next, I saw A.A. BONDY, who was playing a solo acoustic set on the porch behind Creekside Lounge. Very Dylanesque, Bondy played some excellent folk songs that really drew me in with their strong melodies and lyrics. His song at sxsw.com, “American Hearts,” was one of the tracks that grabbed my attention. Bondy also dealt with a loud and drunken (but good-natured) audience member fairly well, responding with subdued humor. At one point, the boisterous guy yelled out, “If there’s a vote in South By Southwest, vote for this guy. He seems true!” That’s pretty perceptive for a drunk guy.
I rushed over to the Convention Center to see AKRON/FAMILY on the Day Stage, showing up in time to catch the last several gloomy, doomy minutes of the previous band, A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS. Man, those guys were LOUD, especially for a show on the Day Stage, which is a very corporate-looking room with a lunch counter. The band ended its set with a shredding guitar solo and I spotted a few disgruntled people in the room walking away with their hands over their ears. I liked it. I also liked Akron/Family, whom I’ve never seen previously, despite the fact they’ve been around for a while. Despite being way off on the fringes of what’s considered mainstream music, they had a very winning sense of humor on stage, and I think they made some new fans. It was a great mix of meditative bird-call soundscapes, a goofy song supposedly directed at children about a silly bear, experimental noise, and freak folk, with a focus on audience participation. “Sing this note,” they told the crowd, trying to get a drone note going. “You can sing it ironically if you want. … This is a lot more women than we’re using to having at our shows. It’s usually a lot of men with beards.” (Download “Phenomena.”)
I hesitated before going to the VAN MORRISON show at 7 p.m. at La Zona Rosa, mostly because I knew it would be jam-packed. And I do try to avoid spending too much of my SXSW watching musical acts I’ve already seen. But hey, it is Van Morrison, after all, and nothing else of note was happening at 7, so why not? There was a long line to get in, but as the Mendoza Line once said in a song title, the line moved quickly. I was at the outside edge of a huge photographers’ pit, struggling to get close enough for a shot during the first three songs (when picture taking was allowed). Luckily, it was bright enough that I was able to see Morrison fairly well through my telephoto lens, and I got a few decent shots. I stayed for the first half hour of this show and liked what I saw and heard. It was nice seeing Morrison at fairly close range after the disappointment of watching him a couple of years ago at the United Center. His voice sounded great, amazingly close to the way it sounded on his old records. He occasionally rears back a little and opens his mouth wide at the side (sort of like Dick Cheney, I hate to say, but I can’t think of another comparison to make for that look). And despite his reputation for being a little sullen, Morrison seemed to be in good spirits, smiling and chuckling at a few points. He played sax at times, and then he even took out a ukulele and played that wee instrument to great effect on a couple of songs. He seemed to be focusing on material from his recent recordings, but I assume he probably played some of the crowd-pleasing classics later in the night.
Maybe I was foolish to rush out of the Van Morrison show and walk quickly across town in search of new music, but I felt that urge to discover something. My next stop was the Wave Rooftop, where BIRDS OF WALES was playing. (Like so many bands these days, this one is from a place other than the one in its name – Toronto.) I loved the Birds of Wales song, “Cinderella (Has Nothing On You),” but unfortunately, the whole band did not make it to SXSW. The drummer’s wife just had a baby and the band is getting ready for a European tour, so Birds of Wales singer-guitarist Morgan Ross (who is apparently of Welsh descent) did the gig as a solo acoustic show. Without the band playing behind him, the songs were a little on the dull side. I still have hopes that Birds of Wales is better as a full band, and I’ll be listening to the CD to find out… I stayed at the Wave for the next band, BEASTS AND SUPERBEASTS from Victoria, British Columbia. This was their first performance outside of Canada, and you’ll get some idea of this band’s standing from their opening remarks: “So, we’re looking for a label and a distributor and a manager … and a band.” The set up was a female singer on keyboards and Melodica, a guy on vocals and guitar, and another guy on keyboards. The sound is naïve, a little amateurish and somewhat precious folk or chamber pop. I thought the show, which was sparsely attended, was pretty good, though some other people left midway through the set, clearly uninterested. As the crowd got even smaller, Beasts and Superbeasts played the nice tune I’d heard on sxsw.com, “If I Was A House,” and the set closed with another strong song.
Now, what is a band from Copenhagen doing playing klezmer music? (Or something resembling klezmer or Gypsy music, at least.) That’s what I was wondering as I stopped into the Mexican restaurant Rio and caught most of the show by AFENGINN, which featured a tall Nordic dude with long dreadlocks on mandolin leaping around a lot as he played and sang, but clarinet, violin, bass and drums. After one song, the singer remarked, “This is how it is in Denmark. You should come.” Several people were dancing to Afenginn’s catchy, bouncy music, and it seemed that even some of the people who were at Rio for a Mexican meal instead of SXSW were getting into it. “This is our first time in Texas,” the singer said at one point. “So I figured we would do this introduction in the beautiful key of A.” (Huh?) Afenginn should be a big hit on the world-music scene. And as much as I had liked Beasts and Superbeasts in the previous time slot, Afenginn reminded me: THIS is how excited you should feel when you’re playing or hearing music.
See my photos of Van Morrison, Birds of Wales, Beasts and Superbeasts and Afenginn.
One of the more intriguing songs posted at sxsw.com was “Sorry We Took All Yr Money” by SCARY MANSION from Brooklyn. This gig at the Hideout turned out to be one of my favorite shows of SXSW. The lead singer, Leah Hayes, plays one of those tiny little strumsticks – which I’ve always thought of as a toy version of the guitar – but cranked up the feedback and volume during solos. And while she reminded me a little bit of Marissa Nadler or a goth folkie, she had a kick-ass rhythm section playing behind her (and a sister who joined her on harmony vocals for a few songs). Definitely a group to watch.
During all my years of going to SXSW, I’ve never attended the Austin Music Awards. Somehow, I pictured a sit-down awards ceremony, which sounds rather dull compared to all of the other things going on. But this year, one of the honorees was ROKY ERICKSON, and he was playing with OKKERVIL RIVER as his backup band. I couldn’t miss that. I showed up as GARY CLARK JR. was playing, then caught about 15 or 20 minutes of awards being doled out, including Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top handing a plaque to Erickson. Then came Okkervil playing three of their own songs with all of their trademark intensity, followed by Erickson playing three of his classic tunes backed by Okkervil. Erickson looked and sounded great, and the combination with Okkervil was perfect.
I stopped for just a few minutes at Copa, where a techno band from Bogota, Columbia, called MONARETA was playing – two guys with bicycle wheels on their heads. It seemed potentially interesting, and what I heard was pretty good, but I wasn’t in the mood for dance music just then, so I scooted over to Friends and caught the last several songs by roots-rockers SOUTHEAST ENGINE. Their music seemed OK, but didn’t leave much of an impression on me amid everything else. I’ll give them another chance, though.
The main reason I was at Friends was to see the last act of the night, CENTRO-MATIC, one of my old favorites. They hammered through some of their best songs (not playing much from their forthcoming album), and closed with a great cover of “Save It For Later.” Well, I missed out on seeing the English Beat, who were playing at SXSW this year, but at least I heard someone do this song.
SXSW recap: Tuesday, March 11
South By Southwest was a fabulous experience for me once again. As always, I missed some of the bands I wanted to see, I heard about other noteworthy bands too late, and I went through the usual hectic insanity of running around all over downtown Austin trying to see as much stuff as possible. I think I saved myself from some of the typical sleep deprivation by putting off most of my writing and photo editing until the whole thing was over. I know, in the world of instant blogging, there is a premium on posting reviews and pictures as quickly as possible, but every minute I spent working on the blog would have been a minute I could have spent watching another concert (or getting just a little bit of sleep). Anyway, after listening to 700-some mp3s plus numerous myspace sites in preparation for SXSW, and after four and a half days of live-music immersion, I’m finally ready to look back at it all… (PHOTOS are coming soon, too, but first I’m going to do some writing.)
TUESDAY, MARCH 11
The music portion of SXSW did not officially begin until Wednesday, but I was in town on Tuesday night and caught a few live bands. Playing at Emo’s, THE HARD LESSONS did not impress me too much. A little too classic-rock radio for my tastes. In the smaller room next door, THE HANDS were putting on a pretty decent show. They sounded good when they were rocking out to twin guitar lines during the epic solos, perhaps going for a bit of My Morning Jacket kind of vibe. The songs themselves didn’t strike me as all that original, but I think The Hands are worth a listen. Down the street, Beerland was hosting the THIS IS AMERICAN MUSIC tour, and I stopped in to see solid (but too short) sets by GLOSSARY and GRAND CHAMPEEN. And then I was back down the street at Emo’s one last time for PORTUGAL. THE MAN. As much I’d like to support a band from my home state of Alaska (how many bands are there from Alaska, anyway?), I can’t say I enjoyed Portugal. The Man very much. Too jam-band for me.
Quick SXSW update
Yes, in case anyone is wondering, I am at SXSW… but things are simply too hectic for me to spend time writing blog posts or editing photos right now. A full report will be coming in a couple of days.
In the meantime, look for my first installment of reporting at the Pioneer Press Web site.
And I quickly went through the 4,000-some photos I’ve shot and picked out a few, posting them at flickr.
Briefly, some of the best bands I’ve seen so far are Sons and Daughters, Frightened Rabbit, Megafaun, Scary Mansion, Horse + Donkey, A.A. Bondy, Darker My Love, the Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club, Okkervil River with Roky Erikson… I’m sure I’m forgetting something. OK, that’s all for now…
Headlights and Evangelicals
This show Friday (March 7) at Schubas was a double bill I’d been looking forward to for a while, teaming up the latest weird outfit to emerge out of Oklahoma, Evangelicals, with Champaign’s finest pop band of the moment, Headlights. Evangelicals put on a searing performance last year at SXSW, and their new album, The Evening Descends (on the Dead Oceans label, the latest offshoot of the excellent Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar labels in Indiana), is a strong followup to their debut, So Gone. This is a band that plays its music drenched in reverb and psychedelic sounds, to the point where the songs themselves may get a little too obscured. The tunes underneath all of those echoes are worth finding, though, with tons of emotion, poetic lyrics and vocals that careen into falsetto with a daring sense of recklessness. That phrase that fellow Oklahomans the Flaming Lips used to describing themselves, “fearless freaks,” is also an apt description of these guys. Paralleling that layered, hazy sound, Evangelicals presented a similarly obscured visual spectacle last night, playing with almost no lights other than their own black light and strobes. On top of that, a fog machine kept pouring out smoke and the microphone stands were shrouded in handkerchiefs. Once the band asked the sound guy to turn down the reverb just a little bit, a passionate performance emerged out of the murk.
See my photos of Evangelicals. (I did what I could…)
Headlights was another band that impressed me last year at SXSW, with a new record out in early 2008, Some Racing, Some Stopping. Last night, it struck me that their music is reminiscent of the quieter and prettier music that Yo La Tengo does. The basic melodies on guitar or keyboard are fairly simple and usually bright in tone, and the vocal harmonies are lovely, too. When the songs do build to more of a rocking sound, it’s in the way that the Feelies used to do it, with hypnotic repetition. At several points, more than one member of Headlights kneeled on the floor, twiddling with effects pedal rather than playing notes on their instruments, creating oscillating effects – but all in the service of a good song rather than for the purpose of creating noise.
The Pogues at Riviera
(This review is also at the web site of the Southtown Star newspaper.)
By 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, the crowd at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre was getting restless, with impatient Pogues fans clapping rhythmically and wondering when the band would come out. The group was running about an hour late, and the word among the security guards was that Pogues lead singer Shane MacGowan – who has a well-deserved reputation for drinking heavily – had not even shown up. Finally, with a sense of relief, the word came: Shane was in the building.
As MacGowan and his seven original bandmates in the Pogues took the stage at last, all seemed to be forgiven. And by the end of the show, as audience members waved their fists above their heads and careened against one another with reckless abandon, the night had turned into an ecstatic celebration of the Irish folk-rock, both wild and beautiful, that made the Pogues famous in the first place.
The Pogues haven’t released any new material since the original lineup reunited last year, and like other bands relying on the appeal of their back catalogues, the Pogues face the risk of becoming a nostalgia act. But that’s a worry for another day. In the meantime, it was simply glorious to hear the Pogues’ combination of drunken pub anthems, rollicking jigs and reels and good old-fashioned sentimental ballads.
The question hovering over any Pogues concert is what sort of condition MacGowan will be in. Repeating his performance last year in a Pogues concert at the Congress Theatre, MacGowan appeared to be inebriated yet capable of remembering all the words of his songs, singing them all in his typically slurred, thick brogue. It’s easy to imagine MacGowan as a drunkard in some pub who unexpectedly wanders over to the microphone and stuns everyone with his poetic powers.
Wearing a top hat, dark suit and sunglasses, MacGowan leaned and staggered all night, pretending at a couple of points that he was boxing with his microphone stand. For whatever reason, MacGowan seems to require periodic rests or breaks. At several points, he walked offstage and relinquished lead vocals to other Pogues for a song or two. In MacGowan’s absence, Spider Stacy sang his best-known Pogues tune, “Tuesday Morning,” and Phillip Chevron sang “Thousands Are Sailing,” his memorable track from the album “If I Should Fall From Grace With God.”
One of the reasons MacGowan can get away with being a little out of it during concerts is that he has such a crack band playing behind him. The Pogues play their accordions, banjos, whistles and mandolins with a lot of finesse without ever getting fussy about it. They strayed pretty far from traditional Irish music with their closing song, the rousing Spanish-tinged party tune “Fiesta,” but few bands capture Ireland’s spirit as well as the Pogues.
The opening act was one of our local should-be-stars, Ike Reilly, who played a solid set with some of his best songs, including the apropos “When Irish Eyes Are Burning Bright.” He seemed to win over the crowd members unfamiliar with his music, getting more enthusiastic applause as the set went on.
The Hives and the Donnas
(This review will also appear at the web site of the Southtown Star newspaper.)
At one point during Friday’s concert at the Riviera Theatre, Hives lead singer Pelle Almqvist asked the audience, “Is it possible this is the best live show in the history of the world?” And then, answering his own question but hedging his bets a little, he said, “It is still possible.”
Actually, the concert would not likely rank on anyone’s list of all-time bests, but the Hives did put on a good show. And with the Donnas as opening act, the concert felt like a hard-rocking co-ed double bill.
Almqvist is the sort of singer who asks crowds for constant reassurance that he and his band are fabulous. (This is a guy who calls himself Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist.) And since the Hives are a bunch of dudes from Sweden wearing what look like black-and-white prep-school uniforms, you have to wonder at times if the whole show is some sort of comedy act that might make more sense if you were from Sweden. Still, even if the whole thing is an act, the Hives do know how to rock hard and fast. Fast was the tempo all night long, as drummer Chris Dangerous somehow managed to strike dramatic poses even as he kept up a fierce tempo. Dangerous is the sort of drummer who spends a lot of time throwing drumsticks up into the air and catching them. (At one point, he failed to catch one of his sticks. His response? Toss away the other stick and wait for a roadie to bring out a new set.) Guitarist Nicholaus Arson, with a rockabilly haircut, extended his guitar out toward the audience while Almqvist ran back and forth with manic energy.
All of this showmanship was in the service of some simple but effective garage-punk songs, with loud, crunchy guitar chords and shouted vocals. The Hives’ problem is that their songs all sound too similar, but it isn’t a bad formula, and on songs with catchy choruses like “Main Offender” and “Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones,” the power of the Hives could not be denied. Toward the end of the show, Almqvist was still reminding audience members who was onstage, as if they needed reminding. “We are the Hives,” he said, “still standing.”
If the Hives are very self-aware, the Donnas seem to lack any similar sense of irony. They just play hard rock, straight up without any jokiness, cranking out loud tunes that straddle the line between pop and heavy metal. At times on Friday night, the Donnas sounded like they might slip at any second into a Bon Jovi or Mötley Crüe cover, but they stuck with their original material, including one chorus that stated the obvious conclusion anyone would arrive at from watching the Donnas: “Girls rock!” Like the Hives, the Donnas act like real rock stars. While Brett Anderson roamed the stage in her sleeveless Harley-Davidson T-shirt, Allison Robertson let her long blonde hair fly like some 1980s guitar god – make that guitar goddess.
Dengue Fever at the Empty Bottle
I’ve been a fan of Dengue Fever since seeing them at SXSW a few years back, and the band seems to be getting more attention these days, even including an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” I have a pretty high tolerance for listening to music sung in languages other than English, so I don’t really tire of listening to the incomprehensible Cambodian words to Dengue Fever’s lively songs, but I could see why Dengue Fever might be too, well, unrelentingly exotic for some people. The surf-rock guitar and serpentine vocal melodies keep it fun for me, and the band was in fine form last night (Feb. 27) at the Empty Bottle. Singer Chhom Nimol was a marvel, and bassist Senon Williams was a towering maniac, hopping around the stage all night. Nimol brought a fan onto stage to sing an old Cambodian song. I have no clue what they were singing about, but I liked hearing it.
The first band of the night was a new Chicago outfit called Alla, which features someone I know – taper extraordinaire Aadam Jacobs on percussion. This was the first time I’d heard a note of their music, and it struck me as promising, with some cool psychedelic touches. Second was Cordero, the Spanish-language band on the Bloodshot label led by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Ani Cordero. She and her band played a lively set, a nice complement to the Dengue Fever music coming later in the night.
Shannon Wright at Schubas
The last (and only) time I saw Shannon Wright in concert was when she opened for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Chicago Theatre. I still vividly remember the odd way she stalked around on the stage with her legs in a posture resembling a crab. Wright’s put out a good number of records, but she doesn’t seem to get quite as much attention as she deserves. She played a riveting, if short, set Friday (Feb. 22) at Schubas. She played the first three or four songs on piano, showing an idiosyncratic sense of tempo and melody. I liked the slightly peculiar tinge of her piano compositions. Then she switched to guitar for the rest of the night. Her guitar songs sound quite different from the piano ones, but there’s a similar eccentricity to the chords and tempos. She really let loose by the end of her set, pouncing on the stage as she riffed (although she didn’t do that crab walk this time) and loudly singing way off-mike on the last tune.
Wright’s backing band consisted of the drummer and bassist from the opening act, King’s Daughters and Sons. Not to be confused with Sons and Daughters, this is a group from Louisville. I’d never heard of them before, but they impressed me quite a bit. Their songs start off mellow, a bit like Iron & Wine folk rock, and then build into long epics. The three-song CDR the band is selling at shows is well worth picking up if you can find it. I’m eager to hear more.
See my photos of Shannon Wright and King’s Daughters and Sons.
Dirtbombs at Double Door
Seeing the Dirtbombs again confirmed my memory that this is a great band – and it also made me wonder why I don’t listen to their records more often. Maybe the live Dirtbombs experience is better than the recorded one, but the key thing is that this band has some terrific songs. I picked up their new album, the aptly titled We Have You Surrounded, at the merch table, and so far it’s sounding pretty strong.
Unlike their show a few years back at the Double Door, this Dirtbombs set did not begin with the big dramatic buildup with one musician at a time. Without any fuss, they all trotted out onto stage and launched right into some ripping Motown-y garage rock. I love the way Mick Collins acts a bit like a guitar hero, while at the same time, he’s using a little amp, dwarfed by the typical guitarist’s gear. The two-drummer setup was as cool as ever, with the two playing not exactly in synch but constantly keeping all of the songs in motion. The Dirtbombs are apparently not doing the two-bass thing anymore; one of the bass players, Ko Shih, played guitar all night this time, though I caught her doing some bassist-style fingering on the lower strings. And she’s still playing with her mouth agape and hair strewn across her face, as if she’s in a constant state of shock. The Dirtbombs sounded especially good whenever the three singers all joined together and the crowd got wild in front of the stage. Oddly, they played two INXS covers for their second and final encore. I have to say I always hated INXS, but I could appreciate the spirit of the songs when the Dirtbombs were playing them.
See my photos of the Dirtbombs.
The first band of the night, Coldcock Jones and the Shithawks, was just as vile and stupid as you would guess from the name. The singer ended up practically yelling at audience members who didn’t appreciate his band’s subpar Ted Nugent wankery. Maybe it was all a joke, but even if you looked at ironically as some sort of performance art, it was a painful experience. The second band, Lee Marvin’s Computer Arm, was considerably better, doing some lively garage-punk, but man, those silent pauses in between the songs were awkward.
Super Furry Animals
One of the things I recall quite clearly about the show that the Super Furry Animals played a few year ago at the Abbey Pub (when Rings Around the World had just come out) was the lack of an encore. It was a superb show and the crowd clearly wanted to hear more, but the band seemed to have worked out just how to end the performance on the perfect note, and they weren’t coming back. It was one of a few shows I saw around that time without encores, which would have been unheard of in the years before that. A few artists, at least, finally seemed to recognize the emptiness of this ritual if it is allowed to happen at EVERY concert.
The Super Furry Animals were back on Saturday, playing this time at Metro. I’ve missed all SFA shows since that stop at the Abbey Pub, but once again, the band took a “no encore” stance. This time, in fact, lead singer Gruff Rhys, held up a sign reading “RESIST PHONY ENCORES” before leaving the stage. And sure enough, there was no encore, even though just about everyone in attendance would have been happy to hear another song or two.
It was a top-notch set, with a good selection of songs from various SFA records, ranging from oldies (well, relative oldies) like “Golden Retriever” and “Rings Around the World” to songs off the group’s fine new pop album Hey Venus!. Thanks to those Welsh-accented vocals, it all sounded pretty consistent, even when the styles of music shifted from straightforward indie pop to psychedelia. The show lacked the constant stream of films that appeared in the last SFA concert I saw, but it still had a few elements of absurd spectacle. Rhys performed the first song and one later song with his head encased in a large mask/helmet, resembling some sort of alien racecar driver. He also chomped on carrots during one song and spat the remnants onto the stage.
The first act was Jeffrey Lewis, who was pretty amusing with his comical songs (including one describing a conversation with Will Oldham) and “movies” – stories he told with illustrated books. Next up was Times New Viking, a guitar-drums-keyboard trio doing lo-fi rock with the vocals buried under all the noise. I liked some of what I could make out in all that din, though it got a little tiresome by the end. (And for what it’s worth, the comments I heard from others at the Metro about Times New Viking ranged from, “Hey, they were pretty good” to “Worst show of the year.”)
Cat Power at the Vic
(This review is also on the web site for the Southtown Star newspaper.)
Cat Power, the singer also known as Chan Marshall, was once notorious for abandoning songs or entire concerts before she was halfway through finishing them.
When she played at Chicago’s Vic Theatre two years ago, she gave an erratic performance, with some brilliant moments and lots of awkward silences. She was back at the same venue Sunday night (Feb. 10), but this time she exerted complete mastery over the music.
Although Cat Power is a strong songwriter in her own right, she focuses on cover tunes on her new album, “Jukebox,” and those songs dominated Sunday’s show. She chose a diverse lot of songs, ranging all the way from the Frank Sinatra hit “New York, New York” to Joni Mitchell’s meditative “Blue.”
Marshall showed a jazz singer’s sense of timing, letting her words drop behind the beat or run ahead of it. She almost always sings in a breathy tone, but she knows how to sing in a way that’s strong and breathy at the same time, pulling the microphone away from her face on the more forceful notes.
Freed from playing guitar or piano, Marshall seemed to feel an uninhibited freedom to roam the stage with her peculiar pantomime-like dance moves. She often crouched down low as she sang, making gestures with her hands that sometimes acted out the words of the songs – or just reflected one of her fleeting whims. She held her hands in prayer, she flicked her fingers with a fish-like motion, she pretended she was clicking a remote control, and she circled a finger next to her head (the universal sign for “crazy”).
One of the reasons Marshall probably felt so free on Sunday was the excellent band acting as her safety net. Billed as Dirty Delta Blues, the four-piece group plays a bluesy, rootsy style of rock music that evokes the days when Bob Dylan first went electric or the Rolling Stones recorded “Exile on Main Street.” The band also knows how to play simmering, quiet grooves — perfect for Cat Power’s ballads.
In addition to the tracks from “Jukebox,” Marshall and the band indulged themselves in several other cover songs, including George Jones’ “Making Believe,” Patsy Cline’s “I’ve Got Your Picture” and James Carr’s “Dark End of the Street.” It was only late in the concert that fans got a chance to hear Cat Power do some of her own songs, including the new track “Song to Bobby” — apparently, a letter of sorts to Bob Dylan — and a few songs from her popular 2006 release “The Greatest.”
Cat Power may have mastered the personal demons that caused trouble at her past concerts, but she still refuses to play by all of the rules. Instead of doing the usual routine of leaving and coming back for an encore, she remained onstage as the band left, spent several minutes tossing T-shirts into the crowd, basked in the applause and then disappeared.
Big Buildings at the Bottle
Two of my favorite unsung Chicago bands (well, mostly unsung) were at the Empty Bottle Saturday night (Feb. 9): Big Buildings and Palliard. The night started out with the only non-Chicago act on the bill, Dreadful Yawns from Cleveland. I’ve heard of these guys but never heard them – maybe that awful name never inspired me to seek them out – but I liked what I heard Saturday night, some real organic-sounding rock. Worth checking out for sure.
Palliard played second, and I was happy to hear songs from the group’s fine 2006 album Won’t Heal Alone. I just wish I had a new Palliard album to enjoy right now. They play a really nice brand of melancholy roots rock. Their set included a Gillian Welch song that she herself hasn’t released yet. After hearing her play it in concert, one of the Palliard members got her to write down the words on a napkin. (Speaking of records I’m desperately dreaming of… when is Welch ever going to release another one?!?)
The third band was The Thin Man. You’ll notice I didn’t mention them at the top of this blog entry when I said two of my favorite Chicago bands were playing. It’s not that I don’t like the Thin Man, but the vocals just wear a little, um, thin on me after a few songs. Saturday, though, the band was pretty lively and I ended up liking it better than previous shows I’ve seen.
Big Buildings headlined the night, a record release part for their new album, Wampum, which is an actual record in the old sense of the term – a vinyl long-player. Not available as a CD, it comes with a code for downloading a digital version. So far, I’ve just listened to it on the old turntable and it sounds excellent, even with the occasional phonograph pop and crackle. The group played a very energetic set, and their songs showed a lot of range, everything from garage rock and Wilco folk rock to Velvet Underground and ’60s pop.
See my photos of Big Buildings, the Thin Man, Palliard and Dreadful Yawns.
Six Organs at the Bottle
All three of the musical acts Friday night (Feb. 8) at the Empty Bottle were interested in exploring what they could do with guitar, stretching out notes or finding patterns that would gain in richness as they repeated on loops. First up was Scott Tuma, who has played with Souled American and Good Stuff House. His songs (or was that just one song?) were achingly slow as the notes reverberated. Notes that sounded wrong at first started to seem right as he repeated them. He occasionally stepped up to the mike and let his soft voice drift above the rumbling.
Mick Turner, best known as a member of the Dirty Three, played second, offering a surprisingly long set of his instrumental music accompanied by a “movie” including slides of his artwork (naive stuff, charming in its own way, a little like pictures from a children’s book except for the fact that there were naked ladies). Turner’s music was peaceful and pretty, building to some impressive peaks.
Six Organs of Admittance was the headliner, although I think they played a shorter set than Turner. Six Organs is essentially Ben Chasny, who also plays in the heavy psychedelic band Comets on Fire. In this guise, he tends more toward acoustic and meditative music, but it rocks in its own way. He opened the set by himself, playing an acoustic guitar with incredible speed and dexterity. (I noticed his guitar is an Alvarez, the same brand as mine, although I have a different model. This was just about the only time I’ve ever seen anyone playing one during a concert. I love mine.) The show went electric when Elisa Ambrogio, who plays on the most recent Six Organs record, Shelter from the Ash, joined him onstage, as well as drummer Ian Wadley (who’d played earlier with Turner). They sounded great together.
See my photos of Six Organs of Admittance, Mick Turner and Scott Tuma.
Golijov opera at CSO
Catching up here on a few concerts I’ve seen over the last week. Last Thursday (Feb. 7) was one of my rare (too rare) visits to Orchestra Hall for a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. The CSO was performing an “opera” – sort of – by one of my favorite living composers, Osvaldo Golijov, who is the CSO’s composer in residence. And one of my favorite classical singers, Dawn Upshaw, was performing. (I’ve been a big fan of hers ever since hearing that classical best-seller, Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3.) I put opera in quote marks because this piece, “Aindamar: Fountain of Tears,” felt almost more like an oratorio, or some cross between opera and symphony. As far as the story goes, it’s more impressionistic and poetic than plot-driven. The piece was notable for its use of prerecorded sounds, including gun shots, which transform into a percussion pattern. At moments, “Ainadamar” almost sounded like an opera with touches of laptronica. Upshaw and the other singers (Jessica Rivera and Kelly O’Connor, who sang the male role of Lorca with her rich voice) sounded magnificent. It was great to see Golijov walk up onto the stage from a seat in the audience during the applause at the end.
Ra Ra Riot and Virgins
I’m never sure which concerts will sell out. Sometimes I sniff some hype in the air, and a show fills up with fans eager to hear the next big thing. Sometimes I think the music’s great, and then almost no one shows up. On Friday at Schubas, at least two of the three bands, Ra Ra Riot and the Virgins, seemed to have some buzz, but both of those bands have only an EP to their credit so far. Is that enough to draw a crowd? Apparently so. It did sell out. Both bands are on the verge of releasing full-length albums. The first band of the night, Essex Chanel, also seemed to have something of a following, judging from the enthusiastic friends/fans at the front of the place, though their somewhat techno ’80s-style pop wasn’t really my cup of tea.
I’ve only heard the Virgins’ songs a few times on myspace, so I wasn’t too familiar with their music before the show. I enjoyed their set, though I’ll have to hear the songs more to decide just how worthwhile they are. The band reminded me a little bit of the Strokes, with tightly constructed pop songs containing a bit of that post-punk vibe.
See my photos of the Virgins and Essex Chanel.
Ra Ra Riot’s self-titled EP from last year is a nice, if modest, little collection of songs. The production is a little plain, but there’s a forthright quality about the singing and the arrangements that appeals to me. It just sounds honest. It also sounds to me like the sort of self-produced small-label records that indie bands put out in the mid-1980s, back when everyone was trying to become the next R.E.M. One thing that I didn’t really pick up on with Ra Ra Riot until seeing the band live was the importance of the string players. The cello and violin are almost the lead instruments, but Ra Ra Riot doesn’t really sound that much like lush orchestral pop. It’s more like a string quartet than an orchestra. And Ra Ra Riot was quite lively in concert, with the sort of stage roaming and hair flailing that you’d expect at… (OK, here comes the clichéd rock-critic comparison that you’ve been bracing for – sorry!) … an Arcade Fire concert. Ra Ra Riot played all of the EP and some new songs that sounded promising. For the first time ever, the band did two encores, closing out the night with a cool cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love.”
A Dynamite show
Amid all the hubbub over Amy Winehouse – and, to a lesser extent, the critical praise being showered on Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Bettye LaVette – another terrific old-school R&B act has been a little overshadowed. I’m talking about the Dynamites, a young Nashville band playing behind a veteran soul-music frontman, Charles Walker. Billing their collaboration with the somewhat awkward group name The Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker, they released a really fun and funky record last year called Ka-Boom! I keep on comparing it to James Brown, just because it’s the easiest point of reference.
I missed a couple of Dynamites shows in Chicago last year, but was happy to make up for it with Saturday’s concert at Schubas. The opening act was the Soul Reys, who lived up to their name with groovy, guitar-driven instrumental soul. The Dynamites opened their set with a couple of instrumental songs, too, but then Walker, wearing a dapper suit, came up, and the stage belonged to him for the rest of the night. Walker can squeeze out those hoarse funky notes through his vocal cords like James Brown, but he also wowed everyone with a few of the night’s more delicate moments. Singing “Deeper, deeper, deeper,” his voice went higher into a beautiful falsetto, and as tight as the Dynamites sounded, Walker could have pulled off that moment a cappella. The Dynamites know how to groove, and a lot of the people in the crowd spent a good portion of the night dancing.
See my photos of the Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker and the Soul Reys.
Best films of 2007
1. THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson) – I waited until this movie opened in Chicago Jan. 4 before I finished my 2007 list, and I’m glad I did. (Arguably, if you go by Chicago release dates, this one should be saved for the 2008 list, but I’m sticking it under 2007 since it qualifies for the Oscars.) As historical epics go, this film is remarkably spare and focused. It could have been one of those sweeping sagas – how the oil industry changed the country – but instead it’s chamber drama about one greedy, self-centered and driven man. Daniel-Day Lewis’ performance is simply amazing (as so many of his performances have been). Much of the time, his character is putting on a show for the people around him, and the film makes wonderful use of this oil man’s speeches, finding a peculiar kind of poetry in these sales pitches. Lewis does allow us some glimpses behind his mask, but he never reveals that much about why he became the way he is. Too much of that sort of psychoanalysis might have lessened this film. It’s quite a while before the first line of dialogue is spoken, and those opening scenes are a masterful example of what is essentially silent cinema. I’ve liked all of Anderson’s previous films to one extent or another (I need to see them again to arrive at a more thoughtful analysis), but this is his strongest work yet. It bears little resemblance to Anderson’s earlier movies until the final scenes fall into a slow, building intensity that reminded me of the unusual pacing in Punch Drunk Love. The new film is more than a little reminiscent of Erich Von Streheim’s classic Greed, and the sharp orchestral score by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead kept putting me in the mind of Stanley Kubrick – a feeling that was reinforced by the devastating final shot.
2. LIGHTS IN THE DUSK (Aki Kaurismaki) – This film barely received any distribution or critical notice, but I found it to be one of the best yet from one of my favorite directors, Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki, a master of minimalism. Kaurismaki tells this sad little story with brilliant cinematography, smart editing and a wicked sense of black humor. It’s another new film that reminds me of the great silent films – in this case, the work of Charlie Chaplin. (See my earlier review of Lights in the Dusk.)
3. BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (Guy Maddin) – Winnipeg’s Maddin continues to be one of the weirdest filmmakers in the world with his latest fever dream, which came to Chicago this year with a full orchestra, sound-effects crew and narration by Crispin Glover. I also saw the film without the spectacle, in a print featuring narration by Isabella Rosselini. It works in either version, though like all of Maddin’s films, this one will baffle a lot of people. The rapid editing style succeeds in simulating the way memories and visions flick in and out of the brain (in an interview, Maddin told me this was his intention). Strangely enough, the movie shares some common elements with The Orphanage, though their cinematic styles are completely different. Both films are about characters returning to haunted orphanages where they grew up, with a mystical lighthouse located nearby. Brand Upon the Brain! comes much closer to presenting the cinematic equivalent of dementia.
4. SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reydagas) – Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico (where a German dialect is spoken rather than Spanish), this film is breathtakingly beautiful and heart-rending. The plot takes an odd, seemingly mystical turn that I’m still grappling with. Silent Light played at the Chicago International Film Festival.
5. ZODIAC (David Fincher) – With his earlier film Seven, Fincher was part of the somewhat sickening movement I call serial-killer chic. I liked that film and some of the other movies about serial killers, including Silence of the Lambs, but after a while it started to feel like the genre was fetishizing some aspects of these disturbing murderers. Fincher subverted the genre with Zodiac, which might have seemed anti-climatic for people expecting another Seven. It does something that few films based on real crime stories have ever done: Rather than boiling down a complicate true story to a few stock elements, it shows the story of the Zodiac Killer as an unknowable mystery that obsesses various people, especially a newspaper cartoonist, over a long stretch of time. Zodiac feels real and authentic, and in spite of the lack of a dramatic conclusion, it also manages to be quite absorbing.
6. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Joel and Ethan Coen) – I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy’s novel (yet), so I can’t say how it compares, but this is a terrific thriller with a creepy, almost nihilistic attitude. The ending threw some people, but I found it fitting.
7. THE DARJEELING LIMITED (Wes Anderson) – Anderson’s quirkiness makes him an easy target for some critics, but I thought he was in top form this time. The panning camera shots, editing and colorful shots of India are fabulous filmmaking, and the characters are pretty compelling beneath all those quirks. Anderson’s movies are a bit like kabuki, and you have to accept that the surface won’t seem completely real. Darjeeling teeters between being a spiritual journey and a satire making fun of spiritual journeys, but that teetering makes for an entertaining and eloquent film.
8. ONCE (John Carney) – Simplicity is one of this film’s winning qualities. It often feels like a documentary, and Carney wisely lets some of the musical scenes unfold in real time. Few other movies have so vividly captured that connection people find by making music together.
9. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS (Christian Munigu) – Another film that seems real enough to be a documentary. This Romanian movie about a woman arranging an abortion for a friend is not easy viewing, but it is compelling and moving. Its realism reminded me of the earlier Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu as well as the films of Belgium’s Dardennes Brothers. It showed at the Chicago International Film Festival.
10. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (Julian Schnabel) – The opening scenes – shot from the point of view of a paralyzed man waking up in a hospital – are marvelous filmmaking using handheld camera, blurry and shallow-focus shots. It’s the sort of movie that might come off as experimental except for the fact that Schnabel keeps the narrative clear. After that opening, the movie broadens out to include shots from other perspectives, but it always feels like a uniquely cinematic experience. And without resorting to cheap inspirational fare, the story makes you think about what it means to be alive.
SPECIAL ASTERISK LISTING – There’s one 2006 movie that did not come to Chicago until 2007, and would place high on this list if I counted it as a 2007 film:
THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
MY NEXT TEN
11. Two Days in Paris (Julie Delpy)
12. The Savages (Tamara Jenkins)
13. Abel Raises Cain (Jenny Abel and Jeff Hockett)
14. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy)
15. No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson)
16. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon)
17. All the Invisible Things (Jakob W. Erwa)
18. Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
19. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
20. Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)
RUNNERS-UP:
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
You, the Living (Roy Anderson)
Offside (Jafar Panahi)
Control (Anton Corbijn)
Juno (Jason Reitman)
Sicko (Michael Moore)
The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton)
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)
Half Moon (Bahman Ghobadi)
This is England (Shane Meadows)
The Man From London (Bela Tarr)
Opium: Diary of a Madwoman (Janos Szasz)
Ploy (Pen-Ek Ratanarung)
Best Chicago plays of 2007
1. THE STRANGERER – Mickle Maher’s play – which combines a 2004 debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry with Albert Camus’ The Stranger – sounds a little bit like a stunt, but it was deeply profound, funny and often disturbing. Of all the plays I saw in 2007, this is the one that lives on in my dreams. Theater Oobleck is bringing back The Strangerer in April. Don’t miss it.
2. AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY – Tracy Letts’ play at Steppenwolf (now on Broadway) won lots of critical praise, and it deserved it. What an epic of domestic dysfunction and black comedy. Great script, even better cast.
3. I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN – Stuart Dybek’s wonderful collection of connected short stories seemed like an unlikely book to adapt for the stage, but playwright Claudia Allen really got it right with this enchanting show at Victory Gardens.
4. THE ADDING MACHINE – This world premiere at Next Theatre (Joshua Schmidt and Jason Loewith’s new musical version of Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionist drama) was surreal and nightmarish, not your typical musical-theater fare. A superb work of art.
5. DEFIANCE – John Patrick Shanley’s military drama at Next Theatre was so good because it’s such a tight, compact play, exploring ethical issues without ever getting didactic.
6. THE SAVANNAH DISPUTATION – The Writers’ Theatre production of Evan Smith’s new script was the best play of the year on the topic of religion, a topic that popped up a lot on stages in 2007.
7. HUNCHBACK – I missed this show when Redmoon first staged it in 2000, so I can’t say how the new production compared with the original, but it was a marvelously inventive and self-reflexive show.
8. THE TURN OF THE SCREW – Like a magic show, this Henry James adaptation at Writers’ Theatre toyed with our senses and raised more than a few goose bumps.
9. THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN OF JENNY CHOW — Wacky fun with some emotional depth, Rolin Jones’ play was an unexpected hit for Collaboraction, and it deserved all its success.
10. OTHELLO – An excellent and intimate version of the Shakespeare classic, directed by Michael Halberstam at Writers’ Theatre, with a fabulous turn by John Judd as Iago.
Runners-up:
The Wooden Breeks at Lookingglass
Doubt (touring production)
Frozen at Next
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (touring production)
Mirror of the Invisible World at the Goodman
Fire on the Mountain at Northlight
The Crucible at Steppenwolf
Betrayal at Steppenwolf
Lady at Northlight
Bach at Leipzig at Writers’ Theatre
Favorite photos of 2007
Over the past week or so, I’ve been going through all those photos I shot at concerts in 2007, picking out some favorites. I tried to limit my favorites to one per band, with a few exceptions. Some of my choices are unconventional shots, not necessarily the photos that are technically the best, but the ones that capture a time and place for me.
There are three ways you can look at the photos.
Best concerts of 2007
My concert tally for the year comes to 138 shows (I counted each day of a festival as one show), with 427 performances including all the various opening acts and festival performers. Maybe 50 of those are partial performances.
These were my favorites:
1. Neil Young, Nov. 12 at the Chicago Theatre. Review.
2. The Mekons, Oct. 12 at the Hideout and the Mutiny. Review. Photos.
3. Grinderman, July 25 at Metro. Review. Photos.
4. Iggy Pop & the Stooges, Aug. 5 at Lollapalooza, Grant Park. Review. Photos.
5. The Wrens, June 24 at the Belmont Arts and Music Festival. Review. Photos.
6. Björk, May 12 at the Auditorium Theatre. Review.
7. The Arcade Fire, May 18 at the Chicago Theatre. Review.
8. Mavis Staples, Aug. 12 at Millennium Park. Review. Photos.
9. M. Ward, Jan. 29 at Park West. Review.
10. Neko Case, March 29 at Park West. Review. Photos.
Runners-up:
The Decemberists with the Grant Park Orchestra, July 19 at Millennium Park
Bettye LaVette, Dec. 7 at FitzGerald’s
Marissa Nadler, Sept. 5 at Ronny’s
Sonic Youth, July 13 at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Union Park
Cat Power, July 14 at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Union Park
Mothercoat, March 15 at SXSW
Okkervil River and Damien Jurado, Sept. 19 at Logan Square Auditorium
Great Lake Swimmers, Oct. 28 at Schubas
Andrew Bird, April 20 at the Riviera
Dappled Cities and Figurines, Oct. 24 at Schubas
Oakley Hall, Oct. 2 at Schubas
…and many, many other good shows.
Waco Bros. wrap up year
Another year comes to an end, and as far as live music (my primary topic here on this blog), it’s been another exciting year filled with many, many memorable performances. I’ll have a list of favorite concerts soon, as well as my favorite photos. (Still working on that…) Unless I unexpectedly see some live music in the next two days, my final concert of the year was the Waco Brothers and the Deccas Friday (Dec. 28) at Schubas. The Wacos are making it a tradition to play shows just before New Year’s at Shubas every year, and they’re just about the perfect bar band for some year-end revelry. Bloodshot will soon be releasing a live album recorded at last year’s Wacos shows. On Friday, the band played the entirety of its 1997 record Cowboy in Flames, one of its best albums. That was fun, and then came a couple of encores including the Wacos’ country-punk take on “Baba O’Riley” and a terrific version of the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” with Tracy Dear on lead vox. There were leg kicks galore.
The opening act was the Deccas, a Chicago girl group doing ’60s-style pop tunes with three-part harmonies. I liked what I heard, and look forward to seeing and hearing more from the Deccas. Check out their myspace page.
A little movie of the Pipettes
Movie? Well, slide show is more like it. I’m experimenting here a little with some of my old photos, using iMovie to edit them into a sort of movie. This is the Pipettes performing March 15, 2007, at a SXSW day party at the Flamingo Cantina.
Best records of 2007
1. THE SADIES: NEW SEASONS (Yep Roc) – This record is filled with the sort of the songs that the Sadies themselves sing about in the track “Simple Aspiration”: “That simple little song/We used to listen all night long.” The Sadies’ music is far from simple, but it does have a modest, unassuming quality about it. The Good brothers are just about the most amazing guitar players on the planet right now, and those fancy licks come to them so easily that it never sounds like they’re showing off. And I love the way Dallas and Travis sing, too, with those croaky, understated voices of theirs. The songs on New Seasons sound slightly haunted. “Anna Leigh,” a song about a girl’s “eerie dream,” even contains the line, “It haunted me through all the shows, just what she saw.” The precise nature of all the dangers and dark fates alluded to in the lyrics is left a mystery. The album reaches an emotional peak for me on “My Heart of Wood,” in which the protagonist says he can barely breathe when he thinks about whatever it is that’s coming. “And if I’m still alive when the autumn kills the leaves, I guess I’ll be what they consider free.” The Sadies’ music might be categorized as roots rock or Americana, but it’s much richer than those labels might indicate, reminding me of everything from Johnny Cash and the Byrds to early R.E.M., but always sounding like nothing other than the Sadies. Sadies web site.
2. ARCADE FIRE: NEON BIBLE (Merge) – No, Neon Bible is not quite the album that Funeral was, but it’s still damn good. These are songs that burrowed into my brain over the course of the year, intensely personal and dramatically epic at the same time. The real church organ on “Intervention” is a great touch that really makes the song. The peculiar instrumental break in “No Cars Go” is one of those wonderful musical moments that makes you say, “What the heck was that?” The back-to-back songs with “don’t” lyrics (“I don’t wanna work in a building downtown…” in “Antichrist Television Blues” and “Don’t wanna live in my father’s house no more…” in “Windowsill”) are an eloquent expression of our age’s anxiety and frustration over the way things are. And the low-key, moody “My Body is a Cage” is a perfect ending. Arcade Fire web site. Neon Bible web site (with lots of videos and weird stuff).
3. FEIST: THE REMINDER (Cherrytree/Interscope) – This album has survived one of the true tests of musical quality for me: It made it through many spins on my stereo, plus overkill at the local Starbucks, and exposure on TV commercials. And after all that, when I put on the album again, it still sounded great from start to finish and I hadn’t grown the least bit sick of it. I have to admit to being a latecomer to the Leslie Feist fan club. While I like her previous album, Let It Die, this one’s better. I love her voice, and the arrangements are almost perfect in their elegance. I love mellow pop music when it’s done right, and this record is a good an example as I can think of how to do it right. Feist web site.
4. HANDSOME FURS: PLAGUE PARK (Sub Pop) – I hadn’t heard a note by the Handsome Furs when I saw them open this year for the Besnard Lakes at Schubas, but I found their guitar-meets-Casio-electronics sound pretty captivating. I bought the CD from their merch table, and it quickly become one of the albums I was listening to the most this year. I never got tired of it, maybe because it’s just nine songs long and all nine tracks have such strong melodies. I think I would have been skeptical if I’d read a description of the Handsome Furs’ sound. In a way, these songs sound like demos for a full band without the drums and bass and everything else that will be added later, but I don’t think these recordings could really be improved on with more bells and whistles. The guitar playing of Dan Boeckner (also a member of Wolf Parade) sounds perfect against Alexei Perry’s very basic keyboard chords and electronic drum beats, giving these anthems an unusual tension. Handsome Furs on myspace. Handsome Furs mp3s and videos on Sub Pop web site.
5. ANDREW BIRD: ARMCHAIR APOCRYPHA (Fat Possum) – Bird continues to amaze with his many talents. But it wouldn’t matter that he’s a fantastic whistler, violinist, singer, guitarist, etc., if he weren’t also writing wonderful songs to put all of that talent to use. This is another strong collection, almost on a par with his previous record, The Mysterious Production of Eggs. (Don’t overlook a delightful track Bird left off the album, “Self Torture,” which available on emusic.) Andrew Bird web site.
6. GRINDERMAN: GRINDERMAN (Anti) – Nick Cave and a smaller sub-unit of his usual backing band, the Bad Seeds, called themselves Grinderman and put out the year’s best loud rock music. Cave switched from his usual piano to guitar, and the pounding, twisted blues punk songs include his usual dose of wit, smarts and passion, and lots of frustrated libido. (See “No Pussy Blues.”) And on the rare occasion when Grinderman dialed down the intensity for a ballad, it also came up with a fabulously spooky song, “Man in the Moon.” Grinderman web site.
7. RADIOHEAD: IN RAINBOWS (self-released) – A superb album that will stand on its own merits regardless of the news story surrounding its unconventional release. I’ve liked every Radiohead album since OK Computer, so I’m not one of those people who felt like the band needed to “return to form.” To me, this is simply another great album in Radiohead’s impressive streak of great albums. It’s a subtle record that took a while to sink in for me. The band sounds at ease with its mix of sounds right now, not complacent but maybe a little comfortable. Yorke & Co. no longer need to prove that it’s OK to mix electronica with guitars. They know what they’re doing, and Thom Yorke even sounds a little soulful at times. Radiohead web site.
8. THE 1900s: COLD & KIND (Parasol) – The orchestral arrangements and vocal harmonies are sublime throughout this gem of an album. With all of the violins, guitars, keyboards, guy-and-girl vocals and what have you, the record ran the risk of sounding overstuffed, but somehow the 1900s managed to balance it all just right. There’s a strong 1960s flavor to the songs, with a little bit of the Mamas & Papas, and the sprawling orch-pop ensemble sound of later groups like Belle & Sebastian. The song “Acutiplantar Dude” (about a friend of the band who died) builds to a goose-bumps-raising line about being born again. “The Medium Way” has a similar climax, when the voices take the melody to an unexpected high (“I don’t know if I can sleep, it’s 3 in the morning“). These are illustrative examples of what I call the delayed-gratification principle in songwriting. As much as songwriters love to repeat the melodic hooks they come up with, sometimes it pays off to use it just once, dropping it in at the high point of a song. The 1900s web site.
9. SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS: 100 DAYS, 100 NIGHTS (Dap Tone) – Man, it’s been a really good year for soul music – old-school soul like James Brown and Motown and Stax artists used to sing. Despite all of the tabloid hullabaloo surrounding Amy Winehouse, I still think her record’s pretty fab, and so were the albums by Bettye LaVette and the Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker. Best of all, though, was Sharon Jones, who repeats the success of her last record, Naturally, with another platter of horn-driven grooves that sound exactly like lost soul sessions recorded four decades ago. I appreciate the answer that producer/songwriter/bandleader Bosco Mann gave on NPR’s “Fresh Air” when Terry Gross asked him how he achieved that sound. It’s not the equipment, he said, it’s the arrangements and the musicianship. Daptone Records web site.
10. ANTIBALAS: SECURITY (Anti) – These Brooklyn acolytes of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat genre really let the logic of their songs dictate where they go. And they go to some strange places. The songs are long and mostly instrumental, but it never feels like the guys in Antibalas are jamming for just for the sake of jamming. The songs are compositions where every piece counts. There’s a little bit of singing (including a memorable rant/chant about the G.O.P.) and lots of brass. The horns sound so powerful. Antibalas web site.
THE REST OF MY TOP 25 in more of less descending order:
Dappled Cities: Granddance
The Shins: Wincing the Night Away
Loney, Dear: Loney, Noir
Magnolia Electric Co.: Sojourner
Björk: Volta
The Papercuts: Can’t Go Back
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Bettye LaVette: The Scene of the Crime
Johnny Irion: Ex Tempore
The National: Boxer
MV & EE with the Golden Road: Gettin’ Gone
Josh Ritter: The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
The Budos Band: The Budos Band II
LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver
Great Lake Swimmers: Ongiara
THE REST OF MY TOP 100 in alphabetical order (of course, all of this is subject to change after I listen to more records, and listen to these records more…):
The Aliens: Astronomy For Dogs
Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake: From the River to the Ocean
Besnard Lakes: Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil
Black Moth Super Rainbow: Dandelion Gum
Blonde Redhead: 23
Boris with Michio Kurihara: Rainbow
Box of Baby Birds: Box of Baby Birds
Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew: Spirit If…
The Broken West: I Can’t Go On I’ll Go On
The Capstan Shafts: Environ Maiden
Caribou: Andorra
Dinosaur Jr.: Beyond
Dolly Varden: The Panic Bell
Dolorean: You Can’t Win
Dr. Dog: We All Belong
The Dynamites Featuring Charles Walker: Kaboom!
The Earlies: The Enemy Chorus
Exploding Star Orchestra: We Are All From Somewhere Else
Field Music: Tones of Town
The Fiery Furnaces: Widow City
Figurines: When the Deer Wore Blue
The Go: Howl on the Haunted Beat You Ride
The Go! Team: Proof of Youth
Jose Gonzalez: In Our Nature
Patty Griffin: Children Running Through
P.J. Harvey: White Chalk
Richard Hawley: Lady’s Bridge
Iron & Wine: The Shepherd’s Dog
Sondre Lerche: Phantom Punch
Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer
Lil’ Cap’n Travis: Twilight on Sometimes Island
Linda Thompson: Versatile Heart
Charlie Louvin: Charlie Louvin
Eleni Mandell: Miracle Of Five
Mannequin Men: Fresh Rot
Cass McCombs: Dropping the Writ
The Mekons: Natural
The Mendoza Line: 30 Year Low
Menomena: Friend And Foe
Midnight Movies: Lion the Girl
Thurston Moore: Trees Outside the Academy
Marissa Nadler: Songs III: Bird on the Water
Nina Nastasia & Jim White: You Follow Me
The New Pornographers: Challengers
Oakley Hall: I’ll Follow You
Okkervil River: The Stage Names
Patrick Park: Everyone’s in Everyone
Parts & Labor: Mapmaker
Phosphorescent: Pride
Robert Pollard: Coast to Coast Carpet of Love
Robert Pollard: Standard Gargoyle Decisions
Porter Wagoner: Wagonmaster
Jon Rauhouse: Steel Guitar Heart Attack
The Ike Reilly Assassination: We Belong to the Staggering Evening
Richmond Fontaine: Thirteen Cities
Robbers on High Street: Grand Animals
Rufus Wainwright: Release the Stars
Savath & Savalas: Golden Pollen
Scotland Yard Gospel Choir: Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
Elliott Smith: New Moon
Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Bruce Springsteen: Magic
Mavis Staples: We’ll Never Turn Back
Stars: In Our Bedroom After the War
Taken By Trees: Open Field
David Vandervelde: The Moonstation House Band
The Weakerthans: Reunion Tour
Tinariwen: Aman Iman: Water Is Life
Uglybeats: Take a Stand
Various Artists: The Inspiring New Sounds of Rio de Janeiro
Wilco: Blue Sky Blue
Robert Wyatt: Comicopera
Neil Young: Chrome Dreams II
Youth Group: Casino Twilight Dogs
Some new articles
The January issue of Chicago magazine includes my feature story about Lucy Page Gaston, who was the country’s most famous crusader against cigarette smoking in the early 1900s.
Also just out, the winter issue of Signal to Noise: The Journal of Improvised & Experimental Music includes my review of the Clark Street Bridge Percussion Orchestra’s concert and the new album by Black Mountain.
Sorry, the stories aren’t online. You’ll have to get them on the newsstand, at least for now.
Charlie Louvin at Schubas
It was hard to believe that Charlie Louvin, a living legend of country music, was playing to a small audience Sunday evening at Schubas, without a whole lot of publicity or hoopla. The guy just turned 80, he’s up for a Grammy, and his songs have been covered by the likes of the Byrds and Uncle Tupelo. Seems like he deserved a bigger concert, but the intimate venue made for a fabulous little show. Schubas had chairs set out for the 6 p.m. show, which started maybe even a minute or two early.
There’s something about the gravelly qualities of older singers’ voices that works really well for me in a country-music setting. Louvin still sings quite well, with that sandpaper roughness. It was pretty inspiring to see him putting on a show at his age, and winging so many songs. He kept telling his band to ignore the set list and play other songs they hadn’t even practiced. As he called out the musical keys for each song, it prompted one of his many corny jokes (delightfully corny, I mean). “Music’s just like crossing the street,” he said. “You’ve got to C sharp or you could B flat before you get to the other side.”
Yes, indeed, Louvin is on old-fashioned performer and he told plenty of jokes like that and commented directly at some audience members and the waitress. Highlights of the set included “Atomic Power,” “The Christian Life,” “Long Journey Home” (with the chorus of losing all your money but a two-dollar bill) and “Ira,” his touching tribute to the brother (the other half of the Louvin Brothers) who died so many years ago. I got a little choked up watching this octogenarian singing about how he will soon be up with Ira among the angels. (I sure do hope he sticks around for a while, though.)
Thrill Jockey 15th anniversary
Thrill Jockey Records celebrated its 15th anniversary with two nights of great music over the weekend (Dec. 14 and 15) at Logan Square Auditorium. My review will be in a forthcoming issue of Signal to Noise magazine. In the meantime, I’ve posted some of my photos.
Most Serene Republic at the Beat Kitchen
The Most Serene Republic is yet another one of those rock bands, er, “collectives,” from Canada on the Arts & Crafts label with a sprawling, eclectic sound, at least one unusual instrument (trombone), and a certain anarchic spirit. Unlike some of the other bands from north of the border, the Most Serene Republic hasn’t made a really big impression on me. The group’s new record, Population, strikes me as pretty good, a fairly pleasant listen, but then after listening to it, nothing much sticks in my mind. The band came to the Beat Kitchen on Saturday, and they were pretty enjoyable as a live band, largely due to the slightly demented demeanor of lead singer Adrian Jewett. I’m still not sure I’m going to remember these songs for very long, but I did like what I saw and heard Saturday night.
The first band of the night was a Chicago outfit called Blueblood, which was a pleasant surprise. Vigorous singing, strong rhythms and (you guessed it) post-punk angularities. The second band was Mock Orange. The group attracted some fans who showed their appreciation with loud yells (including one guy who urged Mock Orange to play “28 more songs” instead of one more as they wrapped up their set), but I can’t say I enjoyed the band all that much. Not my cup of tea, I guess.
See my photos of the Most Serene Republic, Blueblood and Mock Orange.
Bettye LaVette at FitzGerald’s
Bettye LaVette’s a live wire of a singer, rarely letting up on the intensity and feeling that she pours into her music. I’ve had the honor to interview her twice (Read my story last week for Pioneer Press here.) And now I’ve had the privilege of seeing her in concert twice. The last time was at the Old Town School of Folk Music in 2006, and this time (Friday night, Dec. 7) it was at that great little club out in Berwyn, FitzGerald’s. The only disappointment was that Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, who played on and co-produced her new record, didn’t swing out to Berwyn to join her during the show, despite the fact that he was in the city for a gig earlier in the night at the Empty Bottle. Oh, well. It was a great show anyway, with passionate renditions of songs off her two most recent albums and a few oldies. At a few moments, when the music got quiet, you could hear the usual chatter of people talking over by the bar, but when the band left the stage and LaVette began singing her amazing a cappella version of Sinead O’Connor’s “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” you could have heard a pin drop in the place. With that stunning song — she almost looked ready to collapse from the emotion of it — LaVette exited stage right and it would have been anti-climatic for her to do anything more.