I sense that Built to Spill has not aged well. Frontman Doug Martsch's beard and general "aloof lumberjack" vibe were visionary, of course, but there isn't a straighter guitar-humping Freedom Rock arrow in the whole '90s Magnet-reading quiver. Not enough of an Afropop influence for these polyglot times, alas. And yet, amid the nostalgia-trip orgy that September's All Tomorrow's Parties New York has turned into—My Bloody Valentine! Dinosaur Jr.! Mogwai! Tortoise! Thurston Moore recreating an entire solo record for some reason!—it was the notion of Built to Spill performing 1997's Perfect From Now On in its entirety that almost convinced me to head north. To paraphrase Roast Beef, that record is the bitch.
Thankfully, they're gonna play it a couple times in town, too. (At Terminal 5, yes, but they've improved.) September 25 and 26. Look for even-more-extended versions of "I Would Hurt a Fly," the still-mighty "Velvet Waltz," and all-time wooing-a-collegiate-lady mixtape boner jam "Kicked It in the Sun." The Meat Puppets and Dinosaur Jr. open, guaranteeing the most socially awkward green-room environment in recent history.
Erykah Badu/The Roots
Radio City Music Hall
Friday May 9
During climactic onstage moments, Erykah Badu likes to remove her wig. Sometimes this is a violent act: At a show five years or so back in Columbus, Ohio, she abruptly ripped off her mushroom-cloud afro and slammed it down at her feet in mid-wail, probably the single most shocking thing I'd ever seen at a rock concert. (Shortly thereafter she dove head-first into the crowd; she was dating Common at the time, I guess he has that effect on people.)
Feeling less aggressive this evening but no less gleefully eccentric, Erykah simply yanks off her smaller, more demure bob in an idle moment, twirls it around a bit, and sticks it back on. Backward. She looms erotically over a MacBook, primly bending 90 degrees at the waist to trigger samples before pouring some mysterious liquid (tea? whiskey? blood?) out of a thermos into a tiny cup and throwing it back. Her prodigious backing band plays buttery, modal soul-funk; her backup dancers often stand perfectly still and just stare us down.
A damn shame she didn't show up during the Roots' brief but bombastic 45-minute opening set: They even did "You Got Me"! (Plus a thoroughly raucous version of "The Seed," which morphed first into Curtis Mayfield's "Move on Up," then on to Kool G. Rap's "Men at Work.") But it's hard to imagine anyone operating on the same plane, the same planet, as Ms. Badu, who can wail when she wants to but prefers to coo demurely, calmly leading her band around by the nose ("Wait," she announces several times per song, and the beat dutifully drops out to heighten the drama) and prancing lithely about. The selections off her recent New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War) aren't so much songs as long, luxurious moods, but she milks them for all the bliss and drama we can stand.
Ah, yes. The red balls. During the moody, lovelorn "Green Eyes," Erykah tosses a few red exercise balls about, stacking them atop each other, chasing one with the other, hiding behind them, and finally booting one across the stage (it almost knocks over her MacBook). It's bizarre, nearly childish, and completely mesmerizing. "I just love her," blurts out a woman behind me, over and over. Badu hits us with both barrels whether she's being defiant ("Tyrone") or deviant ("Annie Don't Wear No Panties"); just before the show wraps up after two hours of truly inspired weirdness, she brings out a starstruck couple from Cincinnati, and the guy drops to one knee and proposes. (To his girlfriend, not Erykah. Though I'm sure he considered it.) Strangest, most riveting show I've been to in ages. "I don't know if I hit the right notes," Badu admits at one point. "But it was a good day. My shit ain't based on notes anyway."
Our dear associate Annie Zaleski o'er at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis has a signed copy of the imminent reissue of Mogwai's splendid 1997 disc, Young Team, that she graciously intends to give away: Head on over there and look into it. The reissue's due out May 26; "Tracy" is the jam.
Not Elvis Costello. (Rob Trucks with the pics, more below.)
Panic at the Disco
Roseland
Wednesday, May 7
So these dudes are in the throes of a major Sgt. Pepper fixation: goofy psychedelic clothes, goofy psychedelic pop tunes, the drummer looks a lot like Ringo from far away, etc. This is not so terrible. It holds attention, provokes discussion. During tonight's climactic sing-along to "Northern Downpour," an actually quite stirring bumbly-folk ballad, an army of rapt teens bearing digital cameras sing along to lyrics projected on the backdrop screen, part of a set only slightly less elaborate than Hairspray's across the street:
Hey moon, please forget to fall down
Hey moon, don't you go down
You are at the top of my lungs
Drawn to the ones who never yawn
"I have no idea what that means," notes the Photographer.
"Maybe 'the ones who never yawn' are people who aren't jaded," I suggest. "The young."
"Yeah, but babies yawn," the Photographer counters. "Babies yawn like motherfuckers."
See? Discussion. Panic at the Disco's new album, Pretty. Odd., is, well, yeah. I can't tell if The Kids are into it, these ornate nods to "Octopus's Garden" and the Doobie Brothers, or if they're just biding their time for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." But it's heartening to see a young rock band catch a break, net a hit song or two, and then go "Fuck It" and try to write "A Day in the Life" 15 times. This band right now is basically the Warped Tour's interpretation of "Listen to the Flower People." I'm comfortable with that if you are. Keep that horn section on retainer, gentlemen.
Our trusted friends/colleagues at Rhapsody's Play blog continue their hot streak today with a gallery of what they deem Achievements in Album Cover Manscaping. This is both self-explanatory and way more appetizing than it sounds. If you guessed Herbie Mann's Push Push is the first entry, you win a prize: You get to look at the cover of Herbie Mann's Push Push again.
There's this sweet new trend among Hold Steady fans apparently where you toss a half-full cup of beer straight up in the air during climactic moments—when the whole band kicks into "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," say—so as to better amplify the fist-pumping Bruceness of it all. In a venue where beers cost $8 or so, this is a powerful statement.
Meanwhile, this is a strange show, some sort of Target/Tribeca Film Fest hybrid sponsorship wherein the first band of the evening is handed a check for $10,000, and the Hold Steady's immediate predecessors, the Virgins, slog through a joyless, impotent version of INXS's "Devil Inside" while the hugely overzealous lighting guy goes all Phantom of the Opera on us.
Thankfully, the Hold Steady play it straight: bar-band grandiosity par excellence, and mostly the hits at that—not a lot from their imminent new album in June, save that song with the line "Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer" in it. No, it's mostly "Stuck Between Stations," "Massive Nights," "Stevie Nix," "Southtown Girls," etc., all still indisputably great Led Zep/poetry slam anthemia; when guitarist Tad Kubler rattles off a particularly righteous "Eruption"-worthy solo on the latter, he and head ranter Craig Finn enthusiastically high-five. Twice.
It's important to note how crucial keyboardist Franz Nicolay (the nattily dressed one who looks like Super Mario) is to all this. This is gonna sound pejorative, but everything he plays comes out as straight-up Bruce Hornsby: "The Way It Is" for the fast ones, "Mandolin Rain" for the slow ones. This is a very very good thing. Not worth dumping $4 worth of beer on your neighbors over, in my opinion, but we all react to Bruce Hornsby differently.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 12:01 AM, April 30, 2008
Rob Trucks only got to shoot for two minutes, but he did okay.
Nick Lowe
Canal Room
Tuesday, April 29
Nick Lowe has a new song called "I Read a Lot." A lament, not a boast. (Though he's got a lot of those, too.) He reads a lot because he's lonely, you see. This comes up often, his loneliness—consider "Lately I've Let Things Slide," in which he's so despondent he can't bring himself to do laundry or shut the front door. It is a tribute to Nick's songwriting prowess that he can make such pissing and moaning not only palatable, but believable, because frankly, dude is profoundly handsome and suave as hell, the James Bond of wistful, sad-sack countrypolitan charm.
To wit, with a mere half-hour to work with, he charms the hell out of us during this Tribeca Film Fest-affiliated afternoon delight, even when he's doing one of his boasts, like "I Trained Her to Love Me," in which he woos nubile young ladies just so he can antagonize and devastate them:
And I'm gonna start working on another after this
And when I get that one in a state of bliss
I'll betray her with a kiss
We forgive him because he just looks so sweet, so innocent, and the way he slides up to a new chord on that last line is just devastating. Love this dude. Hearing the guy who wrote "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" sing "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" live does a soul good. And yes, it reminds you that Nick's range used to be a bit wider, more searching and universal than the boast/lament axis he mostly spins on now. But he's earned the right to sing about wearing dirty clothes. He wears them well.
Not to belabor the point here, but triumphantly taking the stage the night before the release of her big American debut, Estelle totally almost wipes out. Severe wobbling ensues. "These are brand new heels," she explains. "That's what happens. Shit."
She's appealing though, in an Awkwardly Endearing sort of way, tiny and fiery and profoundly British, wrapped in a Fruit Stripe Gum sort of dress, half-trilling/half-rapping through her chic postmodern soul, her way-too-loud band nearly overpowering her. She manages, though, mostly via relentlessly goofy between-song banter, which often consists of her complaining about a freeloading ex-boyfriend and then announcing, "But I wrote a song about it!" Some of those songs are quite good: Shine, out on John Legend's new label—and there he is, joining his young charge for a duet on Stevie Wonder's "I Can't Help It," showing us what complete but relatively boring Command of the Stage looks like—particularly excels at pop-reggae tunes like "No Substitute Love" and "Magnificent."
Her big quasi-hit, "American Boy," is splendid too of course—no Kanye cameo tonight though. Too bad. Estelle herself is plenty of entertainment on her own, though, sheepish and loopy, shouting "Dag nab it!" when she gets real excited and offering up actually quite lucid dating advice: "Life is too short. You fucked up the ozone layer. If you like someone, have sex. Fuck it. Literally."
As a mediocre-basketball fanatic, you are naturally enthralled by the Cleveland Cavaliers-Washington Wizards first-round clash; so, too, inexplicably, is Jay-Z. And Soulja Boy. I can make this relevant to your life. I promise.
The video above features Jay-Z's new diss track, a freestyle (god, I hope it's a freestyle) over Too Short's "Blow the Whistle," first played at a Washington D.C. nightclub Friday night and aimed at Wizards shooting guard DeShawn Stevenson. A brief summary of how this happened: Prior to the series, DeShawn declares that Cavs superstar Lebron James is overrated. Lebron responds that actually responding to such a jibe would be like Jay-Z responding to a diss from Soulja Boy. The Wizards respond by getting Soulja Boy courtside seats for game 3 of the series, which they win. Jay-Z decides to respond himself. (The Washington Post, God love 'em, has been all over this.)
I cannot in good conscience recommend "Blow the Whistle (Anderson Varejao Flopped Again)" as a musical entity. But this is just loopy enough to be moderately entertaining, especially Sunday afternoon, game 4 of the series, during which the uptight TV announcers were forced to try to explain this calamity to the large swath of home viewers ignorant of rap-feud aesthetics. But though I grudgingly ride with the Cavs on this one, I must take umbrage at the announcers' dismissal of Soulja Boy as a "one-hit wonder." Bow down to "YAHHH," friends.
Ah: To make this relevant to your life, Jay-Z is probably siding with Lebron here because he aims to woo the guy from Cleveland to Brooklyn in a couple years, just in time to join the relocated Nets, who will play in a fancy new arena whose construction will probably involve bulldozing your apartment.
Lest you be curious, the Cavs are up 3 games to 1 in the series, which continues Wednesday night in Cleveland. The winner will triumphantly advance to the next round vs. the Boston Celtics, whereupon they will be beaten like gongs.
So we're dealing with a shaky-handed cinematographer here (in all fairness, he was probably out in the sun all day), and his decision to focus on Prince's preening face on the Jumbotron instead of the tiny stick figure onstage is a good one that he abandons too early. But you get the point here anyway, the point being that along with everything else, Prince shows an excellent acumen for taking sheepishly anthemic alt.rock songs, draining the sheepishness, and upping the anthemia. His seven-minute version of "Creep" is shamelessly preposterous: He drags out the verses like a half-in-the-bag jazz warbler, pours on what sounds like the faux-choral synths Radiohead will fall in love with a few albums later, inserts some falsetto vamping before the final chorus, and, Prince being Prince, loads up that final chorus with ecstatic guitar shredding so joyous and monolithic our shaky-handed cinematographer very nearly points his camera straight at the ground, because the sky is suddenly way too intimidating. This is almost enough to make you wish you'd been there. Almost.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 10:09 AM, April 25, 2008
Foals
Bowery Ballroom
Thursday, April 24
Their equipment is surly and uncooperative this evening, a symphony of feedback shrieks, disquieting rumbles, and short-circuit sneak-attacks. But the poor roadie tasked with managing this calamity keeps nearly being impaled by the point of a guitar as he darts around the stage, because the dudes in Foals are merrily thrashing around the stage anyway, their dance-punk racket a bit too dark and moody to call their demeanors "blissful," exactly, but they are clearly really, really enjoying themselves. Even Mustache Saxophonist Guy is pounding his chest.
The drummer is a monster, sharp and bright and brutally precise; he makes me forget my severe annoyance. There's nothing worse than a band with only one album still not playing your favorite song: The apex of Foals' Sub Pop debut, Antidotes, is "Big Big Love (Fig. 2)," the quintet's jittery funk finally undercut by some sweet melody. No time for that tonight: It's all jittery and all funk, inspiring small dancefloor patches that nearly turn into moshpits. It's enough to make you actually want to hear "House of Jealous Lovers" again. During the encore, his bank of pedals crapping out again, the lead guitarist just raises his axe over his head and dances around with it as the poor roadie tinkered away. It has the same effect.
Live, Destroyer songs have about a 5:1 confusion-to-rock ratio, glammed up and pompous and brash and irrepressibly wordy, staggering about in an erudite daze, lurching from one wobbly riff to another. Your ringmaster, Dan Bejar, is no help when it comes to orienting yourself. Everything about him screams aloof, from his jaunty shock of hair to his campy, theatrical rasp to his own distinct wobbliness: During applause between songs it's unclear if he's bowing or stumbling. This is the sort of show where a chorus of "I didn't know what time it was at all" is perfectly acceptable, because you don't.
Bejar's four-piece backing band is surprisingly muscular but a bit wayward—most songs tonight (the lion's share derived from the new Trouble in Dreams, and if Fluxblog's account is accurate, just a slightly reordered rehash of the previous night's set at the Music Hall of Williamsburg) seem on the verge of falling apart. When they can agree on a couple chords, though, like the buoyant "Self Portrait With Thing (Tonight Is Not Your Night)," the effect can remind you of T. Rex or the Killers. Your preference.
(Someone in the crowd requested "Free Bird." I thought we had evolved.)
Bejar is riveting even as he studiously deflects your attention, howling through an endless stream of zen riddles, Babel Fish atrocities, and bizarre pieces of advice ("Beware the company you reside in"; "You shouldn't hurt the ones you love, unless you realllly wannnt toooo." He seems to take a very dour delight in your disorientation. "I was going to tell a story about that song, and how it was written," he declares during the encore, having just plowed haughtily through "Certain Things You Ought to Know." Then he starts another song.
It's fascinating to watch the '90s alt-rock all-stars condemn the industry in 2008, raging against the machines that birthed them, whether they're seeking justice in court or appealing to an even higher power: the virtual court of public opinion. Whatever else you think of Trent Reznor, his dalliances have been fascinating: flash-drives left in random bathrooms, elaborate open-source remix projects, $5-to-a-good-home ambient opuses. On that last point, I agree heartily with the honorable Christopher R. Weingarten about Ghosts I-IV: namely, that his democratic ambient ambitions run the risk of making his captive audience realize how easy it'd be to make their own meandering mood music. You push for democracy, you run the risk of being voted out.
But this new one, "Discipline," at least reaches back to Trent's pretty hate machines of old, a stomping backbeat prodding along behind his plinking, moody piano of more recent vintage. It's not that great a song, no. But it's immensely comforting to watch Trent plug away at it, tapping the decaying music industry's walls, looking for hollow spaces he can still slither inside. You can probably do better, but good on him if he eventually convinces you to actually do it.
Hosted by director John Landis, the screening/soiree includes a "Solid Gold Dance Party," a zombie face-painting station, and a Michael Jackson look-alike contest. (Robert Downey Jr. is not eligible.) Plus it's free, though as a friend notes, it's located "all the fuck out on the water."
So preceding the actually quite excellent Forgetting Sarah Marshall (great Buena Vista Social Club joke, in any event) is the trailer for Pineapple Express, yet another Judd Apatow concoction, this one with darker, edgier, more violent content betwixt the stoner gags and my-thumb-looks-like-my-cock shenanigans. Looks pretty good. But the best thing about the trailer (aside from the foot-through-the-windshield thing, maybe) is the score: M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes," the gunshots syncing up splendidly, the eerie Clash sample evidently the perfect accompaniment to chubby men blowing pot-smoke rings in slow motion. She's so versatile.
So Mr. Pajo—he of Slint, Zwan, Papa M, etc.—has a new power-metal band called Dead Child, all loaded up with badass staccato riffs blazing from what I have to assume are really, really, really pointy guitars. Song titles include "Rattlesnake Chalice," "Wasp Riot," "The Coldest Hands," and "Twitch of the Death Nerve." In this dark age of irony (not a bad song title, that), it is sad but understandable that some would accuse Dave of taking the piss.
In a lively chat with esteemed Columbus, Ohio blog Done Waiting, David bristles at this a bit:
--
To those anonymous critics that never experienced life before cell phones, internet, MTV, and compact discs:
* My front four teeth are fake because the Louisville Outlaw bikers knocked them out at the Iron Maiden concert in Louisville, KY in 1983. It was their ‘Piece of Mind’ tour and Fastway and Saxon opened. It must have been their first tour with their new drummer, Nicko McBrain. Fuck you.
* My first band was a metal/hardcore crossover band called ‘Maurice’. We did a tour opening for Samhain in 85? 86? I think ‘Unholy Passion’ had just come out. Glenn called my parents house months after the tour because he was forming a solo band called Danzig and he liked my guitar playing (I could shred way better then). I never called him back because we had just started Slint and I didn’t want to play show-off guitar anymore. FUCK you.
* I was playing Malmsteen licks when he was in Alcatraz – Rising Force hadn’t started yet. I saw Metallica with Cliff and they slayed. Fuck you and YOU.
* FUCK YALL.
--
Okay then. Dead Child plays the Knitting Factory April 23, and Europa April 30.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 12:59 AM, April 14, 2008
So next week Rhino unleashes the first wave of its grand refurbishment of the Replacements catalog, spanning the Twin/Tone years, and thus including Stink, Hootenanny, and Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. But the crown jewel of this haul is obviously 1984's masterpiece Let It Be, and this seems like a fine occasion to remind yourself that the crown jewel of Let It Be is "Androgynous." Sure, disaffected teens of a certain era might've flocked to "Sixteen Blue" or "Answering Machine" or (most probably) "Unsatisfied," but I maintain that this tune remains Paul Westerberg's finest hour, a sweet and spikey ode to ludicrous '80s fashions and the gender confusion they could engender.
(Essay question: Compare and contrast Paul's "He might be a father/But he sure ain't no dad" with Kurt Cobain's famous lament "I tried hard to have a father/But instead I had a dad.")
See Rhino.com for the expanding tracklists, bells & whistles, etc., and look for phase II, the Sire years, later this year.
For deep insight into the sordid trials and tribulations of Marty Anderson, esteemed frontman for Bay Area art-rockers Okay, I refer you to this excellent piece by Voice associate/friend/groomsman Garrett Kamps for SF Weekly a couple years back. Marty's voice—a cracked, frail, disquieting, but inspiringly defiant thing—gets the point across pretty well. Following 2005's double-disc extravaganza High Road/Low Road, Okay next month will unveil Huggable Dust, another inspired burst of merry-go-round-broke-down cacophony anchored by vocals that are tough to get used to and even tougher to shake off once you've warmed to them.
The killer here is "Half-Asleep." As this quick Paper Thin Walls chat shows, Dust largely concerns itself with heartbreak, despondence, self-loathing—the classics. As Marty faintly croaks "I'm afraid/I'm no fun/I'm nothin'/I'm no one," angelic backing vocals underscore the beauty he's convinced he lacks. It's the virtuosity with which he insists he's right that proves him wrong.
Because Internet-based album-cover humor pieces will never lose their luster, we proudly direct you to "Tangled Up in Hues: Excellence in Rock Portraiture," a witty and erudite (is "polymammalianly" really a word?) curatorial exercise by beloved Voice associate/friend/groomsman Nate Cavalieri, housed on Rhapsody's official blog, Play. (Wouldn't "Party Mountain" be a better name for that blog? You think so too? Good.) Behold the bold and bizarre artistic choices made by such disparate hitmakers as David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Meat Loaf. And find out for yourself which JJ Cale record "features a priapic North American raccoon clad in some kind of smoking jacket, contemplating a famished beagle." Here is your high-culture fix for the day.
Union Hall denizens look on in delight during the candle-wax episode. Several more splendid Rebecca Smeyne pics below.
Monotonix/Dark Meat
Union Hall
Monday, April 7
The bartenders could only look on in horror. The only thing funnier, and more terrifying, than watching the Israeli garage-rock trio Monotonix in concert is watching other people watch Monotonix in concert, recoiling in horror, hands at their sides in a defensive crouch, ready to bat away a cup of beer, a garbage can, a bass drum, or frontman Ami Shalev, a truly deranged, magnificently mustached shirtless gentleman who flung full cups of beer into the crowd, swung from the rafters, stomped up and down the bar, poured beer down his pants, allowed other people to pour beer down his pants, poured burning candle wax down his pants, relocated the drum kit on a whim, mashed the microphone into his butt crack, kissed random concertgoers on the lips, groped a young lass in the crowd (she didn't seem litigious, perhaps because she was in the opening band, punishingly loud psych-rock faux-cultists Dark Meat), poured a full trash can on his drummer (who took it in stride, never breaking the beat even when he had a trash bag wrapped around him) and, ah, yes, almost forgot: occasionally sang.
Monotonix are actually a pretty great band on musical merits alone: a thrashing trash-rock avalanche, uninhibited and unhinged, one brutally joyous riff after another. But this is probably the most severe the-record-doesn't-do-it-justice situation ever. And while Ami's faces are classic, pitched perfectly between goofy serenity and beer-soaked insanity, it's the horrified folks behind the Union Hall bar who'll stick with me, unsure how to react to two shirtless sweaty dudes slithering on the bar and screaming. Gaping in disbelief is a completely valid reaction.
Howlin Rain/Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
Mercury Lounge
Wednesday April 2
"Chooglin'" is an underrated verb. The definition, as famously put forth by Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Keep on Chooglin'," is fairly self-explanatory:
Maybe you don't understand it
But if you're a natural man
You got to ball and have a good time
And that's what I call chooglin'
Rock critics mostly use the term now to describe bands that evoke CCR's sound (and natural-man philosophy), which Howlin Rain do quite splendidly, unleashing not so much songs as excuses—to solo, to ramble majestically, to choogle. Led by Comets on Fire flamethrower Ethan Miller (whose compulsion to solo is so severe he often does so one-handed while emptying a water bottle), the band doesn't have much in the way of songs, or melodies, or riffs, even, but when the howlin' commences, two guitars and a keyboardist capable of sketching both Delta dirt and interstellar space vying for your attention, they embody the best of multiple Brothers: Allman, say. Doobie.
Righteous.
The odd singer-songwriter Brooklynite who goes by the name(s) Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson desires the same sort of a classic-rock synergy—when his backing band first cranks up ("Are the backing vocals sufficiently dampened with reverb and delay?" asks his bassist by way of introduction), it's pure Tom Petty. They have only begun to learn to fly; MBAR is charming, but his guitar frequently wanders out of tune, and his yelping voice often joins it, and his associates' backing vocals need way way more reverb and delay to be tolerable. His chooglin' potential is palpable, though, just waiting to emerge. At least he's having a good time.
I find the R.E.M. resurgence building around Accelerate heartening, but also a little sad -- it requires them to more or less shit on everything they've done in the last decade. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more reviled record in the 21st century canon than 2004's Around the Sun, the band's last and, by universal consensus, worst. I will not attempt to disavow you of this notion -- it's bad. Like an R.E.M. riddim record, 13 variations on a yawning midtempo shuffle, feckless and hookless. But I still feel bad for it, and for the band, that it's now a sacrificial lamb, reviewers and interviewers gleefully shredding it as a way to praise Accelerate. "R.E.M. is back!" goes the meme. "Rocking again! Shaking off the cobwebs! None of that sleepy electronic crap! Guitars!"
This, too, is not entirely untrue -- there's an undeniable raucous vigor to Accelerate, whether the sentiment driving that is let's-rock-out or oh-shit-we'd-better-rock-out. But regardless, you can hear the boys gritting their teeth as journalists and fans alike damn the past to praise the present. From Michael Stipe's Pitchfork interview:
-- Pitchfork: A lot of people have remarked on the punchiness and conciseness of the album. Is that a reaction to Around the Sun?
Michael Stipe: You're going to read that over and over again, and we freely admit that we lost focus on the last record. But we also say, and people tend to downplay this part, I really like the material on that record. I think the songs are great. It's just the way we approached them in the studio that really I don't think made them shine as much as they might have. And whatever steps we've taken, I'm not going to badmouth any of the work that we've done, but I'm also not deluded about it. It's not as much of a reaction as reporters who we've sat at a table face to face with... Everyone comes into an interview situation with their own story and their own idea and then they cherrypick the comments that help create their argument. And so I think for the band members it's not as much a reaction to the last record as you might read. It's simply that we all realize that we had lost focus, and we did the most obvious thing, which is to write really fast songs that are really in your face and kind of raw.
Pitchfork: That whole "reaction" line seems to be an easy story to sell.
MS: Yeah, it's a fine story. It's not exactly accurate, is what I'm saying.
--
"Focus" is the official band euphemism, the compromise. But I fear that Accelerate doesn't as much evoke classic R.E.M. as just remind people of classic R.E.M. It's not as good as 1998's Up, the first post-Bill Berry record, the initial big mellow-electronica push. But folks just tolerated that one and heaped opprobrium on the two that followed; now that the band will turn up and rock out again, they get a cookie, a magazine cover, a B+. I wonder if the band thinks it's worth it.
Yes, at long last, I have capitulated to this sweet new Internet trend -- of segueing Skid Row into Steely Dan. I apologize also for the relative goopiness of the Superdrag track, but give him a break. Certainly you were in love once. I have high hopes that this can rise to the title of Second-Best Muxtape of All Time; I doubt anything will beat this one.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 10:27 AM, March 27, 2008
Cause and effect. Pix by Rob Trucks.
Drive-By Truckers
Terminal 5
Wednesday March 26
Mercifully, they did not play "Bob." I get to feeling pretty bad, though, about disparaging the one subpar Drive-By Truckers song, especially after they've romped through two hours' worth of often pretty magnificent ones, raucous triple-guitar Southern rock manifestos with lyrics ten times better than they have to be: "You know the bottle ain't to blame and I ain't trying to/The bottle don't make you do a thing, it just lets you." That the Truckers passed around and ultimately drained an enormous bottle of Jack Daniels while dispensing this wisdom only made it more poignant.
Patterson Hood is still the ringmaster here, jovial and gregarious, and his "The Man I Shot" is a monster, a surly, tempestuous scuzz-rocker that might actually be the best song ever written about the Iraq War; in any event it's a fine addition to his catalog of tunes about people feeling bad about having killed other people. (I'd forgotten about the even scuzzier "Sink Hole," not to mention "Hell No I Ain't Happy," fine selections from the deep-cut pool.) But Mike Cooley is the mesmerizing one, looming triumphantly over the lip of the stage as he solos, barking out brilliant zen koans in his jagged Jagger croon about all the things the bottle let him do.
DBT encores are generally three or four songs longer than they need to be (go out on top and stop after Cooley's "Zip City," boys), but a shambolic cover of "People Who Died" can't erase the ludicrous grandeur of "Let There Be Rock," in which Patterson thanks AC/DC, .38 Special and so forth for having "kept me from blowing my brains out when I was a teenager" and gets 3,000 or so New Yorkers to scream along to a song about going to a Molly Hatchet concert.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 2:34 PM, February 25, 2008
Way to go, Glen.
It’s an imperfect analogy to say that Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová snagging last night’s Best Song Oscar was as thrilling and triumphant as Herbie Hancock stealing the Album of the Year Grammy was appalling, but “Falling Slowly” getting the nod was some heartwarming shit nonetheless, not quite as sublimely surreal as the Three 6 Mafia’s win, but a splendid reminder that you can root for the underdog and still be tremendously leery of Juno. They’re the official Cute Oscar Story this year, botched acceptance speech and all, and I couldn’t be happier. For longtime fans of Glen’s day job as frontman for folksy Irish arena-rockers the Frames (see “What Happens When the Heart Just Stops”), it’s a trip to watch this by all appearances pretty sweet dude win the lottery: taking home an Oscar for a song he cowrote (from the critically adored DIY flick he starred in) with the costar Czech girlfriend who’s half his age. This could be you, folks.
We’ll assume that the aforementioned relentless critical adoration has brought you to Once’s doorstep by now; if not, allow me to reiterate that it’s very quietly wonderful, and that “Falling (not "Following," bleagh) Slowly” is not the best song in it. Ladies and gentlemen, “When Your Mind’s Made Up.” The following is a clip straight from the movie—the bored soundguy’s Hey These Guys Are Pretty Good awakening is pretty cheesy, yes, but if you found “Slowly” a bit feeble and twee, here’s the same style but with a gripping bit of snarl added. The big, booming, wordless climax here is the best 30-second span of music released in 2007; how splendid to have this juggernaut institutionally acknowledged. Ain’t no point tryin’ to stop it.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 2:29 AM, February 21, 2008
Best shortstop ever.
Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Village Vanguard
Wednesday, February 20
He looks like an introverted, professorial Derek Jeter these days, very stoic behind those tortoise-shell glasses, his back to most of the crowd, smiling rarely so you’ll truly relish those brief moments of levity. It felt potentially momentous, dropping in on a relatively famous Cuban jazz pianist with Castro’s mug still leering from the tabloids, but the early set tonight, early in Rubalcaba’s week-long Vanguard run, struck no particular celebratory note, triumph being merely one of various moods expressed, often within the same tune: ominous dread, playful bombast, furtive restlessness, subdued calm. Gonzalo himself would seem to prefer the calm. His new Avatar (Blue Note) is getting a ton of press (big Times spread with “meticulous” in the headline), largely for, after 20 years of mostly trio and solo work, his decision to collude with four NYC upstarts (most notably Yosvany Terry on sax) meant to egg him on, or, tonight at least, egg each other on while he watches stoically, meticulously.
On record it’s bassist Matt Brewer’s “Aspiring to Normalcy” that’ll haunt you, 13 minutes dominated by a slow, vertiginous sonata with mournful sax and trumpet moaning low, a long and luxurious descent into profound unease. Rubalcaba can pour on the daffy and dexterous runs, the oblique chord-pounding swagger, when he wants to, and tonight his indulgences too were rare enough that we knew to savor them. But it’s the restraint that resonates: During the brush-ballads he was often just a whisper, and even during brasher, louder sections he mostly let the horns fight it out. He’s definitely more Hitchcock than Romero, but it all still built to a modestly electrifying conclusion, his finally honed Afro-Latin bounce mutating into a hip-hop swagger, the drums pushing in hard and raucous, heads in the equally stoic crowd starting to bob and swagger a bit themselves. It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for.
Gonzalo Rubalcaba plays the Village Vanguard through Sunday, February 24
Super Furry Animals
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Friday, January 25
From their preschoolish name to their goofy aesthetic (“pet sounds” in every possible meaning/iteration of the phrase) to the giant-ass Mighty Morphin Power Rangers helmet frontman Gruff Rhys dons during particularly poignant moments, the Super Furry Animals have a distinct SpongeBob SquarePants/Pee-wee’s Playhouse sort of vibe: instant cartoonish appeal, relentless whimsy, questionable design sense. (If you know one thing about their new record, Hey Venus!, it’s that the cover art is truly appalling.) “Oogi! Oogi! Oogi!” some robust dude behind me keeps shouting, and I’m not certain if that’s a request or just a valid guttural reaction. Full disclosure: My cat is (sort of) named after the lead guitarist.
Bunf.
Bumf.
They are the Welsh Beach Boys, is the simplest way to put it. Venus has some lovely, bouncy moments (“The Gift That Keeps Giving” especially), but mostly at SFA shows I just sit around waiting to hear something from 2001’s splendid psychedelic odyssey Rings Around the World, and am eventually rewarded with the mighty helium-disco anthem “Juxtaposed With U” (played too slow, but still effective), as well as “Receptacle for the Respectable,” with its bewildering death-metal coda. (Leading this evening to actual wanton guitar-smashing, which seems out of character, but only slightly.) The rest is Pleasant Enough. Stylistically their nets are cast wide but not terribly deep, though there’s a hard, bitter edge to these surrealist TMBG character sketches—the nefarious heroine of “She’s Got Spies” cries while watching the 6 o’clock news, and that was back in 1997.
Evidently these guys have constructed an elaborate Internet request line that will determine their set lists—when they show up back here in February I recommend “Run! Christian, Run!” (not about Mike Huckabee) or “Venus and Serena” (not about Martina Hingis) or, if you want to make them feel better about Venus, “Baby Ate My Eightball” (not about Martina Hingis). No complaint of course if you cast your ballot for “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck”—with apologies to De La Soul, the best Steely Dan sample in pop-music history—but I’m pretty sure that one’s guaranteed.
I’m ñot clear oñ how Jack Peñate plays his guitar so accurately. The South Loñdoñer is a thrasher, a flailer, a joyous little staggerer, careeñiñg with coñvictioñ, hither añd yoñ. This does ñot leñd itself to properly formed chords, eveñ the simple, suññy chañges Jack favors, with the releñtless upbeat surge of third-wave ska añd bluñt, brassy force of classic Britpuñk. His bassist añd drummer are way way off to the side añd way way off iñ the back, politely giviñg Jack a wide berth as he trashes about, delightedly, like a little kid play-actiñg as a rock star. (“I’m like a 12-year-old iñside,” he coñcedes.) He’s shy añd smiley, a youñg, humble George Michael sort of dude. His guitar toñe is bright, treble-y, too loud, añd just right. He ofteñ puñctuates his liñes with añ off-key Yahhhhhh! (Ñot Soulja Boy’s Yahhhhh, but iñ that same geñus.) He is Eñthusiastic. We are Eñthusiastic.
The soñgs oñ Jack’s ñew Matiñée are absurdly catchy añd just slightly off-kilter, recalliñg but ñot apeiñg both Ted Leo/Pharmacists (but slightly less populist: Jack iñtroduces “Got My Favourite” as “about traiñers añd possessioñs I like”) añd the Jam (but less brazeñ: His versioñ of “Dowñ iñ the Tube Statioñ at Midñight” is a cautioñary tale about muggers eñtitled “Ruñ For Your Life”). But the real prize this eveñiñg is Jack himself. I love shows where you learñ what every soñg is about, e.g. “This is a soñg about loviñg someoñe añd fiñdiñg out they doñ’t love you straight away. [Crowd awwwwww’s.] You kñow what I meañ though. BIATCH!” Furthermore, every ñewish artist iñ towñ for the first time offers some weak “Heyyyy Ñew York, Sweet” actioñ, but Jack seems geñuiñely psyched/cowed by it all, ñotiñg that his two heroes hail from here: the Ñotorious B.I.G. añd Jeff Buckley. Señsiñg we are skeptical about the former, he theñ raps—yes—most of the first verse of “Dead Wroñg” (“Smack the bitch iñ her face,” etc.), which is thoroughly disorieñtiñg, to say the least. “Every middle-class white boy iñ the whole world learñs that, doñ’t they?” Jack marvels. “Iñcredible.” Iñdeed. There is ño eñcore, as he’s ruñ out of soñgs.
Jack Peñate is playiñg Uñioñ Pool toñight (Wednesday the 23th) if you are so iñcliñed
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 12:07 PM, January 17, 2008
More splendid pics, all by Chris Owyoung, below
Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver
Church of St. Paul the Apostle
Wednesday, January 16
“Can I ask what brings you here?”
This is a logical question, posed by an elegant, serious-looking, appropriately dressed woman, to me, a scruffy, bewildered dude in jeans and a flannel shirt from Old Navy, I believe.
I am inexplicably shamed.
Uh, it’s the Radiohead dude.
“Ah. Just not the sort of crowd I’m used to at a new-music concert.”
No. This evening we are largely dilettantes, cowed by the gorgeous, cavernous venue, shifting uncomfortably in creaky pews, valiantly wrapping our heads around the premiere of the Radiohead dude’s orchestra. There is nervous chatter, here and elsewhere, that the Wordless Music Series inadvertently misled folks to believe that Mr. Greenwood himself would be in attendance tonight. He sha’nt. Most likely though he would’ve just waved politely and inadvertently scared any small children.
Our program this evening, performed by the black-clad Wordless Music Orchestra, begins with Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic, which as you perhaps recall is very specifically about the sinking, not the crashing or the blowing up or what have you: It’s a long, slow, gorgeous underwater descent, the orchestra bathed in calmly pulsating aquamarine light, waves of lilting violin passages adorned with found-sound tapes of bells, banging pots & pans, crickets, chattering survivors (one breaks into “Nearer, My God, to Thee”), and, in the respectfully silent church, clicking camera shutters and groaning pews. Three ethereal vocalists occasionally rise above the gentle din. Fabulous. “That was 8,000 times better than Sigur Rós,” my associate proclaims. Yes.
After intermission and a shorter, less enthralling interlude of John Adams’ Christian Zeal and Activity (Brad Lubman now conducting, carving long sighs and daintily plucked footsteps out of the orchestra over a taped evangelist ranting about “the withered hand,” the backdrop now blood-red), it’s time for Popcorn. In the program, Greenwood imagines his work as an attempt at white noise as generated by “a room full of breathing, shuffling, occasionally distracted players”; the result isn’t as shrill or bombastic as you’d immediately expect, but there’s a lurking, disquieting, mechanistic hum as thirtysomething strings saw ominously back and forth. (Listen to the last 30 seconds of OK Computer’s “Climbing Up the Walls,” that throbbing, symphonic decay.) Occasional one violin or cello or viola bursts out of the din, the player’s head bobbing forward violently.
Then, a sharp break in the cacophony: The violins now violently plucked like guitars, the cellos now lumbering downhill, the basses blurting out a boom-boom-bash beat that almost recalls “We Will Rock You”: horror-movie chase-scene shit. (Part of this is actually on Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood soundtrack, the “Proven Lands” track.) And the switch back to the mechanistic hum is even more exhilarating, a long silence broken by creaking music stands, flipped pages, violins tucked back under chins—a protracted, clattering inhalation. Another wild, cacophonous flourish, and we’re done. Standing O, etc. I’d hoped, though, to ask the elegant, appropriately dressed woman what she thought, but she’d long since blended into a crowd much larger and scruffier than she was used to. I hope she didn’t mind us.
Popcorn Superhet Receiver will be performed again tonight (January 17) at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, wordlessmusic.org
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 3:25 PM, January 8, 2008
Jeffrey Lewis
Sidewalk Cafe
Thursday, January 3
Walked to this straight from Juno. Bleargh. Tolerance for guileless, sing-song lobotomy-pop thus at a low tide indeed, and yet here I find Mr. Lewis, a Downtown cohort of the Moldy Peaches/Kimya Dawson nexus, dreamily clutching his stickered-up guitar beneath a banner declaring this the “Home of Antifolk.” What the “anti” means in 2008 is up for debate, or derision, if you’re feeling crabby, which I suppose I briefly was.
“Anti-Virtual Lower East Side,” it seems fair to say. The tension between the new and old (and virtual) versions of Jeffrey’s home base seems to weigh heavily on him, or at least as heavily as anything weighs on him, which is to say not heavily at all. Jeffrey is very, very sedate. His deadpan delivery, a wide-eyed valedictorian monotone, has plenty of nerd-rock precedent—TMBG’s John Linnell, or the Dead Milkmen at their slackest—but with fingerpaint bursts of the childlike wonder that’s set the Juno soundtrack’s star disquietingly aflame. Thing is, from the onset, Jeffrey makes that style seem tremendously appealing, both right here at the Sidewalk and back there at the theater.
It’s the a capella song about Ramen that did it, or did it first. With a wobbly, pinched-nose oration, he describes the history of the starving artist’s favorite meal, pinpoints his favorite flavor, and dreams of owning a popular art gallery/restaurant that doesn’t serve it. Most of Jeffrey’s shy, embarrassed between-song banter has a half-poem, half-rap, all-reluctance lilt, and playing guitar doesn’t really change that. His simple, rickety chord changes are more like nervous tics, something to do with his hands, like a guy on a first date distractedly building a pyramid of sugar packets in a diner booth. But it feels more controlled than usual, less an I’m-Still-Five-Years-Old affectation and more of a genuine style. His lyrics mix pawnshop zen koans (“I always kind of like to be surprised/I don’t want to know what happens when I die”) with corny rhyming exercises (“eating Tofutti Cuties with Fela Kuti”) with, when delivered in his shell-shocked Steven Wright mumble, what passes for actual jokes (“You say it’s dog-eat-dog/But dogs don’t eat dogs”).
Then, the climax. “I have a new pedal,” Jeffrey declares. “I got it as a gift. Let’s plug it in and see what it does.” He announces that it’s a Hi Band Flanger, and then he starts playing with it. What it does, evidently, is make eerie birdlike sounds, which we then listen to for roughly five minutes or so, Jeffrey crouched down to manipulate the knobs. (From the bar in the next room—from whence we can catch glimpses of the Orange Bowl on TV and occasionally hear a couple drunk dudes singing along with the stereo on, say, Erasure’s “A Little Respect”—a guy walks in to investigate, stares at Jeffrey’s hunched figure for a few seconds, shakes his head, and walks back to the bar.) When satisfied with his birdlike sounds, Jeffrey gives us the technical specs: MANUAL knob all the way down, DEPTH all the way up, RATE down, and RES just most of the way up. We appreciate this update. He turns it off. We applaud. He then produces a handheld tape recorder, with which he’d been recording everything. He rewinds it, mics it up, hits play, and then sings his next song (featuring “goons with harpoons waiting in adjacent rooms”) with the tape as accompaniment. The song ends, and we applaud live simultaneously with the applause on the tape. I find this all inexplicably profound.
Later this month Jeffrey releases his fourth Rough Trade album, 12 Crass Songs, which is, indeed, a dozen Crass covers, streaming “I Ain’t Thick, It’s Just a Trick” or “Do They Owe Us a Living” (yes) or “Punk Is Dead” (also yes) through a gauzy, full-band prog-folk daze that might remind you of that Why? dude. It’s winsome, if a little bizarre. But Jeffrey’s meant for the stage, rhapsodizing Ramen, testing out his new gear, selling his comic books, and evoking a dog-doesn’t-eat-dog L.E.S. that might not even exist anymore, even online. This will only make you appreciate him more. I don’t see what anyone sees in anyone else.
Jeffrey Lewis plays Joe’s Pub Thursday, January 10, joespub.com. The CD release for 12 Crass Songs takes place at the Mercury Lounge on Wednesday, January 30. Tickets available here.
Posted by Rob Harvilla at 1:00 PM, January 2, 2008
Embedding on this YouTube video is disabled, so you'll just have to enjoy this nifty screenshot.
Sporadic Non-Sequiturs from the Music Editor
Alicia Keys
“Like You’ll Never See Me Again”
From Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (ABC)
The whole Times Square New Year’s Eve fiasco is best absorbed from a safe distance—a wood-paneled basement in Zanesville, Ohio, for example, the better to insulate one’s self from the event’s less desirable elements: intemperate climes, pulverizing crowds, Lenny Kravitz. This is a deeply lame event, the flagship of a deeply lame holiday. (All expectation, all inevitable letdown.) That Alicia Keys made it briefly, sublimely transcendent is a herculean feat, an alchemist transforming White Castle into filet mignon.
I’d be angrier with myself for holding out on As I Am (her third) for so long, but you can’t script such a surreal introduction, a bizarre mingling of the convincingly real (her breath visible in the coulda-been-worse chill, her gloved hands a bit unsteady in places) and the suspiciously fake (photogenic front-row denizens mouthing the words, one of whom clutching Alicia’s album-cover photo). What’s miraculous is that all this not terribly appealing context couldn’t overwhelm the song, a sumptuous ladleful of ballad-y goop, the tinkling arpeggios evoking a cinematic snowflake barrage, the staunchly conventional verse/prechorus/chorus/repeat/whoa-oh structure a warm comfort that heats to a climactic roiling boil. Pure Nicholas Sparks cheese soufflé. Your mom would love it. And at 12:10 a.m. or so, the cheap champagne aftertaste still lingering, you had to love it too, even as Alicia threw in corny we’re-all-gone-love-each-other-in-’08 spoken-word asides as the suspiciously photogenic revelers in their chintzy festive crowns waved their hands and made you suddenly, inexplicably care.
You’ll be happy to know this song still kills in the light of plain ol’ New Year’s Day, the scruffy drum machine a nice, spare counterpoint to the high-gloss lushness that floats above it, the heartstopping ski-jump takeoff (“How many really know what love is?”) and heartbreaking landing (“Millions never will”) that kicks off the second verse another stunt that renders the maudlin deeply profound. You can’t even conceive of how many tearjerking first-dance wedding-reception moments this will soundtrack, nor how large a country you could populate with the wedding-night conceptions it’ll oversee. Even Carson Daly can bask in its soft, immutable glow.
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