SXSW 2012: Friday

Had some adventures today. Having fun, getting into the zone. Saw about twice as many bands as Thursday, too. Unintentionally apropos lyric quote of the day, from New Build: "It's not good for the body, but it's good for the soul." (At least, I hope that's true.)

esc

(this is not spoek mothambo, it's just some guy who was at the spin party)

Spoek Mothambo 12:30 PM SPIN Party @ Stubbs
A friend hooked us up with passes to the hot-ticket Spin Magazine party, killer lineup but also an ideal, archetypal way to start a Southby day: free BBQ, free beer, free vodka, free weirdo space-age sugar-water. The highly amusing MC for the event ("Make some muthafucking tweets!") described this Sub Pop-signed South African rapper/artist/guy as "way cooler than you," which I guess is true on a technical level – and he did have a pretty fly jacket – but between us I think you're actually probably cooler. His set bounced around from post-punk to rap to electro-ish breaks in rather haphazard fashion, and was decent to dance to in spurts, but didn't leave much of a musical impression, except maybe his funked-up version of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control."

Dionnevox 1:00 PM @ Stubbs
From Seattle, playing this party because they won some sort of contest, but anyway they earned it, without a doubt. Nothing short of baroque in their approach to costuming, with a sort of dark fantasy steampunk burlesque look (summarized by the aforementioned MC as "if the movie Blade Runner were two attractive girls.") Lead singer lady stripped through about four distinct outfits over the course of the brief set, including a sequined harlequin bustier and black leather bodysuit with assorted diagonal zippers (she had to sit down on stage to fully remove that one), not to mention her elaborately made-up/bejeweled face and black feathered headpiece, while the dead-eyed dancer was equally striking in black and white lace tights, garter, striped faux-fur legwarmers and platforms. For some reason they didn't make the DJ/producer guys dress up at all; totally lame. Musically they followed a similar aesthetic – dark industrial electro-goth torch songs with low, deadpan vocals and solid songwriting. The standout was probably "Spoken Like a Slave," during which the singer lady repeatedly cracked her mic cord like a whip.

Escort 1:30 PM @ Stubbs
Stone killers. Escort is a fifteen-piece (at this show anyway) disco orchestra, largely composed of NYC studio pros (the drummer happens to be my cousin.) And they're perhaps the most ridiculously tight live act anywhere, not to mention the most fun. They're fronted by lanky French-African singer Adeline Michele, who's a total knockout and a sweet-smiling charmer – but really the whole band are just gorgeous to look at; about as diverse a collection of musicians as you could imagine sharing one stage. Too bad they're apparently too big a band to make touring economically plausible; there's a lot of folks out there who could use some of their pure, unadultered joy.

New Build 2:10 PM MWTX @ 1100 Warehouse
The latest in a recent string of unreasonably excellent Hot Chip side projects (following Alexis Taylor's About Group and Joe Goddard's 2 Bears – who just put out probably the party album of the decade), this group is spearheaded by guitarist Al Doyle (also of LCD Soundsystem) and drummer (in this group, bassist) Felix Martin, joined here by a Stop Making Sense-ish full band, including a killer timbale/steel pan player. With his shock of red hair and big scruffy beard, Doyle's a friendly, familiar figure from Hot Chip and LCD shows, and definitely a likable bloke, but he doesn't quite have the charisma to carry a performance like his other bands' inimitable frontmen. Or maybe this was just an atypically low-energy set – he admitted that they were exhausted, which was pretty clear to see. (And not a great sign considering they still had a bunch of shows to play.) Set-closer (and my current brain-ruling jam of the moment) "Misery Loves Company" riled up some dancing energy from the crowd, but it pretty much took that long.

Purity Ring 3:00 PM @ 1100 Warehouse
Super cool, super hotly tipped electro-weird duo from Montreal (and Halifax, apparently); almost as fresh and original in their approach to performance as to their music. I.e.: very. Set against a simple. spare pink/green/orange backdrop, producer Corin Roddick triggered sounds by drumming on a complex arrangement of paper-lantern-like color-changing lamps, while Megan James twirled and whacked a mounted bass drum that lit up with every hit. As for the music – definitely done some sonic disservice in this overly loud and bassy setting, but potent nonetheless – it is deep; twitchy; voluptuous; alien; gorgeous. I normally hate this comparison, but I would describe James' vocals, particularly her way of drawing out and rounding her syllables, as legitimately Björk-like at points. Stunning.

Nicolas Jaar's Darkside 3:30-6:30 PM(?) @ MTV Hive House
Ok, this was kind of unexpected. Not knowing what I was getting myself in for, I boarded a bus with only about eight other people, bound for an (evidently, very) intimate performance by elusive, arty-electro wunderkind Jaar (or more specifically his new, jazz-tinted "Darkside" project.) It turned out be at a house somewhere a good ways from downtown, with an expansive yard complete with stone fireplace, rusty swing set and large chicken coop. The performance was to be intensively videotaped for an episode of Yours Truly (some web thingy which I don't entirely understand), but it took almost two hours to actually happen, during which time we chilled on the porch, watched the chickens, and enjoyed some nice Belgian blonde ales, pulled pork sliders, tater tots and champagne. Not exactly how I'd been planning to spend my afternoon, but hard to really complain...

And the performance, when it happened (in the garage; windows blacked out and adorned with colored fluorescent light-bars), really was something special – Jaar on Ableton loops, keys and multiple knobby controllers, along with a clearly jazz/improv-rooted guitarist and sax/keyboard player, all three of them immensely proficient musicians, more or less improvising extended elaborations on their recent EP tracks, and achieving a true, fluid fusion of electronic and live instrumentation in a way that was pretty much unprecedented in my experience. If that sounds at all esoteric and/or heady – well, to some extent it definitely was, but it was also emotional, engaging, and surprisingly dynamic, with elements of the mix constantly shifting and evolving around a subdued but seriously grooving core.

Easily the most transcendent piece came after the brief (~20 min.) taping itself; another extended "jam" that wormed its way into a spry, funky re-imagining of the album highlight "Space is Only Noise," as we danced barefoot on the lawn...

The Rubies 7:00 PM @ Elysium
And then, for something completely different – except insofar as it was an equally demonstrative instance of SXSW's gloriously chaotic, improbable serendipity. Somehow I had it in my head that this band was a spin-off of ambient noise/drone group Emeralds (probably because it was listed as "The Rubies (from The Emeralds)," and I conveniently ignored the "from Yokohama Japan" part.)

But no. These Rubies from Japan were a bunch of preposterously manic hard rock'n'roll/power-pop nutsos, in classic bewilderingly enthusiastic Japanese fashion. They all had on matching splotchy print shirts and red pants. Except for one guy who had a tiger print shirt and red pants, who came out playing about five tambourines at once and wearing another one on his head. Then he passed them all out into the crowd, followed by a huge shopping bag full of mini-heart-shaped tambourines. Then they pulled a random girl onstage to dance and smash a cymbal, and left her there while most of the band jumped into the audience and started pulling people into a frenzied dancing circle. Then they passed out a ton of those little bottle-shaped party-popper things and instructed us to fire them all simultaneously at one of the band members. All while pounding out nonstop heavy metal surf riffs and high-octane Beatle-pop harmonies. Oh my god, it was preposterous!!

(I left, after maybe twenty minutes of sheer madness, festooned with tangles of party-popper streamers, and also with a mini-tambourine, which became an excellent accessory for my night of biking through the streets and back alleys of Austin, as well as an excellent audience-participatory clapping aid.)

The War On Drugs 7:45 PM @ ACL Live/Moody Theater
Hey, Philly band! Honestly can't remember if I'd seen these guys before or not, but anyway they did their warm, hazy, folky-rockin' thing, like they do, and it was resoundingly pleasant, especially under the pastel purple and sea-foam green lights of the new and very spiffy Moody Theater. There were a couple of other Philly(-ish) bands I'd been thinking of trying to catch around this time – the terrific folk songwriter Strand of Oaks (actually from Wilkes-Barre) and super-fun good-times rockers Free Energy (whose new single is pure radness...so psyched they're back in action these days!) But, I was here instead, mostly to make sure not to miss...

The Magnetic Fields 8:45 PM @ Moody Theater
Oh Stephin. Oh Claudia. Oh John, and Sam, and Shirley... So, I have a deep, long-abiding love/hate relationship with this band. Which I won't get into here. (Well okay, when it comes down to it, mostly love.) Anyhow, what can I say. They have reintroduced synthesizers – after a decade-plus of their strictly-real-instruments-only policy – on their (not-terrible, but predictably sub-par, and overly joke-centric) new album – but decidedly not in their live setup, which remains almost entirely acoustic. Impressively for the size of the space, it was quiet enough not to wear earplugs – per usual, Stephin Merritt did his best to enforce absolute audience silence in his typically oblique, bone-dry fashion. ("I talked at somebody else's show once.......it was Patty LuPone.......that's why I'm so short.") He seemed to be in a (relatively) good mood, though. He made jokes that were funny as well as clever. He played melodica, harmonium, kazoo, and (on a subtle rearrangement of "Come Back From San Francisco") revealed a surprisingly sweet falsetto.

I left after forty-five minutes – not sure how late their set actually went – but while I was there they probably did most of the new tunes (many of which, I'll admit, really are novelty/comedy song gold), along with plenty of 69 Love Songs "hits" and a few choice oldies (spine-tingling "Smoke and Mirrors"; oddball Holiday pick "Swinging London"; Obscurities standout "Plant White Roses") – most of which still bring chills. If only he still wrote 'em like he used to.

The Mynabirds 9:30 @ Lambert's
Totally underrated female-fronted rootsy (folk/soul/rock/country/pop/etc.) indie outfit on Saddle Creek. (The kind of band that has a deer antler resting on top of their Nord Electro synth, whatever that tells you.) Hopefully the underrated part changes with their upcoming second album. I only caught three songs but they were each pretty close to perfect: probably my favorite number from the first album (the tender, thoughtful "Ways of Looking,") and two new songs (including lead single/title track "Generals") both of which were a good deal more funky and rocking than the old stuff. Also, both front-lady Laura Burhenn and her right-hand vocal/percussion woman are total lookers, in completely different ways.

Housse de Racket 10:00 @ Malverde
Clever band name – it's French for "tennis racket sleeve," but the false cognate connotation (noisy house music) is precisely apposite. But what I caught of these Parisians' set sounded pretty generic – typical electro-rocky dance whatever. Maybe it would've helped if I could have actually seen them through the smallish but extremely dense crowd. I think there were some mustaches involved.

Mr. Gnome 11:00 @ Treasure Island
Guitar/drums girl/boy duo from Ohio, about whom I knew nearly nothing going in. Took a long time troubleshooting their seriously complex, pedal-heavy set-up. The songs I heard were pretty complex too. Hard-hitting, punkish, a bit bluesy, but structurally unorthodox and with an impressive amount of sonic activity for just two people. Would give them some more time in the future, perhaps; for now I'm mildly intrigued, but not totally sold.

St. Lucia 11:00 @ Karma Lounge
Basically, in this portion of the night, I was taking inspiration from the NPR All Songs Considered guys, whose SXSW podcasts document a fairly extreme, uncompromising approach to the conference that involves seeing a seemingly logistically impossible number of bands, as many of them as possible new and basically unknown, and generally staying for only a few songs before dashing off somewhere else. If the previous two sets were borderline strike-outs, this band – a name I'd heard maybe once and then again earlier in the day – was a grand slam.

Nothing overtly earth-shattering, musically speaking – it's basically just synth-pop, upbeat and dancy in a fairly standard way, with a definite "tropical" feel in several of the songs – not unlike Tanlines or a more coherent Delorean – and a markedly anthemic, John Hughes-soundtrack vibe. It's just that literally every song sounded like a hit single. And they look great on stage: young, fresh-faced, clean-cut (in a Vampire Weekend sort of way), super-smiley and enthusiastic. And the lead singer has a great, clear pop voice and a confident, commanding presence. Crucially, the audience was equally amped, definitely the liveliest audience I've seen so far this week, and – even though St. Lucia have released a very tiny amount of music so far – they all seemed to know every song. Somebody said they thought it was because the entire crowd was from Brooklyn. Either way, I predict we'll be hearing more about these guys very soon.

Dragonette 12:05 @ Friends
After listening to Grimes soundcheck lackadaisically for about twenty minutes (a half-hour after her set was supposed to start, mind you), from outside the stuffed-to-the-gills Clive House, I ditched and dashed across town to catch these Toronto electropop underdogs, whom I have been wanting to see for years now. (I think they've cancelled at least one if not two US tours in the last half-decade.) And they did not disappoint. Hell, I think they only played two songs that I knew (and not even a particularly great ones) – which means the set was almost entirely new material – but it didn't even matter. They've got their sound – tough, spiky, dancy synth-rock power-pop (Swedish band The Sounds are a good reference point) – and they're pretty much sticking to it; so it doesn't take much to follow along. And, predictably, Martina Sobrara – aside from being a powerhouse vocalist – is completely adorable, and nice, and funny, and basically sexy as hell. (Also, she's tiny.) Awesome, pumped-up crowd for these guys too.

Blitzen Trapper 1:00 @ Red 7 Patio
A very pleasant surprise: I wandered out onto the patio, since Niki and the Dove were still setting up, and was greeted by some gorgeous, Fleet Foxes-style harmonies that quickly morphed into blazing, riff-heavy rock complete with curly red-haired dude wailing away on a cowbell. Never gave these guys much attention before, and I probably still won't, but it was still totally righteous to rock out with them for a couple of numbers.

Niki and the Dove 1:20 @ Red 7
Hmm... Swedish newbies that (along with the aforementioned Spoek Mothambo) seem to represent a not-wholly-convincing attempt on Sub Pop's part to wildly broaden their genre purview. They've clearly got a heavily Knife-influenced kinda thing in mind, and they've got the weirdness part down (both vocal and sartorial), as well as plenty of squiggly, rickety-sounding synths. But they seem to be in serious need of some melodies. Or maybe that isn't the point?

Alice Russell and Quantic Soul Orchestra 1:30 @ Barbarella
Went in looking for Toddla T (whose set ended up being cancelled, due to general lateness I guess, wonk wonk), instead I got this lovely British soul singer – seriously, Adele's got nothing on her – plus "orchestra" (which I guess means they have a violinist.) High, high quality, sophisticated soul. Blue-eyed...whatever. Gold. And so gracious. Plus, it was her birthday! So we sang to her too.

And now, to bed. Good morning!

[reposted from Philly City Paper]

re:stocking

the annually rejiggered pitchfork readers poll (now closed) – which somewhat arbitrarily requested five songs and albums of the year, yet a full top ten of favorite songs out of from their best of the 1990s list [a fun and interesting task..i ended up with the magnetic fields' "the book of love" on top, but it might have been different another year] – also asked us to pick the year's top three live acts.

that's always a hard one, and maybe even more so since i saw more live music this year than possibly ever, thanks to a steady stream of CP assignments. robyn came pretty quickly to mind – her august show with kelis at the trocadero was the apotheosis of an emphatically summer-pop-summer, and a great reminder that she's as much of an effortless bad-ass as a performer as she is as a record-maker. (one particularly brilliant bit of stagecraft: eating a banana during the lengthy build-up of "don't fucking tell me what to do" – finishing in time to deliver just the title hook vocal live – in, if this is possible, a relatively non-sexualized, or other-than-sexualized fashion.) it also showed a fairly dramatic progression from the intimacy and simplicity of the first time i saw her into a dazzling, larger-than-life-feeling pop-star spectacle, though the difference was as much about a clear shift in her way of relating to the stage and the audience as added production fireworks (not to mention the perhaps-unfortunately ballad-free setlist.) will be interesting to see how that evolves when she comes back to play an even larger venue, the electric factory, in february. anywhow, a world-class performer, no question.

i'd thought about lcd soundsytem (whom, like fellow top-tenners joanna newsom and vampire weekend, i saw for both the first and second time this year) until i remembered about mayer hawthorne [& the county], from this vantage point easily my favorite new artist of 2009 [and that's not even accounting for the weirdly lackluster live performances of jj and the very best], whom i saw for the first-through-fourth times this year, at four substantially different venues [the most recent time, regrettably and frustratingly preventably, occasioned my missing a chance to see easily my favorite new artist of 2010, allo darlin', for the second time – but first real-full time – all in one day...], and he consistently killed it every time. the mayer hawthorne show is a well-oiled, spit-polished thing of beauty, and those four performances were far more similar than they were distinct [though the latest included some very exciting sneak previews of his new material], but i hardly minded the chance to re-experience it.

for the third slot, i picked a band i'd just seen, and really only recently listened to: stornoway, about whom i wrote this preview for city paper. the first two (and best) songs on their debut album, beachcomber's windowsill – which probably oversell the extent to which they can be categorized as "indie-pop" – bookended a set that demonstrated both rock-solid chops (instrumental and vocal) and considerable musical range, from moody, arty chamber-ish pieces (some of it verging on slightly tedious) to straight-up (and very british) folk (including a really lovely new one, "november song," performed solo and acoustic by frontman brian briggs) to a surprising amount of rocking out, particularly on the big swelling codas to a few songs. there was also briggs' endearingly nervous/nerdy banter, including recitations of inventions made in philadelphia (the slinky, lemon meringue pie...) but the best part was almost certainly the two-song encore, performed entirely unplugged and un-mic'd, which elicited some of the most genuinely enthusiastic crowd-love i've witnessed in a while. [videos of the encore songs are here and here, thanks to my cp compadres.] it was truly a heartwarming feeling to be in that crowd.

let alone recapping the year in live music, this past week alone has been stellar. last friday i watched two fake-local groups – my buddy tom's band via audio and their piano-popping pals jukebox the ghost [aka cutebox the most] – sock-rock a fun-happy beatles-loving crowd that seemed to consist primarily of teens and their parents, some of them in white astro-jumpsuits, with (respectively) songs about slacking, godzilla, pitch-corrected divas, and babymaking, as well as some lovably dopey banter and a frenzied rendition of "what's this" from the nightmare before christmas (also glad i stuck around for the night-closing panda-monium-inducing team-up cure cover.)

on sunday i saw the utterly ineffable nellie mckay kick some life into the bewilderingly all-over-the-place tunes from her new album – from the latin-kitsch/broadway melodrama "¡bodega!" to the meat-is-murder "unknown reggae" – as well as a bunch of the doris day numbers (and some other assorted jazz standards), a few old faves ("dog song"! "sari"!), a possibly new (?), typically beautiful/insane seasonal political number – an anti-christmas tree eco-rant inexplicably wrapped around a broken-hearted love song – and a wtf tom waits cover (awesomely, if unsurprisingly, she can do a pitch-perfect waitsian growl.) i think this was the first time i'd seen her play with a band, a trio of game if non-smiling jazzbos who set a highly amusing contrast to her preposterous, precociously giddy/girlish and befuddlingly anachronistic stage presence. her albums may be (increasingly) hit-or-miss, but her performances never fail to remind me of her truly limitless talent, eccentricity and charm. it's hard to put it words.

finally, last tuesday i trekked up to hoboken with rae to catch night seven of yo la tengo's annual 8 nights of hanukkah at maxwells [ira's account is there], something i hadn't done since 2002, when the band were very memorably joined by ray davies (whom, incidentally, i would have seen in boston over thanksgiving if hadn't, very sadly had to cancel for health reasons...) this show was similarly a pretty transcendent experience, if only because it reminded me how much i dearly love this band (you wouldn't think i'd forget something like that, having written something like this, and i didn't, really, but i maybe hadn't thought about it in a while...)

this is what they played:

HOME = "feels like going home," from ...beat your ass, a really sweet gentle one which i really should have included on home, why did i not do that? [wasn't] BORN 2 FOLLOW is a carole king cover that i didn't know, but almost of the others were familiar YLT favorites, really a solid setlist of classics, if maybe a tad obvious, but just perfect for not having seen them in a while... definitely heavy on the soft pretty ones (season of the shark, last days of disco, shadows, little eyes, black flowers) but that's kinda how i like it, and helped set off the totally awesome noise/drone freakouts that bookended the set (the last and first tunes, respectively from the last two albums.)

they were joined for their entire set (except for "tom courtenay," since he broke a string wailing out during the late-set punk-out patch) by the amazing mr. nels cline (of wilco, nels cline singers, and assorted out-jazz excursions), in a rad eyeball t-shirt, which made the whole thing all that much more awesome, even if he sometimes made it hard to see georgia. then they came back and played two ramones covers – "pet sematary" (james on vox!) and "sheena is a punk rocker") – and were joined by openers bonnie prince billy + the cairo gang (who were also awesome! even though i barely recognized any of the songs they played...need to brush up on billy's last half-decade) to close the night with lou reed's "heavenly arms" (which tbh i only know from el perro del mar's closer.) heavenly indeed...

signs of livestock: feb '10

my show-going's been slow-going for a minute – been doing a fair amount of preview coverage for cp, but, until last week, hadn't really managed to see much live music at all this year.

[though that's discounting the obvious live musical highlight of the year so far, the 69 love songs cover party (that link leads to PW, the sworn enemy, but there are some pretty nice pix there - check the skeptical stair-sitters in #16) masterminded by sam and adam, which was a righteous blast. i got to sing three of my faves too: "i think i need a new heart," "long-forgotten fairy tale," and "busby berkeley dreams," plus impromptu group vox on "i'm sorry i love you." it only took us around four hours to get through, by my count, 57 out of the 69 – no "two kinds of people," alas – pretty damn freaking awesome.]

otherwise, i was foiled in attempts to see nneka and tape because of the snow (the former i just couldn't convince myself or anyone else to brave the blizz for; the latter was canceled but i didn't realize that until i'd trudged all the way there, listening to the utterly lovely new eluvium flutter all over me with the flakes), and to see la roux (about whom i wrote a "one track mind" that didn't even make it to the web, or not yet at least) due to crazy incomprehensible booking/cancellation/rebooking shenanigans (ok, technically i could have gone to see her/them/whatevs at the roxxy nightclub "shred your ex" party on valentine's friday, but $20 cover + 1:00am set time + dubious delaware ave setting are a pretty rough sell, even for me.) and i missed pink skull and memory tapes too, though i particularly enjoyed blurbing the latter.

ok, but: did see the shy, pseudonymous swedish mope sisters (kinda like the musical moron twins), taken by trees and el perro del mar (not actual sisters, but sisters from another mister), on a valen'sdate. not sure why it took me so long to realize (and it wasn't necessarily extra great shakes live), but that taken album (east of eden – should have taken a hint from it being named after my quasi-favorite book) is really pretty lovely stuff, and quite upfront and accessible too (as opposed to the somewhat floaty and indistinct love is not pop, which i do also like quite a bit, but is difficult to even grasp onto enough to really love.) sarah a. is, however, a more interesting presence than victoria b. she's kinda weird in fact. looks like this:

better: saw british retro-pop goofball v.v. brown, who has been making significant inroads on my heart, at the somewhat unpromising (but potentially up-and-coming as a half-decent west-of-the-schuylkil venue? hm...) marbar.

she didn't have a parasol, or lighting that was at all decent; she was wearing what she describes as "geisha hat" that hid her hair and to some extent her face, and lit from below by a frantic color-flashing light (once they rigged it up, about halfway into the set) that did cool and disorienting things to her plaid pants. this felt like a very silly show – there were only maybe twenty people in the crowd, for one thing – but she was loving it, bubbly, alternately endearing for her giddy showmanship and her enthusiastically genuine personability – anyway completely lovable. she seemed just tickled to be here, her first time in philly, asked us what she should do (i wish i knew how to answer that question... somebody shouted out "standard tap" and then explained that they had "pub food," which made her just light up, and ask if she could get a good cup of english tea anywhere) and seemed almost as surprised that we didn't respond with unbridled enthusiasm when she asked about drake (before turning in a kick-ass cover of "best i ever had" – "i thought you loved hip-hop in philadelphia!?") as she was that we had come there to see her and actually knew her songs (she was going to skip "crying blood," but made the mistake of mentioning it and then the crowd wouldn't let her not do it – complete with a reggae "remix" recap.) she opened with my current fave "everybody" (sung thru a megaphone) and closed with "shark in the water," what an undeniable feel-good hit, don't know how i was so tentative about it at first...

and, last night, i faced the rains and trains to see nosaj thing and daedelus (and jogger too, but i only ended up catching the last two numbers of their unwieldy drill'n'bass/screamo/psych/folk/glitch-pop/whatever weirdness....guess i'll puzzle that out later.) it was the "magical properties tour (check out this v. awesome poster), a celebration of daedelus' new label, which doesn't seem to be very well organized as far as having any sort of web presence, or any actual releases, current or future, apart from the jogger debut and even that only barely seems to exist (if it makes it into the amg database, it'll only be thanks to my persistent nagging), but good on them putting the tour together, good idea, good work.

nosaj (whose name seems to be pronounced somewhat differently by his various friends/tourmates) was unbelievably sick. and slick. he played mostly his own music, including the bulk of drift, but with copious amounts of live tweaking and twiddling, amping it up with a brilliant sense of dancefloor pacing, and moving fluidly and almost imperceptibly from one track to the next, occasionally slipping in some other nuggets by the likes of busta rhymes, portishead ("wandering star"), wu tang, flying lotus (i think?), and what must have been zapp (or possibly dâm-funk...need to get my ears on that.) all pretty excellent to move to (better if i hadn't been clutching my coat under my arm) but the best part might have been just watching young mr. thing, aka jason chung (who was wearing a similar if not the same plaid button-down as in this picture, and snazzy-looking watch), as he tended to his knobs and sampler pads with a nonchalant precision, making understated but palpably pleasurable effect-twisting wrist-flicks with off-hand grace. sweet sweet.

alfred daedelus darlington weisberg-roberts was up next and last. strange sort of feeling to be seeing him in the flesh, this funny little fellow who's done so much to charm me over the past decade, through his distinctly unique presentation (visual and verbal as well as musical) as much as anything – with his records too, for sure (invention and, particularly, of snowdonia), though somewhat troublingly less so starting around 2006's denies the days demise. i can't quite put my finger on what's changed in my appreciation for his music (even as my amg compatriots continue to rave over it) – sure, his style has developed in some identifiable ways, but i'm not quite sure why it doesn't do it for me as much now.

it is nice that he seems to have more friends to play with now. for a long time it felt like he seemed sort of off in his own world; occasionally setting-up slightly incongruous rendezvous with the cali undie rap world, anticon and ilk (q.v. the weather), but mostly content (and at his best) as a lone operator. but these days he's (apparently) something of a linchpin of a bona-fide scene, even an elder-statesmen of sorts, perhaps, and now with his own label to boot. (again, apparently.) well. his introductory statement to the crowd, made some flusteredly, was rather touching: "i just want to let you know, if you don't already, that everybody who's up here really means it...terribly so."

he announced that he'd play "some fun stuff and then some dirty stuff and then back to fun stuff." "what's the difference" someone shouted, and he smiled meek assent, but in fact i couldn't really figure out what he meant, as his set felt relatively consistent in tone throughout, building fairly quickly to a level of activity that, while fun for a while and intermittently, mostly felt closer to dirty – in the messy sense, and not the fun one. he was using the monome...his monome – actually, two of them, one smaller one (which he only picked up occasionally and rotated around to make the LEDs all slide to one side and the sound go all squelchy) and the big 256-button one, which he had angled toward us (like in the picture, though he wasn't quite so snazzily dressed last night.) it was certainly mesmerizing to watch him dance his fingers around the grid, and try to figure out all the sequences he was setting in motion.

frankly, though, the music coming out of the speakers just got to be too much to handle. it felt sort of like an especially unhinged girl talk set, except that only a small fraction of the samples were recognizable. stylistically it was all over the place, though heavily electronic, but ranging from dubstep to disco to hip-hop to synth-cheese to doo-wop to soul. i'm pretty sure there was a beirut song in there, one of the few instances of the polyrhythmic juxtapositions (a 6/8 strum pattern against the steady 4/4) that make some of his early productions so tantalizing. i only recognized a handful of his own tracks (i haven't spent all that much time with his latest, love to make music to, but i would have expected to know more from that if nothing else), though he did drop in one of my very favorites, "something bells," butting it up against some early stevie wonder (was it "uptight"? can't remember now), but it left before the real climax.

eh, it was at least interesting, for a while, and maybe it would have been more fun if i'd been dancing more (though, i did try and couldn't really get into it), but on the whole it felt like the (admittedly very cool) technical aspects of using the monome as a performance tool were getting in the way of the musicality that's been so pivotal in his past work. oh well...

sensitive thugs y'all need earplugs

he blogs! music lives! lots o' great live music lately, as i may have mentioned.

last night's show by the very best may not have been the very best...couldn't really measure up to the excitement of seeing them the first time, but even so the set was quite short (a half hour if that) and the energy seemed to be slightly less. which means there was still a ton of energy and it was an awesome party and i was mostly just glad to be there with a bunch of my friends, and other friendlies (though we were too scattered about the room.) two dancers this time instead of one dancer and one crippled singer. i think they might have both been different, but they were definitely wearing different leggings – ginkgo described the effect as "fluorescent yellow cameltoe"; cara's response was "my, those trousers are mesmerizing!"

also last night: fuck buttons – i only caught about 15 minutes of their set (i.e. a song and the beginning of another song), because i was running back around the block to see the verys, but those 15 minutes made me exceedingly happy. even though it's just two hip-looking doods with tables full of gadgets, holding a note on a casio with one finger for 4 bars. i don't entirely understand it, but i really really enjoy fbs. i need to play them for some other people to see if they feel similarly.

also last night: javelin, opening for t.v.b. funtimes, especially towards the end of the set (as the songs got more songy and poppy.) will be looking out for these guys. most memorable part though is that i walked into the empty venue to find them chatting with none other than yale evelev, my ol' luaka boss, who says "oh, we're putting out the record!" he says, this is the best time in music in his life. this era. soul music, african music, indie rock. want to hear more about what he's listening to (apparently it's not the very best)...

i pretty much agree with him (well, best music time of my life, for sure.) was thinking about this tonight, and i figure there's no possible way that people are listening to less music these days, so they must be listening to more, more than ever. [obv ipods and all that] ...and more than that, they're listening to more different music (from each other) than probably ever since mass culture started existing. [esp w/ the death of the big music industry and all that] personally this year i have felt less specifically excited about very new music (especially albums – which is probably my foggy lens – though a couple are starting to grow on me), but no less about music in general. i've had this narrative about being more excited about live music (than ever? maybe not, but than recorded...relatively speaking?), partly because i have just been seeing a lot of it, mostly free...

also last night: i dreamed about bruce springsteen covering "tobacco road" in a kind of medieval lighthouse castle in a tiny harbor town on the north (baltic?) coast of greece, and he let me play a piano solo, but only for a little while.

tonight, though: i saw julie doiron (cat power-level neurotic awkwardness in the banter, hair in her eyes making it hard to hear the songs, but still, a strong resounding voice, sorry i missed her first few) and herman dune at the world cafe. it really is such a nice place to see-hear music, we're lucky it's in the neighborhood. having things be pleasant is, on balance, quite a bit better. and what a treat to be waited on by the fabulous ('n dreamy) birdie busch, even if i had to chase her down for the privelege of paying her $5 for a pair of teas.

oh, but herman dune, what goofy fun. the jojo comparison is inescapable because it's so right-on. even if hd are a bit more self-aware and, um, sane, and their songs have more words. they're both jewish too, yknow (really liked the verse about being bar-mitzvahed in one of the songs he played.) david[-ivar] is super-tall and gangly, and super-beardy, with a preposterous turquoise florida sweater and a gold heart-shaped locket (!) and long spindly legs that he gets up on his tip-toe and does dramatic matador dances, and big long fingers that he plays fast and loose with his songs on the guitar, lunges to crank up the volume for a solo. total goofball, but really clever-funny too. i liked him a lot. that's entertainment!

i also, in the last couple months, saw
• throw me the statue (hi aaron!),
• sid'n'susie (aka matthew sweet + susannah hoffs, and wrote about it for cp, took some pictures too but i guess they didn't post? thereby fulfilling a 12-ish year mission of seeing m.s., didn't disappoint),
• regina spektor/jupiter one (meh...the electric factory suxx. regina is so much better when you can actually see her face. j1 are kinda spry tho),
• mirah (fun! not boring! cute! ripped! anorexic wtf?? fleetwood mac cover! bought 2 vinyls including the reissue of ytiltbrilt – with better art – and one of 12 recently discovered-in-her-storage copies of a rare believed-to-be-sold-out '03 live lp),
• erin mckeown and m. doughty (separately, but both at free-at-noon shows. first time seeing either, in both cases a long time coming... both folks i hadn't thought about too much, but have been paying more attention lately. erin is totally personable and sweet, mike is totally weird-talky and snarky, but in a fun way – wondering if he's like that all the time.)
• y∆cht [sorry, not capsing] (weirdos! wtf! engaging enough, but pretty odd. eh, performance art. also, i reviewed their record. also: james murphy and pat mahoney spinning dee-lite's "what is love?" and t-heads' "naive melody." kool.)

and

• bruce springsteen! twice!! whoa!!! two of the shows of his final spectrum run of four. also for free, for no good reason, thanks to adam (well, for the first show i paid money – a mere $60 less than face value...) i have not been much of a bruce fan, particularly, since the mid-80s or so, when born in the u.s.a. was pretty much my favorite album. enthusiasm surrounding the sudden decisions to go see these shows led me to go back and listen to that album a bunch of times, but more importantly to really listen to darkness on the edge of town for the first time, and also check out the river and the wild, the innocent, among others, and to feel like i sort of had a handle on his discog for the first time, and to say, hey, why did i spend so much time listening to dire straits when i could have been getting into this stuff??

anyway the shows were mostly a blast – especially the second one when i was down on the floor (boss came within, oh, fifteen feet of me? at a few points.) the parts where he played full albums straight-thru (darkness; bitusa) were oddly less exciting – the lack of suspense when you know what's coming next is surprisingly detrimental. also, the bitusa performance were made to sound a lot like the record (massive gating/effects on the drums, in particular, and all the synths), which is kind of too bad, would have been interesting to hear those songs with the more live band feel of the rest of the show. definite highlight of the whole experience was by-request cover of "(your love keeps lifting me) higher and higher." (they had to figure it out first.) bruce just seemed like he was having so much fun.

i also saw sissy wish, whose record i reviewed and is pretty great. that didn't prepare me for the awesomeness of her performance (at an afternoon cmj showcase, following the also rather enjoyable choir of young believers), which was considerably electro-punkier, down-and-dirtier, musically, than the somewhat polished (but still sparky) sound of her record, but mostly notable for her [=siri walberg] manic pixie-nature, bouncing around with an elfin grin, standing on a chair in the audience and commanding us to sing "ya ya ya," generally being silly and cute.

and also she wore a shirt made out of cassette tapes:

which as you can see was the inspiration [or, what i ripped off] for my halloween costume, a week later:

hm, need to study the pictures here for some refinement of the design. i think i know how to make it better now.

weird thing: i went to see sissy again the following night, in philly (hadn't been planning to, but i really wanted to see her again after that), but she was nowhere to be found – not at either of the venues she had supposedly been scheduled to play. even though her publicist put me on the list that afternoon. even though i talked to siri herself the day before about coming to her show in philly... weird.

i didn't see or, the whale, because i was late after the boss played for three hours (after starting an hour late), but i wish i had, as i've been enjoying their record, but i had a very nice time talking to julie after i missed their set. and almost happened to see them the following night in d.c.

i also didn't see: jeff lewis, the books, sian alice, busdriver, flying lotus, lou barlow, r. kelly, anna ternheim, or paramore, even though i wrote about all of them in citypaper.

Livestock Roundup pt. 1: VeryVeroNekoNellieNOMO

time to take some Summer Stock – I've been going to a LOT of great shows lately. seeing some of my favorite artists, old and new, most of whom i'd never seen before. two of the most exciting, from last week, keith urban and taylor swift @ the wachovia center and kitty daisy and lewis @ kung fu necktie, i covered rather lengthily for the city paper blog (and will repost here soon enough.) the following i will try to run thru more quickly, but all were highly enjoyable shows...

The Veronicas @ the TLA, 7/17



Ah, the V's. The band that started it all for me, teen-pop wise. Preview'd 'em in CP, as i also did for Micachu – sweet virginny's Devon Sproule was also playing Philly (well, Ardmore) the same night, so it was pick yr precociously-talented young-twenty-something chicksinger nite (with three excellent options about as disparate as you could get), but I obviously had to go for these saucy Aussies, whom I'd been wanting to catch ever since they cancelled their slot on the Ashlee Simpson show I saw three whole years ago. This was, I believe, their first time back here since then, the "Revenge is Sweeter" tour, and I daresay they seem to be doing poor ol' Ash a few better these days; playing to a packed TLA vs. a tepid half-full E-Factory crowd (granted a much larger venue.)

it felt like the skinny gawky sexy kids party – like a bunch of high school seniors or something who are still kinda awky'n'scrawny, but at least they're the cool kids, revelling in the glory of youth and sex and angst and punk rock and gettin' naked. the video below captures the opening act, Carney, "pranking" the girls by running on stage, prancing around half-dressed (note the artfully nipple-hiding electrical-tape "V" for Veronicas) and grabbing instruments to play along with "Beautifully Broken" – that sort of sums up the spirit of the show: groping clumsily somewhere inbetween juvenile and erotic, but kind of cheekily infectious nevertheless.

the Origliassos made a visually pleasing sort of checker-pattern, with raven-tressed Lisa in a white slip/dress and peroxided Jess in a black one. they were very convincingly live and unaffected, and certainly earnest, giggling and chatting in an uninhibited, girly way – their story of how they decided "twitterhike" from new york with some fans (because there wasn't room on their tour bus?) was endearing if seemingly far-fetched. the band seemed pretty rad and young too, nice to see – at first i thought the drummer was an older, long-haired metal dude (who was inordinately into throwing his stick in the air), but later realized it was actually a girl, who seemed pretty bad-ass.

unfortunately, if predictably, the vocals weren't mixed nearly loud enough, which is particularly a problem for these guys – their vocals being basically the whole point – and I felt like it sapped a lot of the energy out of the show. anyway, they hit most of the hits, kicking right off with "untouched" – was disappointed that they did "this love" as an acoustic duet, even tho it was cool, since it meant no A-ha synth riff – but they skipped "when it all falls apart," which i was totally counting on as the closer. wasn't that their biggest mtv/radio hit in the states? (seemingly not, but why did i think that?) instead, they ended their main set with "4ever" (incl. the first of the mindblowing finale descant lines, but not the ultimate, closing one) and then encored with a breathless "this is how it feels," with more pandemonium and semi-nudity, and fans onstage, like the one who shot this video. would i have dug it more three years ago (when i would at least have wanted to push up to the front row)? yeah, probably so. come on baby, we can't make it last 4eva. still, better l8, 4shur.

Nellie McKay @ 92YTribeca
with Life in a Blender and Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse



Up to nyc for Ester's birthday, we just so happily happened across this fine $15 bill at the snazzy new 92YTribeca, which turned out to be quite a pleasant spot, with a particularly tasty and reasonably-priced (kosher) café. the first and last acts were both rather curious amalgamations who specialized "clever" (not-necessarily-funny) comedic material with a quasi-theatrical bent, both bolstered by strong horn sections. Life in a Blender (bad name; extra points off for making me think of Eve6) were notably the weaker of the two, at once quirkier and blander; the flat-out kooky JHCat4HotA were at least energetically entertaining: a motley crew including two burly bald brothers, a seriously sick black trumpeter/pianist, a girl who we variously described as "new jersey" or "sorority" type (also on trumpet), and a spazzy-neurotic frizzy-haired frontwoman (sorta reminiscent of Seinfeld's Elaine, but even nuttier, and with a preposterously unflattering dress) who spoke-sang nerdily obsessive and sorta dark joke-songs about sex and relationships and modernity. i liked "vampire girls" (with punkish "hot topic"-style pop-culture shout-outs) and "obviously" (...you slept with that girl from your reunion) and the goofily brazen "do me," and actually a lot of the songs were funny for at least the first verse-chorus or so, but not really enough to want to hear them more than once.

so, Nellie was the odd oddball out in the line-up, who stole the show, and all our hearts. actually, she seemed a bit more down to earth and with-it than previous times i've seen her, but she's still a lovable flouncy goof. she only did a couple of recognizable numbers from her albums – nothing from the debut, just "long & lazy river," "there you are in me," "food" and by-request encore "cupcake" from the second, and the razor-sharp "mother of pearl" (aka "feminists don't have a sense of humor") which i didn't know at the time is on her underlooked (er, by me) third – but there were one or two i recognized from past shows, and some cutesy newbies (thrift-shopper anthem "second-hand nell.")

about half the set, though, was vintage '30s/'40s-or-so covers, mostly done on ukulele, many taken from her forthcoming doris day tribute album (!!) which is gonna be awesome (she did a couple along with the finished backing tracks, thereby demonstrating her adorable incompetence at using a cd player), including "if i knew you were coming i'd have baked a cake," and "a-tisket a-tasket" and "broadway melody," which she did in an unreal quavery warble (you can listen to a similar performance of it here.) oh my oh my. here's hoping for a whiz-bang comeback soon soon soon!

The Very Best @ Le Poisson Rouge 7/18
with Dragons of Zynth



tromped across town for a very different sort of affair (fewer swatties, more sweatys), hotly anticipated by me and many. openers dragons of zynth were a lot more fun than i for some reason anticipated, a weird but workable combo of punk, funk, prog, synth-pop, and african polyrhythms, with anarcho/ethno-hipster style. they did some cover of a ghanaian song from the '60s that ben claimed he knew. towards the end they also did some aggressive/confrontational audience-diving, which was impressively intense, performance-wise, but didn't really fit the vibe. anyhoo.

the very best didn't come on until pretty ridiculously late, though i didn't much mind because the amp-up djs were playing some really killer stuff. the evening was already feeling kind of gleefully surreal (at atmosphere of freaky holiday?), partly because of these australians kept coming over to me and trying to talk to me (one of them in...norwegian?) because i was, apparently, the spitting image of their friend (i even danced like him.) once the band finally got on, the whole place just turned into even more of a berserk party, with everybody exuberantly dancing and waving their arms around.

there's not necessarily so much to their live performance – the radioclit dj guy, whichever one he was (there was only one of them there, so half of the duo), didn't seem to be doing a whole lot besides triggering the tracks – though towards the end of the set he made himself useful by pouring out little cups of bacardi and manischevitz (?!) to pass out into the crowd. esau mwamwaya seems like a total sweetie, with an infectiously giddy grin, but even if he didn't have much to offer in the way of showmanship (his english might not have been that good?) he was certainly singing his heart out, and his voice is a majestic thing indeed – in a way, their music is very simply all about the unbridled joyfulness of the singing. (as ben pointed out, the songs themselves are quite simple and similarly-structured.) the back-up singer had a broken leg, or something, but she sang along just as jubilantly. ezra koenig of vampire weekend turned up to sing his part on "warm heart of africa" (though not, unfortunately, to play the sample from their rework of "cape cod kwassa kwassa"), and he is such a chubby-faced cheery cherub, sooo cute!

meanwhile, they had a dancer going crazy all over the stage, shimmying and booty-shaking, rubbing her privates in audience members' faces, sometimes bringing folks up on stage to dance with her, and so on. all in all, it was a pretty crazy scene (even the cast-bound singer got up to hop around at one point), with lots of happiness all around – maybe not the very best musical performance i've seen in a minute, but without a doubt one of the very best parties.

more photos here and here.

[more coming soon, on Neko Case, Escort, and NOMO...also Taylor and Keith and Kitty, Daisy and Lewis... I just had to get this post finally up, several weeks late.]

pop science

Went to a show last night at Borrowed Time, a now-defunct (last night was its last night) art/performance/community space in a temporarily vacant house. It was nice to see Charles Latham, an anti-folk fellow (I feel like I'm allowed to throw that tag around casually at the moment, since I just wrote a review of Jeffrey Lewis' [fantastic] new album without mentioning it once) whom I've seen before at the Mitten. And of course it's always a treat to hear Emily, whom my colleague A.D. just described, preposterously, as "sensationally bitchy." It'd been too long. Her cough was doing fun things for her singing voice. (A little sad too, tho, and I can't help subvocalizing along with some wistful harmonies...)

But I especially enjoyed getting to hear Deirdre and Conor, a new-to-me Philly duo who played guitar/cello/vocals duets, assisted by a cool old Korg analog drum machine (this one), with earnest and sappy lyrics about domestic love, often using silly science and math metaphors (and also a fight song for accountants.) Aw. You know I have a thing for couple bands. They made me think of The Long Lost, not so much for their music (though Deirdre's faint, flat singing is reminiscent of Laura Darling's) but their general aesthetic, which is not just gentle and sincere but so markedly, overwhelmingly White it's kind of amazing. You don't often hear music that feels so utterly un-inflected by (notionally) "Black" pop styles and yet is clearly very genuine in its own right. Diggin' it. Here's what they look like, presumably taken on their wedding day:

After their set, Conor told me about a project a friend of his had done, called pitchformula, wherein he analyzed Pitchfork reviews to see which words appeared more frequently in positive vs. negative reviews. Which I think is mostly interesting as a way to see how critics write differently about music they like vs. music they don't like. Weirdly, one of the words way more likely to appear in negative reviews is "lyrics," while generic instrument terms like "guitars" and "drums" are by far the most predictive of positive reviews. Apparently, critical Pitchfork reviews, at least through 2004 (when he did the project) were less likely to actually talk about the music, more likely to employ "meaningless" value judgments, attacks on the intelligence of the artists and/or listeners, and references to commercialism. It would be really fascinating to know how these results would be different now, five years later; I'd definitely expect to see some substantial changes reflected in both the writers' attitudes and their preferences, following the anti-Rockist revolution, the broadening of P-fork's scope, stature and sensibility, etc. etc. (For some reason, the published results of the project mostly don't include words associated with specific genres; it would have been interesting to see how those skewed.) Also, would be really interesting to know how these results compare with, for instance, Allmusic reviews (which probably skew even more positive – though there's a much wider pool of reviews to draw on – but should ostensibly have less overt "critical bias," however that would come across.)

Apparently, this guy, Loren Wilson, was primarily interested in using this data collection/analysis in order to inform his attempt to write songs that would specifically appeal to critics, somewhat along the lines of Komar and Melamid's fascinating and bizarre Most Wanted and Most Unwanted songs (which are definitely worth a listen if you haven't heard them.) The resulting songs, somewhat predictably, feature many elements (textures, sounds, structural approaches, etc.) thrown together in somewhat overloaded tracks, the upshot of trying to use many of the "positive" qualities all at once (which Wilson justifies because "complex" and "unexpected" are listed high among the favorable attributes.)

It's easy to be skeptical of the legitimacy (scientific, that is, not aesthetic) of this kind of "systematic" approach – given the same lists of words, would many other musicians come up with something that really sounded like this? And – the obvious problem – does the way things sound really have anything to do with how "good" they are? (The answer ought to be no, presumably, but then he's not trying to make music that's "good," just music that will appeal to a certain set of people...albeit people whose criteria for good music should theoretically be especially broad and open. or maybe not.) In any event, the music he came up with does sound strikingly like certain critical-fave zeitgeists of 2003-04. (Also, they're pretty good, though the things that make them good are not really the same as the things that stem from the results of the data – instead, those qualities tend to make them predictable, on the one hand, and disjointed on the other, not that those things aren't also "interesting.")

Which, again, would make it really interesting to hear how it would be different if this project repeated now – if anything, the musical landscape as-approved-by-critics is even more scattered and heterogenous these days (even though a glance at P4K's Best New Music page does still reveal a somewhat surprising amount of more-or-less straightforward Indie Rock); I wonder if songs self-consciously based on current critical preferences would come off even more hopelessly jumbled.

no more pushing words around: a.c. newman speaks his mind

redheads in blue. photo by jenny f.

the bits of get guilty, a.c. newman's new one, which make any kind of sense, which aren't too many, generally have something to do with the malleability and imprecision of language: stop twisting your words into shapes/shapes you can only make out when you squint. your careful walls of conversation stacked in towers so high... no more pushing words around. make of that what you will. or, just as effective: yo ho. bah bah bah bah. la la la la/la la la la/la la la la la la la la.

so much for self-reflexivity. otherwise, it's all more or less a wash. thanks to michael pelusi's citypaper preview for pointing out carl's predecessors in perplexity: robyn hitchcock, lil wayne, duh dylan. but did any of them ever offer such utterly, gleefully empty syntax – words strung together without a trace of semantic coherence; rhyme without reason – as this:

i took the red-eye back to glory
but the more i got the facts straight
turns out that the story's getting shorter...

can't take them out with baby artillery
lady it's secretarial

that spam-worthy nonsense is from possibly his best song, certainly the highlight of his johnny brenda's gig the other night, "secretarial", which he described as "a song about god knows what, from my 2004 album the slow wonder." aptly put, though it's a little weird to hear musicians using quasi-rock-critic-speak like that.

anyway, he had plenty of smart talk to offer on tuesday; words with meanings, and even inflections. he took the stage with a bizarrely sardonic quip about the size of the venue (he called it "big," which i guess was supposed to be both sarcastic and a dig), and went on to sound off about the disorienting, "unreal" nature of the space, about the dubiousness of st. patrick's accomplishments, about people mistaking him for irish because of his red hair, and about the canadian obsession with hideous celtic music (he joked that mashing-up dan bejar's tunes with an unnamed celtic funk star would be a good way to rake it in.)

b.h.'s critical mass review of the show captured many of the highlights of the highly entertaining banter. i just wanted to respond to a couple of things: newman's theory about irish redheads being the result of scandinavian rape'n'pillage doesn't quite pan out with red hair being a recessive trait (right?) and george thorogood out-drawing the new pornos in ithaca does suggest they'd at least be more loaded in HOURS.

also, carl correcting his (i think?) erroneous allusion to "loaded in a thorogood sense" to "loaded in a los lobos sense" made him the second new pornographer to shout out the wolves this year, after neko case enthusing in her liner notes about having steve berlin play on the album. not to mention the news about david hidalgo playing accordion on the forthcoming bob dylan album.

hokay. as for the music... well, it was a fun show. i definitely still like wonder a good deal more than guilty, but seeing it live did help a few of the new songs edge along towards potential favorite territory, in particular the rockers: "the palace at 4a.m." (my current go-to track on the album) and "collected works" (of exes? exits? excess?) i find "ten or twelve" to be a clunky album-opener, albeit a pretty good song, and it wasn't much better as a live opener – it gives the band a chance to get big right away, which is nice, but it's still so slow and gloopy. actually, "miracle drug" felt just as weird in the #2 slot – something about the opening drum groove seemed off, which is really what drives the energy of the whole song. (and it has a lot.)

"heartbreak rides" and "all my days..." come off quite well, with some of the vocal gorgeousness of the wonder highlights "the cloud prayer" and (of course) "drink to me, babe, then," whereas the title track, which he introduced as a waltz, still felt a bit clunky. and "submarines of stockholm," with its driving "la la la"s and baffling chorus hook ("one in a series of") was the one that got stuck in my head as i biked home.


as you can see, my camera loses out to jenny's iphone as far as clarity goes. but at least the openers, the broken west, had better lighting for their set – i was annoyed at how the blue lights clashed with the coloring of the redheaded heart-throbs on stage (the swooningly stubbly carl and his fetching, slightly feisty fiddler – excuse me, violinist – who shared an amusingly awkward moment when he asked if she was a real redhead.)

it was great to check out the broken west, a californian combo signed to merge (up until now their most noteworthy attribute in my mind), who felt like a quintessential indie-rock/pop band. almost a throwback these days – i could definitely see myself having been pretty excited about them c. 2001 or so. as it is i probably won't find the time (no longer my genre...), but they're definitely a solid band. the word that kept coming to mind was "workmanlike", which sounds like faint praise, but i mean it as a positive – it was an entirely enjoyable, and pleasantly familiar set. their songs were good too, though for recognition factor alone the highlight of the set was probably their cover of tegan and sara's micro-hit "back in your head," which they played straight and poppy (piano hits and all) but with a tiny bit of country shuffle to color it a bit.

09ism

shall we get on with it then? poor beleaguered little mnemo [that's my laptop] is back in action, my drobotunes library has more or less caught up with my recent acquisitions, and we've got some spiffy new sidebar sections to deal with.

[if you're still interested: i finally posted an "official" 2008 wrap-up, with my top singles as represented by a mixtape and my top albums as represented by their covers.]

speaking of album covers, '09 has been a brilliant year for them so far. let's bask in these for a minute, shall we?:



a bunch of lovely ladies playing dress up, in and around increasingly intriguing and silly set pieces. lovesit! so i haven't actually heard any of these albums yet. i have been listening to a bunch of older neko (and mirah) though, which is getting me very excited. fox confessor in particular is so effing brilliant, and tigers have spoken, which i'd generally overlooked, is plenty righteous in its own right. can't wait to hear what miss case has come up with this time (well, actually, i am waiting, delaying gratification about a week for the sake of about $7.00, to a.k.a.'s loss, amazon's gain, and my chagrin, but whatevs...)

her sometime partner in crime, a.c. newman, made a rather disappointing impression with his follow-up to the golden slow wonder (a record he hasn't topped since, with or without the new pornos.) for one thing, the cover is just plain ugly (i'll spare you the jpg, though it does look a tiny bit better in print than on screen.) the music is better than that, but it's still sub-par; it feels futzy and baroque in a way that detracts from the songs, and nullifies the clarion directness that has made his past stuff so great. of course, carl being carl, a couple of his melodic dirty-darts can't help but lodge in your craw; my picks would probably be "like a hitman, like a dancer" (ah, that good old a.c. w.t.f.) and, typically, the closer, "all of my days and all of my days off." (lame wannabe-merritt title notwithstanding.) still fond of the guy though, hope to see him next week.

the mirah album is out today – i hadn't realized it was dropping so soon until i saw it beaming (on LP, no less) from the rack at a.k.a. (those sneaky release-date cheaters.) will for sure go pick it up when i have vinyl-carrying capability, cuz that cover demands it. cmon mirahcle!!!!

oh yes, i have been getting back into the big black circles. i bought some rekkids the other week for the first time in well over a year, and then i bought a couple more. it all started when i was djing for feet active! last month without the use of my computer, and decided to pick up a little bit of this and that to make up for it: ended up with lps by parsley sound, quiet village [great for the post-yoga portion], soul/disco singer deneice williams, and early genesis [not for the party], and 12"s by cornershop, hebden/reed [w/ audion remix], nona hendryx [nyce!], animal collective [ginkgo's jam] and maybe some others.

after the party i let myself get suckered in by a 12" sale at ubiquity.com and procured some faves by nomo and owusu & hannibal, plus a grab-bag of rare groove oldies, all half-off. so... we'll see where this leads. not entirely sure how it will square with my inclinations/obsessions toward uni-format-y, but it does strike me that, mp3s having largely eclipsed cds in terms of utilitarian practicality (and now for me personally as well as the music-consuming public as a whole), the edge that vinyl's undeniably lustrous object-aura gives it is that much harder to undercut, particularly with download codes enclosed.

back to our leading ladies: i actually have heard most of the lily allen, but haven't really digested it. in general, i'm not overwhelmed, but i do really like "who'd have known," and "the fear" remains one of my very favorite singles of the year so far (sure i'm counting it, tho i did hear it in '08.) at first blush it seems slighter, subtler, than the hits off her debut, but the melody may well prove to have longer legs, and the lyrics are devilishly perfect. love the video too. why not:




(it's pretty definitely my favorite thing she's done, with mark ronson's "oh my god" a close second – and that common song is pretty good too – i was never the biggest fan of her first album, or her persona generally, and seeing her live didn't help much... we'll see if she can win me over this time.)

i have heard and very much enjoyed the other new album that was co-written and produced my man greg kurstin; the bird and the bee's exceedingly wtf-titled ray guns are not just the future (i know, i get that the military is now making ray guns, which means they're...the present, but that doesn't make the title any more sensible.) it's great. i mean, not every song on it is stunning, but an impressive majority are both instantly enjoyable and seemingly quite durable. and, admittedly, it's a light and fluffy pop album, with no great aspirations other than to be sweet and pleasurable. but greg and inara george (i feel like they're both old friends of mine, which is, er, almost true), like the goofy secret agents they play in the cover art, seem to take that mission quite seriously, and they clearly had a blast carrying it out.

in my review of their show at the tin angel last week, i called the album "[maybe] the most satisfying thing either of them has ever been involved in," which is a semi-bold statement when you consider that geggy tah's sacred cow (1994) and merrick's self-titled debut (2001) are minor classics in my personal pantheon. other than those two albums, there's not too much contest, though into the oh and all rise are definitely worthy efforts. can't say as much for inara's sub-ys effort from last year... this is a great turnabout from that, though it won't necessarily be received as such.

show review what? oh yes: i have been writing reviews of concerts (and also other things) for the city paper blog, which accounts for a good chunk of my music writing to date this year. check 'em on out. (with pixxxas!!)

paper stock:
bear is driving, rafter, your freedom party @ danger danger gallery, 1/29
high places, soft circle, kyle h. mabson @ danger danger gallery, 2/5
tindersticks [& dawn landes] @ world cafe live, 3/4
the bird and the bee [& obi best] @ tin angel, 3/4

also, here's a record review, of album #2 by local boy peasant. innocent churl is almost profligate. (but not quite.)

by the way, i also saw two other shows at the world cafe recently. the indigo girls & shemekia copeland, at a hoopla free-at-noon jawn on friday, were fluffy doo-dah fun – contrary to appearances, i found the 'girls to be both more entertaining and more 'authentic' than shemekia; their new songs were surprisingly engaging, though a room-ful of "closer to fine" made for a special little thrill all its own. a while back, devon sproule & matt curreri's gig, a pre-valentine's affair with incurable sweetie carsie blanton, was mostly notable for a slew of well-picked covers [best: "19th nervous breakdown," which i had in my head for weeks afterwards], which is usually a good thing, though less so when the artist in question one of yr favorite songwriters, and she's letting her kinda-dopey brother-in-law do half the singing anyway. oh well. cmon back around dev! i'll write ya up right.

more show reviews, and previews, and who-dos, comin' round the bend. some woo-hoo overdue review round-ups up'n'around too. 'n maybe i'll figger some other jigs to do. spring's a cumin in, and we're spring back to action. l33t active!

----
oh, p.s.: i couldn't very well talk about cover art in 1st-quarter '09 without mentioning this here flash animation, er i mean jpg. (was gonna post it but i figured i'd spare you the eyeache.) hard not to admit, too, that is "my girls" ever the song for the spring, or what. save it for a springy singy day, and it just comes busting out. he is so goofy coppin' a brian wilson drawl on "...seem like ah kerr abowwt..." ["...fowr m'gurls..."] got some more things to say about the music but maybs later.