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February 8, 2010
CD review: Yeasayer 'Odd Blood'
Psychedelic pop band Yeasayer came out of nowhere in 2007 with “All Hour Cymbals,” a dystopic affair recalling the Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light” and other Brian Eno-infused work. Similar to Vampire Weekend, the debut was so strong that it wasn’t unreasonable to think the band would just fade away after exhausting their best material.Songs such as “2080” and “Sunrise” were both catchy and forward-thinking; to duplicate these would be a challenge.
It seems the band felt something similar to this as well, as the first thing that stands out about “Odd Blood” is its change in direction. The dark, haunting core that defined “Cymbals” is replaced with a distinctively brighter vision. “Ambling Alp,” while staying faithful to the band’s tendency toward layered synth effects and rhythmic experimentation, is notably different with its feel good chorus, “stick up for yourself son, never mind what anybody else does.” Similarly, the companion tracks “O.N.E.” and “ONE” seize upon a dance pop sound that locates them closer to contemporaries like Cut Copy than the Talking Heads. While “Odd Blood” might not win as many new fans as the debut, it represents a big leap forward in the band’s development.
Yeasayer have two shows scheduled — April 10 and 11 — at the Parish. Tickets are $15 in advance, $17 at the door. www.theparishaustin.com.
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February 2, 2010
CD review: "As He Wanders..." by Texas Sapphires
Texas Sapphires
“As He Wanders…” (Ike Records)
Grade: B+
I hate it when younger artists sing songs about the sad current state of country music. Shurman almost ruined a good album by including the whiney, hokey “Country Ain’t Country Anymore.”
The best commentary is to make a pure country album like this sophomore release from Billy Brent Malkus and Rebecca Cannon, known together as the Texas Sapphires. With fiddle, banjo, pedal steel guitar and mandolin on just about every track, this record imagines a time when the most famous Garth is the sidekick on “Wayne’s World.” Even when they rock, as on “Farmer’s Tan,” they can’t shake the hillbilly shawl.
Opening with Arty Hill’s “Nashville Moon,” the Sapphires establish the honky tonk feel right out of the chute. The rest of the tunes are written by Malkus (who shows a great sense of humor on “How Did I Get So Sloppy Drunk When I Was Drinkin’ Neat?”), with the exception of Cannon’s stirring “Teardrops or Rain.” As a balladeer, Cannon (a former punk rocker in Sincola) is not a belter, but has a quality in her voice that makes it seem as if she’s feeling the words. Overdubbing her vocals on “Make Him Make Me,” one of Malkus’ best songs, is a nice touch.
Malkus is more limited vocally, but he can drive a guitar all around. And Cannon’s soft harmonies are always there when needed.
There’s no threat of the Texas Sapphires breaking out on country radio. There’s just a hint of a bar band scent to this record that terrifies programmers. But no one can say- or write a song- about this band being not country.
The Texas Sapphires play a Waterloo instore tomorrow and headline the Continental Club Thursday.
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January 29, 2010
Review: Fiery Furnaces at the Parish
Living up to their reputation, the Fiery Furnaces filled their short-ish set Thursday night at the Parish with dramatic tempo changes and classic rock guitar riffs. Lead vocalist Eleanor Friedberger was inspiring with her consistent energy, maintaining a non-stop rock presence that drove the music throughout. Brother Matthew mainly focused his energy on the guitar, fluctuating between haphazard noise and full blown 70’s arena rock. This habit of key changes and explosive outbursts distinguishes the band’s live show.
That said, the performance was good but not great. There was a balance to the show that seemed to reflect the band’s latest releases — some of their most restrained work — but they were never quite as loose as they seem capable of being. New songs, including the bouncy “Charmaine Champagne” and “Keep Me In the Dark” stretched out nicely live. The set ended after a fast 50 minutes.
Part of the charm of “I’m Going Away” is the soulful piano that gives the album its laid-back feel. There was no piano or keys with band; instead, the new material was reinvented strictly as guitar rock. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. At times it worked, but some of the new tunes, including the bluesy “Drive to Dallas,” suffered from keys’ absence. The encore mini-set picked up again with Eleanor taking a turn on the drums as well as “Single Again, “Japanese Slippers” and the super-catchy “Here Comes the Summer,” which closed an evening that felt like it wrapped up a little early.
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January 25, 2010
CD review: Various artists 'Casual Victim Pile'
Various artists
‘Casual Victim Pile: Austin 2010’
(Matador)
Grade: A
With “Casual Victim Pile” so dominated by the furious sounds of rock ‘n’ roll — from Follow That Bird’s righteous, Joan Jett-evoking “The Ghosts That Wake You” to the closing midtempo New Wave shuffle of Lost Controls’ “Entirely Wired For Sound” — it might come as a surprise that the best word to describe it would be “love.”
Of course, it’s a sappy way to sum up a record so decidedly unsappy, so loaded with kicks and thrashes and even a one-minute, four-second song — “Nazis On Film” by the Teeners — that’s one of the best bits of driving gutter punk that will ever assault your eardrums. But Matador Records co-owner Gerard Cosloy’s highly personal snapshot of the Red River scene circa 2009 is an obvious labor of love from the first track to the last, carefully curated and misfire-free.
Whether on the low-key jangle of Harlem’s catchy “Beautiful and Very Smart” or the psychedelic drawl of Elvis’ “Mommy’s Little Soldiers,” “Casual Victim Pile” manages to feel cohesive without ever limiting itself, bounding across 19 tracks of headbang-worthy rock.
Even if it is just a glorified mixtape — albeit a mixtape from Matador Records that we hope will bring needed exposure to a bushel of great Austin bands — it’s just about the most lovingly assembled collection of fiendishly addictive tunes you’re likely to find anywhere. Way to make the Beerland faithful proud, Matador.
Read more about ‘Casual Victim Pile’ in Sunday’s Life & Arts section. Bands featured on the release will play three nights — Feb. 4-6 — at Beerland to celebrate the record.
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CD review: Patty Griffin 'Downtown Church'
Patty Griffin
‘Downtown Church’
(Credential)
Grade: B+
Before she became the undisputed Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin was a mediocre gospel singer. Really. A magnificent voice always, but Aretha lacked the purity of purpose possessed by such less talented, but better Christian blues singers as Sallie Martin, Dorothy Love Coates and Bessie Griffin.
Patty Griffin is an amazingly athletic singer and her fans will love her attempt to get next to God on “Downtown Church,” recorded at a Presbyterian one in Nashville. But there’s no growl in the gal. Praising a higher power who can’t get the electricity turned back on takes an innate quiver or twist that, like Lady Soul, Griffin just doesn’t have. Don’t know why she thought she could bring something fresh to “If I Had My Way” and “Wade In the Water.” When the Staple Singers did those songs in the ’60s, they were done. Produced by Buddy Miller as if he has too many albums and loves them all, “Downtown Church” is often divinely stirring but lacks a deep spiritual core.
And when the Lark of Hyde Park throws in “Virgen de Guadalupe,” it comes off as the most awkward border crossing since Vallejo tried to pass as Rock en Español.
Griffin’s seventh studio album works better when she covers country gospel, such as Hank Williams’ “House of Gold” and “We Shall All Be Reunited” by Doc Watson, and adds hue with gentle new originals “Little Fire” and “Coming Home To Me.” But what really makes the record is a solemn, yet soaring, version of “All Creatures of Our God and King,” written in 1225 by St. Francis of Assisi. A hymn made for her, it’s like being in church and the top of a mountain at the same time.
Listen, I’m a snob of black gospel music, so it was predetermined that I wouldn’t accept this. I was going to list all the gospel records you should buy instead of “Downtown Church.” But over a few listens, I was converted.
But if you pick this up, you also have to get “Freedom Highway” by the Staple Singers. Patty wants you to.
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More from Sunday's Help Austin Help Haiti concert
(Kelly West AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
The marathon “Help Austin Help Haiti” benefit on Sunday at the Austin Music Hall began with Asleep At the Wheel’s lilting version of Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You” and drew toward a close almost 10 hours later with Charlie Sexton romping through a muscular version of the Beatles’ “Help.”
In between, the cream of Austin’s Americana/singer-songwriter community came together, as it has so often in the past, for those in need. Although no exact figures were available Monday morning, the concert and accompanying silent auction seemed certain to have raised many tens of thousands of dollars for Haitian earthquake relief.
The event came together with breathtaking rapidity. Visiting with Tim O’Connor and Doug Moyes of Direct Events, who manage the Music Hall, on an unrelated matter a week and a half ago, Joe Ely asked offhandedly if anyone was planning a local effort to aid Haitian earthquake victims. “You are,” the pair told Ely in essence, and basically tossed him the keys to the building.
With lots of behind-the-scenes sweat and tenacity, Ely and his cohorts assembled a cast of musicians that also included Shawn Colvin, Bob Schneider, the Gourds, Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis, the Flatlanders, Robert Earl Keen, Marcia Ball (filling in for an ailing Billy Joe Shaver), Band of Heathens, Patricia Vonne, Reckless Kelly, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Guy Forsyth, Band of Heathens and Paula Nelson.
Many of the participants were parents themselves and the televised images of children wandering lost through the wreckage of Port Au Prince weighed on them.
“The big thing was being a dad,” said Bob Schneider, discussing his participation as his son, Luc hovered nearby. “All those people will have a hard time looking after the kids in all the devastation.”
“No matter how big this town gets or how much it changes, it’s still a music town and this is how we grieve and celebrate,” said Kelly Willis as her own kids romped around her dressing room.
Husband Bruce Robison added, “I’m proud to be part of this. It’s wonderful to try to help, and to find people that give you a way to help.” “Musicians are like family,” said Shawn Colvin, “and when someone like Joe makes this happen, how can you say no?”
Inevitably, with such a cast, musical highlights were plentiful. The Flatlanders (Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock), augmented by guitarist David Holt and steel maestro Lloyd Maines, lit up the room with a scorching version of Gilmore’s “Midnight Train.”
Colvin did a meltingly lovely solo take on the Lefty Frizzell/Merle Haggard hit “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Marcia Ball, sitting in with Ely and band, rocked the 88s on Ely’s keyboard anthem “Fingernails.” The Gourds mashed up an epic rendition of “Gin and Juice” with samples of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” and Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” Ely dug deep into his song bag for a moving acoustic version of “Dig All Night.” Robert Earl Keen put an anthemic spin on Townes Van Zandt’s “Flying Shoes.” Robison and Willis sat in on one another’s sets between backstage babysitting duties.
“You feel helpless looking at the TV,” said Ely during the course of the evening. “But then I thought about Willie Nelson doing the benefit for the tsunami victims and Clifford Antone putting together a fundraiser after Hurricane Katrina … And I thought, it’s my turn.”
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January 15, 2010
Review: Fat Man and Little Boy at the Whip In
(Fat Man and Little Boy perform Thursday at The Whip In. Photo by Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
“We’re gonna play without a mic,” announced Little Boy at the onset of Thursday night’s gig. “Normally we can place blame on a (bad) sound system … .”
“Or a bad sound man,” added his counterpart, Fat Man.
A mic might not have been a bad idea for Fat Man and Little Boy, otherwise known as the Atomic Duo, purveyors of “struggle” music for our modern day Depression. The setting was Whip In, a convenience store off the I-35 frontage road in South Austin, where the din of chatter and clanging of silverware born of the dozen or so diners communing over scrumptious Indian food and on-tap craft beers in the store’s refurbished eating area made for sometimes indiscernible lyrics.
But Fat Man and Little Boy were oblivious. They were too wrapped up in their self-deprecating banter and knock-knock shtick, and in making sense of live renditions of the mountain, swing, bluegrass, Dust Bowl, and Tin Pan Alley songs on their self-titled album. The album came out in November but because Fat Man had a torn rotator cuff then, the Atomic Duo’s just now celebrating its release, with a January residency at Whip In among other Texas dates.
Vocals were split fairly evenly between Fat Man (Mark Rubin, Austin’s resident advocate of old-time music, most notably with the trio Bad Livers) and Little Boy (Silas Lowe, an East Coast transplant equally enamored with Old, Weird America). Traditional and original songs were buoyed by ersatz country voices and the high lonesome sounds of mandolin, banjo and resonator guitar, and occasionally were assisted by vocalist Jenn Miori, fiddler Wayne “Chojo” Jacques, and harmonica player Sean Tracey.
“Texas City” spoke of the 1947 explosion of ammonium nitrate aboard the French vessel SS Grandcamp, which killed hundreds of people in the port town. “Turpentine Farm” was about “sadomasochistic animal husbandry.” And “Rope Stretchin’ Blues” affirmed the notion of an eye for an eye, wherein the song’s protagonist busts a home intruder’s head with a club.
Fat Man and Little Boy excelled at turning heartache into humor, with a vibe on par with White Ghost Shivers and the Gourds. For one departing customer, the lack of a mic was no big deal.
“You sounded great,” she told the duo.
“If you stick around,” Fat Man said, “we can fix that.”
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January 12, 2010
CD review: Freedy Johnson 'Rain on the City'
‘Rain on the City’
(Bar/None)
Grade: B
“Rain on the City” is singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston’s first release of original material in eight years, and it is a strong enough outing to let fans and critics know that he’s still out there, making music. Though the album, a blue, sparsely produced collection, isn’t particularly ground-breaking as far as its sound or song writing is concerned, there is something very appealing about Johnston’s silky-yet-nasally voice as well as the layers of mood that envelop the music. The title track is the strongest testament to Johnston’s talent, a gloomy, minor key ode to loneliness. Similarly, “The Devil Raises His Own,” a dark groove that recalls early ’70s soul, allows Johnston to show off his range.
The album falls short in a few places, such as the gratuitous country track “Livin’ Too Close to the Rio Grande,” but its slip-ups are rare enough that the whole doesn’t suffer much.
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CD review: Katharine McPhee 'Unbroken'
‘Unbroken’
(Verve)
Grade: C
If one gleans anything from “Unbroken,” Katharine McPhee’s sophomore album, it would be this: Girl is sad.
We can only speculate why — channeling the angst from her struggles with eating disorders? Being dropped by previous label RCA Records? Things with husband Nick Cokas not working out well? Recently watched “The Notebook”? The lyrics are a bit too obtuse to say for sure, but “Unbroken,” from the wistful lament of “Had It All” to the sweetly melancholic “Surrender,” chooses heartbreak as its central theme. McPhee and a cadre of co-writers return time and again to images of loss and regret, giving “Unbroken” an unexpectedly tragic tinge. When she closes the album out with a cover of Melanie’s novelty hit “Brand New Key,” the ray of sunshine is practically a relief.
Of course, “Unbroken” doesn’t concern itself only with darkness — McPhee’s no Leonard Cohen — and the sound is vintage shiny happy adult contemporary, all soaring crescendos and headbop-worthy piano lines. It’s enough to make you wish McPhee, a talented vocalist and stage presence, would be as confessional and intimate with her choice of instrumentation as her choice of lyrics.
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CD review: Vampire Weekend 'Contra'
‘Contra’
(XL)
Grade: B
The bolt-from-the-blue brilliance of Vampire Weekend’s first album rested largely on how successfully it fused everything stereotypical upper-class white people like — with four dapper Ivy League-educated gentlemen crooning about images of Cape Cod summers and infatuations with Louis Vuitton-adorned girls — with the habit-forming beats of African popular music. That mixture gave the band the catchiest and most resonant multicultural white guy pop this side of Paul Simon’s “Graceland.”
That formula sticks around for sophomore album “Contra,” but with added textures and layers of depth, from the M.I.A. samples on “Diplomat’s Son” — at six minutes, “War and Peace” by Vampire Weekend standards — to the billowy auto-tune of “California English” to the blaring trumpets on “Run.” Lead singer Ezra Koenig takes on added vulnerability on “Taxi Cab” and album closer and pseudo title track “I Think Ur A Contra,” which sounds more dreamlike and ethereal than even the debut’s slowest moments. The result is an album that, at 36 minutes, is concise but not immediate, the definition of a grower that takes time to reveal its mysteries. It lacks the slam-bang fun of their self-titled debut — lead single “Cousins,” with its frenetic punk rock energy and surf guitar rolls, is the closest thing to last album’s instantly affecting “A-Punk” — but expands Vampire Weekend’s toolbox. If the debut album was the perfect party record, “Contra,” with its increasingly epic scope and references piled on top of references — the ever-clever Koenig’s even titled the album in direct contrast to the Clash’s “Sandinista!” — is better suited for a long road trip, to be immediately queued up and played again after its first listen.
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January 4, 2010
Free Week: cold air and hangovers
David Weaver FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- A-List photos: Free Week 2010, night 2
With New Year’s Eve and its accompanying hangover behind them, Austin’s budget-conscious scenesters rallied on Saturday night, as crowds, venues and lineups all filled out. Music fans weighed cost savings and bitter chill and decided claiming the former was worth toughing through the latter as Riverboat Gamblers spinoff Ghost Knife — so new they don’t even yet have a MySpace — packed the inside room at Emo’s.
Just as impressive was an earlier set from Big Black-meets-Sonic Youth post-punk rockers Manikin, with guitarist Alfonso Rabago’s echo-loaded vocals jumpstarting a crowd already high on the gregarious garage of Serious Tracers. Outside, the spirited sludge rock of Woven Bones rang out over a sizable crowd. Even more popped in to catch certifiable buzz act and recent Matador Records signees Harlem — three guys who never fail to look giddy even at the most unfriendly hours and temperatures of the night.
Further down Red River, Stubb’s and Beerland joined the fray, with the former boasting an electric set from Black Bone Child and the latter hosting endlessly dependable rockabilly circus the Flametrick Subs. At the Mohawk, a substantial crowd crammed into the inside room to catch In Dudero, the Nirvana tribute act with members of the Sword and Those Peabodys — proof positive that, for all of Free Week’s great original acts, sometimes you just want to chug a beer and hear “Rape Me.”
Whether it was the biting cold or just the natural fallout of a hectic holiday weekend, crowds thinned out Sunday night. But those daring enough to stick around were clearly in it to win it — take, for instance, the swirling crowds at Emo’s inside during country rockers Crooks. It’s not often you see copious two-stepping on the floor of Emo’s, but the country western dance was an appropriate indulgence for a band with such a fetching honky tonk sound that you can practically hear the pedal steel — even though there isn’t one. It was something of a country-influenced night at the inside room of Emo’s, with a charming set from Frank Smith (note: the band doesn’t actually contain anyone named Frank Smith) and even a few tunes on the more acoustic, old-fashioned tip from What Made Milwaukee Famous front man Michael Kingcaid, who played a stripped-down show of solo material.
Outside, indie pop maestros Quiet Company put on their Sunday best for an appropriately joyous set containing a furious cover of the Pixies’ “Monkey Gone To Heaven.” Front man Taylor Muse praised the crowd’s persistence — “Some of us musicians have to get up at 6 a.m. for work, too” — and rewarded their loyalty with a closing rendition of the band’s crescendo-laden “On Modern Men” that pulled friends and acquaintances on-stage for a soaring sing-along. The perpetually underrated Corto Maltese fared just as well, toggling between Rush-esque guitar heroics and intellectual rock in the Radiohead style. Proggy electropoppers Many Birthdays — who, to go by their apparent youth, haven’t celebrated all that many birthdays — played the first of what will be a couple of Free Week shows with aplomb. Over at the Beauty Bar, One Hundred Flowers provided quiet, acoustic experimental pop perfectly suited for a more buttoned-down evening of relaxation and cocktails. Even on a quiet Sunday evening distinguished by its harsh chill, Red River looked surprisingly popping — and you were guaranteed to overhear substantially more conversations about Pitchfork than you would on most Sunday nights. Truly, the party has begun. Three nights down, seven to go.
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Review: Chuck Prophet at the Continental Club
Chuck Prophet likes to wax sarcastic in between songs. His first wisecrack during a monster Saturday set at the Continental Club — the second of back-to-back nights — was a riff on virtual reality.
“Go home tonight and check your Friendster page,” Prophet said. (Don’t you mean Facebook?) “How many friends do you need? How many people would actually pick you up at the airport? Now, get rid of the rest.”
Then the San Francisco slacker and his four-piece band, including wife Steffie Finch on keyboards and backing vocals, laid into a cover of Alejandro Escovedo’s “Always A Friend,” which Prophet co-wrote, along with the majority of Escovedo’s triumphant “Real Animal” album.
Prophet is perhaps better known for his collaborations with other musicians, including Austin’s Kelly Willis, than he is for the nine solo albums he’s put out. But “Soap and Water,” from 2007, yielded an appearance on David Letterman, and this year’s “Let Freedom Ring,” a 25th anniversary update of the American Dream proffered by Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” has garnered critical acclaim.
Prophet played heavy doses of both albums Saturday, in a dynamite display of workmanlike rock. Prophet stabbed his trusty Fender Squier like a hoodlum in a knifefight, as he grunted and winced through his character-driven songs, vacillating between a traditional mic and one that made his voice sound like it was amplified through a blowhorn.
“Steve, who I guess is head of security here,” Prophet said, presumably referring to Continental owner Steve Wertheimer, “says there’s been a lot of bootlegging lately. I’d only ask, because this is how we make our living,” Prophet continued, feigning seriousness, “that you film this one. Because no one likes new songs.”
That disclaimer about identity theft was followed by “Hot Talk,” a song about a shady impersonator, with Dire Straits undertones. Meanwhile, “Doubter Out of Jesus (All Over You),” about a treacherous vamp, conveyed double-meaning when Finch repeatedly sang the outro at Prophet, “You could make a doubter out of Jesus.”
But for my money I’ll take the opener, “Sonny Liston’s Blues,” wherein Prophet echoed the words of the boxer in the lead up to his memorable bout with Muhammad Ali. Prophet sang them as if to dupe you into thinking he wasn’t the smart aleck he seemed: “I’m a man of few words, baby/ I think by now you’ve heard ‘em all.”
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December 18, 2009
Live review: Phoenix at La Zona Rosa
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Forget the cold, hard, analytical signs that 2009 was the year French alternative rock band Phoenix finally crossed the line from a beloved indie fixture to bona-fide mainstream success — the gamut of late-night talk show appearances, the festival dates, the widespread critical acclaim and prominent placement on several best-of-the-year (and decade) lists for “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.” Purge it all from your memory.
Because far more important than any of the Wikipedia-friendly evidence, the signs of Phoenix’s rise — if not from the ashes, then at least from the band’s previous status as the clever, sensitive rock band of choice primarily for sexy intellectuals — were found all over La Zona Rosa Thursday night. You could see it in the packed-to-the-gills sold out crowd, the middle school students being picked up by their parents post-show and, above all, the rapturous faces in the audience and the ceaseless movement of seemingly every body in the house.
After a brief introduction by 101X’s Jason Dick — quite possibly the most prominent ginger in Austin radio — and energized opening sets from psychedelic genre blenders White Denim and dance rock enthusiasts Hockey, Phoenix took to the stage for an electric and surprisingly gracious set that touched on material from all four of the band’s studio albums. They showed none of the signs of weariness or apathy you’d expect from a band that’s gigged nearly non-stop in every corner of the world since March, with tight, focused playing and a palpable sense of glee at their command over the audience.
The show kicked off with an enthused take on lead “Wolfgang” single “Lisztomania,” followed by snappy stabs at two band classics — “Long Distance Call” and the mesmerizing, seductively groovy “Run Run Run,” which incorporated particularly dazzling guitar and bass solos from Laurent Brancowitz and Deck D’Arcy. The band’s regular forays into older material were a nice demonstration of their solid back catalog, and demonstrated the kind of seasoned experience and wealth of material that some similar breakout bands aren’t lucky enough to have.
That focus on older material didn’t mean a compromise in energy on new songs, though. They still nailed the most important — to go by audience recognition — songs off “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” with peppy versions of “Fences,” “Rome,” and “1901.” And front man Thomas Mars was always sure to yield the floor to his band mates, giving each member a chance to show off — a willingness particularly evident on the lengthy “Love Like A Sunset,” which gave each member of Phoenix a solo to call their own and proved the group could make a lengthy and meditative number appropriate for a live show. That kind of democratic spirit goes a long way toward explaining why the band’s still vital and capable after well over a decade playing together.
But the night’s real story was in Mars’ very sincere connection to the crowd. Whether soliciting hand claps during “Rome” or jumping into the audience to perform “Lasso,” wearing a grin a mile wide, Mars knew how to work a crowd and how to appear sincerely appreciative doing it. That rapport came to a celebratory end on the final song, a reprise of “Lisztomania” which saw the front man leaping from the stage to perform the first half of the song in the crowd before eventually returning and welcoming dozens on stage to sing and dance alongside the band. As enthusiastic concertgoers poured onto the stage at La Zona Rosa, one thing became clear: Phoenix’s greatest success as rock stars just might be how blissfully unaware they seem of being rock stars. Even with a massively successful year under their belt — Thursday night’s show marks their last of a very busy 2009 — they remain four shy, sensitive, nice guys, who seem as thrilled as the audience to have that many giddy people on stage.
Set list
Lisztomania
Long Distance Call
Lasso
Run Run Run
Fences
Girlfriend
Armistice
Love Like A Sunset
Napoleon Says
Too Young
Consolation Prizes
Rome
Funky Squaredance
Encore
Everything Is Everything
If I Ever Feel Better
1901
Lisztomania (reprise)
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December 15, 2009
CD review: Timbaland 'Shock Value II'
Timbaland performs with SoShy at last month’s American Music Awards. Photo by the Associated Press
Timbaland
“Shock Value II”
(Blackground)
Grade: A
Before the “Shock Value” series, Timbaland never had a signature CD as a solo artist, unlike fellow superstar producers Dr. Dre and Kanye West. Producers can showcase their talent in that setting, free to unleash their creative id without compromise and look for inspiration in unlikely places. “Shock Value II” is the CD Timbaland has been building his entire career toward, the work of a great musician at the top of his game.
After more than a decade of consistent success, he doesn’t need to justify his musical decisions. “Shock Value II” reflects that - featuring everyone from Daughtry and Chad Kroeger to Miley Cyrus, the Fray, Drake and Justin Timberlake. Timbaland tweaks the music for each artist but keeps a consistent sound - a futuristic mash-up of R&B, rock, pop and rap destined to be copied endlessly.
And with such a diverse and talented guest-list, the album feels like a compilation CD of the year’s biggest hits. Nearly every song could conceivably be released as a single; in theory he could have a big hit in four different genres - rap (“Say Something”), rock (“Marching On” or “Long Way Down”), pop (“Undertow” or “Lose Control”) and R&B (“Carry Out”).
For the most part, each song celebrates a different aspect of how great he (and his guests) are. Drake pokes fun at girls from his past (“I should wanna go back to the one I started with / But I’m addicted to this life it’s gonna be hard to quit”) while Daughtry reminisces on his meteoric ascent (“I hear it’s such a long way down / And the climb back up is something I can do without”).
Timbaland serves as a unifying force, as a DJ introducing each act while occasionally delivering a rap verse. He’s nowhere near as talented on the mic as Dre and Kanye, but he doesn’t detract from the music. He doesn’t have much to say; “If you assume my life is wonderful, then y’all right” is about as introspective as he gets on “Shock Value II.” It’s an album designed to play from start to finish at a house party, and it will many times over the next few months.
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December 10, 2009
Live review: Jay Reatard at Emo's - 40 minutes and two arrests, yes that's punk rock
Photos: See pics from the Jay Reatard show.
Jay Reatard, nee Jimmy Lee Lindsey, built his reputation on short, spazzy, furiously energetic garage punk with several bands in Memphis, Tenn. But by the time he graduated to solo material — first with 2006’s “Blood Visions” and this year with “Watch Me Fall” — he’d welded his guitar chops and rowdy rock sensibility with surprisingly catchy, pop-oriented songwriting that made him one of punk’s more accessible musicians. “Watch Me Fall” highlighted Reatard at his versatile best, with a more melodic sound that made greater use of harmonies and even strings.
But while Reatard’s recordings may have matured, his public persona — and the full-frontal assault that is his live show — haven’t aged a day. “Punk rock” is still the most apt description for Reatard’s image. After all, he’s the man who announced the loss of his band via Twitter in October (with the instantly quotable lines “Band quit ! (Expletive) them ! They are boring rich kids who can’t play for (expletive) anyways.”). Reatard’s famous for punching a zealous fan on-stage in Toronto last year. And Reatard has even claimed, also via Twitter, that shots were fired to disperse a fight during his Dec. 8 show at Walter’s in Houston.
That ethos was readily apparent at Wednesday night’s show at Emo’s, as Reatard and his new band pounded through 40 minutes of blistering punk. Fans gathered near the stage moshed violently, a firecracker was detonated on the floor and the show ended with the arrest of two concertgoers.
So, to reiterate: Punk. Rock.
Reatard took the stage after midnight and immediately launched into a series of highlights from his solo career. Though melody has taken on a greater prominence on his recordings, there’s little evidence of that in the live show — Reatard and band focused instead on fast, frenetic playing. They powered through a half dozen songs in the set’s first 10 minutes, treating their instruments less as objects to be coaxed and more as punching bags worthy of abuse. Reatard sliced into “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me,” the lead single off “Watch Me Fall,” with joyful abandon. Hooky riffs helped smooth out the rough edges on “Hammer I Miss You,” and Reatard’s high, Geddy Lee-esque voice rang out surprisingly clearly on “I Know A Place.”
While the set had all the makings of a fun night of pop-punk, it was sadly abridged at only 40 minutes — less than the opening performance by Austin’s own Harlem — after two rowdy fans attacked Reatard on-stage shortly after he announced he was playing the night’s final song. He retaliated by swinging his microphone stand and departed mid-song, giving the at-times rambunctious audience the finger as he exited the stage. There was to be no encore — the lights went up and the PA music kicked in as the two intruding fans were arrested by police outside the club’s Sixth Street entrance.
It was a good show — while it lasted. And Reatard can’t be held responsible for violent fans. But at less than 45 minutes and with a buzzkill of an ending, it’s hard to regard the night as anything more than an initially promising disappointment. That’s the sad thing about punk rock — sometimes the anger overtakes the fun and an audience walks away let down. With a too-short set and a combative ending, Reatard’s Wednesday night show ultimately felt less like a satisfactory set from a skilled player and more like a sad tease of the fun evening that might have been.
Update: The Austin Police Department’s public information office has confirmed that Michael Buehrer, 20, and Peter Aravello, 23, were the two men arrested. Both have been charged with public intoxication.
Pitchfork has this statement from Reatard’s publicist: “Jay was attacked, totally unprovoked, by two different people, both of whom were later arrested. One guy bolted onstage and came swinging at Jay, but security took him away pretty quickly. Soon after (the band hadn’t stopped playing, by the way), another guy sprinted onstage and hit Jay. Unlike the first guy, Jay didn’t even see this guy coming. So Jay defended himself with the mic stand until security took that guy away, too. Jay is safe and unhurt, and the cops were there for about an hour afterwards.”
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December 5, 2009
Live review: KISS at the Erwin Center
Gene Simmons prowled the giant stage, scanning the front rows for female fans to harass and thrill. Fingers fondling his bass, Simmons made hard eye contact with his victims, then subjected them to slow, grinding pelvis gyrations — his metallic cod-piece glittering in the lights — and that interminable, wet, wagging tongue. The women gasped and giggled. Simmons, a self-aware pro, laughed back.
This was high comedy during KISS’ spectacularly silly and moderately fun rock extravaganza Friday night at a crowded Erwin Center, a cavernous venue that could barely contain the show’s endless eruptions of theatrical bombast and pyro porn that finally, during the orgiastic three-song encore, struck a comical level of hedonistic overkill. (Fire! Fire! Fire!)
KISS is lowbrow performance art — children, like so many in the audience, devour this stuff — accompanied by a tinny but extremely loud soundtrack of mindless rock ditties. For 35 years, their concerts have been a savvy blend of bluster and balderdash, with a cloying infusion of Jerry Bruckheimer. (If they began today, KISS would be a CGI creation.)
They do it well, and the four band members worked hard Friday to keep the audience involved with flattering between-song banter, constant eye-contact, call-and-response games and by anointing the masses with flurries of guitar picks. Simmons, Paul Stanley and relative newcomers Eric Singer on drums and Tommy Thayer on guitar (who does a fine imperson-Ace-tion) never took the crowd for granted, constantly checking in, begging our approval and throwing it right back, like an enormous, flame-strewn self-esteem seminar.
They opened with old-timers “Deuce” and “Strutter” — not the most muscular songs out of the gate — with Stanley promising a night of “classic vintage KISS.” For more than two hours, the band stomped through, and sometimes tiresomely dragged out, a hit-list of songs about sex, partying, sex, drinking, rocking and sex. At least two songs, “Modern Day Delilah” and “Say Yeah,” from their new album “Sonic Boom” (“Get your butts down to Wal-Mart and get yourself a copy!” Stanley hollered) were beer-break tunes, but the crowd thrilled and sang along to “Hotter Than Hell,” “Cold Gin” and “Black Diamond.”
The show hit its stride with faster, hookier songs (“Calling Dr. Love,” “Parasite”) and foot-stomping anthems (“Rock and Roll All Nite”) that matched the volcanic production values. Amid a backdrop of JumboTrons, sirens, rising platforms, confetti and flaming mushroom clouds, Simmons spewed blood and fire, Thayer shot rockets from his guitar and Stanley wiggled his rear-end at fans before smashing his guitar. Singer’s drum platform spun around.
It’s no secret that Simmons, lascivious demon-beast, with that long-legged skulk and spiked armor, is the show’s cynosure. In a literal high moment, he was lifted by cables to the rafters, where he mounted a platform and gazed down upon his worshipful kingdom. There he bellowed 1982’s “I Love it Loud,” his lips and chin stained with fake blood. The song ended and the lights went out. It was only in the safety of the dark that the winged batman could do something so ordinary and un-KISS-like as what came next: He descended back to earth.
Set list: “Deuce,” “Strutter,” “Let Me Go, Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Hotter Than Hell” (Gene Simmons breathes fire off a sword), “Shock Me” (with Tommy Thayer on lead vocals), “Calling Dr. Love,” “Modern Day Delilah,” “Cold Gin” (Thayer guitar solo, with rocket-firing guitar), “Parasite,” “Say Yeah,” “100,000 Years” (routine Eric Singer drum solo, one long cluster bomb of quadruplets), Gene Simmons bass solo (with blood spitting), “I Love it Loud,” “Black Diamond” (with Singer on lead vocals), “Rock and Roll All Nite” (with stadium-clogging confetti storms).
Encores: “Lick it Up,” “Love Gun” (Paul Stanley flies over audience), “Detroit Rock City” (Paul smashes guitar). More fire.
Click here to view more photos from the concert.
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December 1, 2009
CD review: The Bravery - 'Stir the Blood'
The Bravery
‘Stir the Blood’
(Island Records)
Grade: C
You could call “Stir the Blood” a study of contrasts.
On the one hand, frontman-songwriter Sam Endicott is angry. You can hear it in every jagged riff, every angsty yowl, even in the gore-evoking album title. And there are only so many ways to interpret a song called “Hate(expletive).” There’s a pretty good chance he wants to shower some physical violence on someone. Possibly you.
But we can assume he at least wants you to have some fun while he does it, because “Stir the Blood” is also a return to upbeat form for this New York post-punk new wave band after a disappointing second album “The Sun and the Moon.” It has an almost pathological need to be danceable in its instrumentation, with the speedy, steady beat on “Red Hands and White Knuckles” adding a rollicking, catchy pulse to a fundamentally violent, ugly tune. It’s that disconnect between the high-school pleading, for instance, of “I Am Your Skin” with its techno-influenced head-bopping time signature that keeps “Stir the Blood” somewhat lively. There’s something naturally fascinating about cognitive dissonance, and it doesn’t come much more dissonant than dancing to “Slow Poison,” with its focus on the bitter sting of heartbreak.
The Bravery never quite dodges the problem that’s dogged the band since its self-titled debut — namely, that “Stir the Blood” starts to sound awfully monotonous after 11 songs. And you’d have to be very young, very immature or very unfortunate to relate much to this level of focused brooding. But those who enjoyed the Bravery’s driven dance sound on the debut will be pleased by “Stir the Blood,” and it’s hard to condemn an album as too dark when it has the good sense to rock while doing it.
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CD review: R. Kelly - 'Untitled'
R. Kelly
‘Untitled’
(Jive)
Grade: B
To paraphrase the great Texas philosopher Hank Hill, somewhere along the line we forgot to teach R. Kelly shame.
This is, of course, painfully obvious to anyone who has followed his unsavory legal problems. Artistically, on the other hand, it’s been helpful. Kelly’s go-to topic has always been sex — it’s what he writes about when he can’t be bothered to write about anything else — and a lack of shame is a pretty good thing to have if you spend your days thinking up new ways to talk about the world’s oldest activity.
Nothing on “Untitled” reaches the lunatic heights of “Trapped in the Closet” nor the complicated shadows of, say, “A Woman’s Threat.” “Untitled” is mostly sex jams, but often very funny ones.
Who else can sell “you have pretty teeth” as a pickup line, as he does during “Exit”? The single “Number One” compares sex to making a hit record (and possibly stripping a car — as guest vocalist Keri Hilson puts it, “You know you stay at the top spot/ When you’re breaking me down like a chop shop”). “Echo” is what he would like your screams to do (“I hope you’re ready, girl, to scream and moan/ like yodoley oley ohhoooo”).
“Religious” has him repenting and changing his thuggish ways (“There’s something religious about you (I wanna testify)/ there’s something church about you” - a.k.a. how to get with the choir director) yet “Bangin’ the Headboard” and “Go Low” should explain themselves. And when he tells you he wants to get you “Pregnant” (“Telling myself I’m a playa so I keep tryna shake it off/ But I keep on seeing this big old house with a picket fence and a dog”), you almost believe him.
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CD review: Adam Lambert - 'For Your Entertainment'
Adam Lambert
‘For Your Entertainment’
(RCA)
Grade: C+
Amid all the controversy and rapt media attention showered on Adam Lambert — from initial questions surrounding his sexuality to his instantly game-changing air-sex antics during the American Music Awards — the “American Idol” runner-up has received surprisingly little attention for his ostensible selling point: his pipes.
Maybe that’s how Lambert managed to record one of the year’s most surprising albums even under intense scrutiny. “For Your Entertainment” is a disjointed but intriguing melding of rock, pop, electronica and dance — with the occasional hard left turn into schmaltz — that taken altogether is one of the most striking examples of pop-by-committee in recent years. Lambert’s at his best when he’s also at his most ostentatious, so “For Your Entertainment” really sings when he embraces his obvious gift for sweaty, sexy dance music. The title track is an electroclash-filled, sometimes-autotuned three minutes that takes to heart George Bernard Shaw’s old maxim about dancing as a vertical expression of horizontal desire. And “Fever” is the kind of track you know was co-written by Lady Gaga even before glancing at the liner notes, with its club thump and unapologetically sex-obssessed lyricism (“There he goes/My baby walks so slow/Sexual tic-tac-toe”). After tolerating the just-shy-of-risque-faux-lesbianism of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” in 2008, Lambert’s unhesitant embrace of both his sexuality and his energy is something of a relief.
He’s less successful when he slows down and pursues the obligatory ballads — “Aftermath” somehow manages to be simultaneously earnest and soulless. The string-laden “Time For Miracles,” which moviegoers might recognize as Lambert’s contribution to the “2012” soundtrack, crumbles like a CGI Los Angeles into an ocean of cliche.
But even in the album’s darkest, most Roland Emmerich-approved moments, there are surprises in store that suggest Lambert might have a good sense of how to shepherd a great pop album, from the thundering strings of “Soaked” to the spare horror movie piano that kicks off “Broken Open.” He might not be — despite what the surviving members of Queen have suggested — a replacement for Freddie Mercury, but as young dance house glam stars go, he’s got promise.
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November 25, 2009
CD review: KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 17
KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 17
Grade: A
Two troubadours — a grinning, shaggy Steve Earle and rising star Hayes Carll — front the cover of KGSR Broadcasts this year (the CD is out Friday, Nov. 27. Check here for retail locations). The contrast between elder statesman of alt-country and beaming, youthful next big thing so adeptly sums up the beauty of the series that one has to wonder if it was specifically chosen as a raison d’etre for Broadcasts as the series enters a period of change.
That ethos of mixing the best of established talent with fresh-faced up-and-comers is particularly pronounced on volume 17, a skillfully curated, two-disc assemblage of 40 live, largely acoustic cuts that offers the single best value in Austin music. Station tastemaker Jody Denberg might be leaving — for now — but he’s gone out with another solid entry of the series that’s become an Austin tradition.
Unsurprisingly, the bread-and-butter artists that serve as the cornerstone of KGSR’s playlist are well-represented. There are recent songs from staple artists, such as an impassioned, rapidly delivered “40 Dogs (Like Romeo and Juliet)” from Bob Schneider, or a surprisingly funky rendition of Fastball”s “Little White Lies,” with a jumpy bass line that tops the original album version.
But the real treat is the album’s surprising emphasis on collecting some of the station’s most beloved and most played vintage cuts. From Alejandro Escovedo’s “Velvet Guitar” to Todd Snider’s satirical “The Ballad of the Kingsmen,” volume 17 is heavy on energetic new versions of some of the station’s most reliable tunes. Tori Amos’ “Silent All These Years” stings with aching vulnerability, while a naked “Ft. Worth Blues” from Steve Earle makes for a powerful closer.
Lest anyone think newcomers are neglected, though, volume 17 also has plenty to please those looking for something a little more fresh — folk prodigy Sarah Jarosz’s “Song Up In Her Head” is a disc two highlight, and Andrew Bird’s “Fitz and Dizzyspells” showcases the indie rocker at his whistling best. The hipster crowd will appreciate a haunting, spare rendition of Spoon’s “Black Like Me.” Altogether, volume 17 hits a challenging balance between guaranteed crowd-pleasers and the intriguing new material that helps keep the station vibrant.
It’s hard to say how the series — and station — might change in the wake of Denberg’s departure. It’s tempting to say he should have gotten the cover nod. But his pending leave offers a good chance to take stock of everything Broadcasts has accomplished in 17 years: millions raised for the Sims Foundation and dozens of discs with hundreds of hours of the very best in music from artists all over the world. And all of it for only $15 a year.
All in all, not too shabby. Take a bow, Broadcasts.
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November 23, 2009
CD review: Susan Boyle 'I Dreamed a Dream'
Susan Boyle
‘I Dreamed a Dream’
(Sony)
Grade: C
The half-year since Susan Boyle’s “Britain’s Got Talent” debut has been a painful one for the fans who turned that Internet video into a worldwide phenomenon. Would Boyle fall apart under the pressure of instant fame? Would Simon Cowell and company give the Everywoman such a polish she’d no longer be recognizable?
It’s hard to imagine many of that group will be disappointed with “I Dreamed a Dream,” which comes close to delivering what’s expected and was clearly made by people who knew better than to try to change the singer’s style. But the record isn’t nearly as good as it might have been, and its sometimes monotonous vibe won’t persuade many listeners who aren’t already in the fan club.
Though it showcases the pretty side of Boyle’s voice, occasionally even letting her be playful (the whisper and croon of “Cry Me a River,” for instance), “Dream” is surprisingly short on power. Yes, the stirring title track is here, and Boyle displays some convincing pop expressiveness on “Proud,” but elsewhere it’s as if she and producer Steve Mac are holding back. Mac doesn’t help matters when, bizarrely, he lets Boyle get lost among the backup choir in “Amazing Grace” and pushes the synths full tilt just as she’s working her hardest to sell the Madonna cover “You’ll See.”
Some strange choices turn out nicely — Boyle certainly makes the Stones’ “Wild Horses” her own — but what’s with the 5 mph take on “Daydream Believer” that makes the song sound like a breakup ballad?
A more earthy production would have gone a long way here, but the slick shimmer does work for “Silent Night.” (Just try to avoid that one in the month to come.) Maybe now that the overnight sensation has delivered a record that doesn’t break the hearts of the faithful, next time around she can let herself go just a bit.
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CD review: Rihanna 'Rated R'
‘Rated R’
(Def Jam)
Grade: A-
There is no way to review Rihanna’s new album “Rated R” without mentioning Chris Brown. After what happened earlier this year, their relationship is the proverbial elephant in the room.
The lead single “Russian Roulette” (“Know that I must pass this test / So just pull the trigger”) and its dark metaphor for love? The anthemic songs about how great she is on her own and the reflective ballads about lost love that every R&B album has? While she rarely explicitly mentions their relationship, almost everything about “Rated R” could be plausibly interpreted to be about Brown in some way.
It’s unfortunate, because “Rated R” should be judged on its own merits. Rihanna has become one of the most consistent hit-makers in pop music, and this album continues that trend. Five or six songs easily could be top 10 singles - from the Jeezy- and Slash-assisted club smashes (“Hard,” “Rockstar 101”) to the slower ballads (“Fire Bomb” and “Te Amo”) and songs that ably mix both styles (“Photographs” and “Wait Your Turn”).
Almost every one of the album’s 12 songs has a strong, memorable and catchy chorus. A superstar group of producers and songwriters - headlined by StarGate, the team behind “So Sick” and “Unfaithful” - give Rihanna a varied musical backdrop (from slow pianos to R&B tinged guitars and electronic club music) that still fits together cohesively. This allows Rihanna to stretch herself as a singer like she never has before.
“Rated R” should only further establish Rihanna as one of music’s pre-eminent superstars. And as for Chris Brown, maybe that’s the only message she needs to send — success is still the best revenge.
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November 22, 2009
Review: Daniel Johnston at St. David's
“Well, that’s all I’ve got for now,” Daniel Johnston mumbled about 20 minutes into his show Friday night at St. David’s Episcopal Church. He had just rambled through three songs on his acoustic guitar, pounding Diet Cokes and obsessively flipping through his lyrics book in between. The 125 or so people in attendance, who were no doubt there just as much to see the idiosyncratic pop-song machine as they were to hear him, had their first awkwardness-as-comedy moment of an intimate set filled with many of them. I know I wasn’t the only one thinking, is it really all over?
Nope. It was just the end of the solo stuff. Roots cover band Strings Attached, who had backed Johnston on opener “Living Life” — wherein Johnston, fists balled, down at his sides, twitched as intensely as Joe Cocker at Woodstock as he sang, “Living, living, living, living, living, living, living, living life” — rejoined him for an hour’s worth of rhyming couplets mostly about girls, ghosts, dreams and death.
They kicked off things with “Mind Movies” and “High Horse,” from Johnston’s glossy new album “Is and Always Was,” which was produced by Beck collaborator Jason Falkner. It was a smart idea to have a backing band for Johnston so he could concentrate solely on singing, but I’m not sure Strings Attached was the best fit — unless, of course, Johnston wanted to convey the subtle country vibe created by Strings’ mandolin and violin flourishes.
In between golden oldies “Speeding Motorcycle” and “Life in Vain,” Johnston, having finally warmed to the crowd, told a joke. “I had a dream,” he said, “that this guy was sentenced to death for suicide — and it was me, in the back of the courtroom, going, ‘No, no.’” Johnston rode the momentum of the laughs it generated and played two more songs from the new album, “Tears” and “Freedom” (originally titled “Freedoom,” he said), before calling for an impromptu intermission.
Upon return, Johnston and Strings played “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles, after which Johnston said, “I have a special Christmas gift for you all.” And with that, he sang a warm and fuzzy version of “True Love Will Find You in the End.” A standing ovation ensued. As Will Taylor of Strings introduced his players over the thunderous clapping, Johnston grabbed his guitar and remaining Diet Cokes, and split for his dressing room.
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November 18, 2009
Review: Rufus Wainwright at Paramount Theatre
Patrick Meredith FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Tuesday night, a well-heeled crowd gathered at the Paramount to see the final performance of a two-night engagement by the man Elton John has called “the greatest songwriter on the planet.” Strangely (and perhaps a bit out of character) Rufus Wainwright took the stage with very little fanfare and, after a polite hello to the crowd, launched right into a soaring version of “Grey Gardens.” The timbre of his rich voice matched the baby grand piano perfectly and filled up every inch of the theater, yielding only to the applause that followed.
Wainwright wasted no time engaging the crowd, riffing on the recent cold front. “When I got here it was 80 degrees,” he complained mockingly. “I was going to go swimming at … that water thing.” The man knows how to work a room and had almost as much shtick as he did music.
Tuesday’s show was a strange mix of the mediocre and the sublime, though. After flubbing the intro to a mostly lack-luster version of “Leaving for Paris No. 2,” Wainwright played a nearly flawless version of “Beauty Mark” that was full of all the resplendent theatrics he is famous for. “Sanssouci,” a wistful daydream about an imaginary getaway on par with Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” was marred only by a slightly out-of-tune guitar. Even so, Wainwright’s rich baritone held everything together beautifully. His guitar playing was a bit rudimentary and no one seemed to mind that he occasionally couldn’t find the right chord. Instead of glossing over these mistakes Wainwright used the occasion instead to draw the crowd in with a wry smile and knowing wink. Like I said, the man knows how to work a room.
Wainwright’s songs can be vain and self-indulgent at times, but Tuesday’s show proved that vanity is one of his greatest assets. To keep an entire theater breathless and listening in rapt admiration for 90 minutes, you have to be in love with the sound of your own voice. On “The Art Teacher” and “Peach Trees” he explored every nuance of the melodies, stretching phrases to their breaking point for dramatic effect, often allowing his voice to trail off into nothingness at the end.
Wainwright also previewed several songs from an upcoming album of solo piano and voice during the show. He announced to the crowd that the piano parts were very difficult and asked them to please excuse any mistakes as he was “in the practice stage.” He was being facetious, of course, and played them remarkably well although the new songs were a bit like cigarettes and chocolate milk, to borrow one of Wainwright’s own metaphors. The overtly showy piano arrangement, which echoed 19th Century Romanticism, wrestled with the facile vocal melody of “Give Me What I Want,” at times obscuring the lyrics. Wainwright was at his best when he let the naturally evocative quality of his voice tell the story as on “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” and “Going to a Town,” which brought the house down. For Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during the encore, Wainwright brought out his opener, Joan as Police Woman, for a duet that featured some lovely harmonizing.
The audience wasn’t there last night for an exhibition of virtuoso musicianship, though. They were there for the gilded voice, the poetry, and the wit - all of which Rufus Wainwright had in spades.
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November 16, 2009
CD review: John Mayer - 'Battle Studies'
John Mayer
‘Battle Studies’
(Columbia)
Grade: C
Listeners who put on a pop record and are greeted with the sound of an orchestra tuning up may fear they’re in for an hour of self-importance. But the latest from soft-pop superstar John Mayer doesn’t want to shake the earth, it just wants someone to love.
Fair enough. But instead of wooing the listener, the singer is intent on first convincing her of the wreck old loves have made of him. “I’m in the war of my life,” he croons on one track; “if fear hasn’t killed me yet,” he claims, “then nothing will.” But there’s not a drop of passion in his voice, and Mayer doesn’t appear to know there should be.
He nearly pulls off the sad-sack act on “Perfectly Lonely,” but even there isn’t fit to hold the Kleenex of another smooth-sounding pretty boy, Chris Isaak, who understands how to make languor sound truly heartbroken.
Mayer delivers plenty of radio-friendly pop here, like the gently catchy “Who Says,” but his take on “Crossroads,” in which his buzzing rhythm guitar sounds like a sound effect from a ’50s sci-fi movie, hardly bolsters his blues credentials.
He’s at his best on “Half of My Heart” (joined by pop-country phenom Taylor Swift) and “Friends, Lovers or Nothing,” two takes on romantic ambivalence in which the songwriter actually seems to know whereof he sings.
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CD review: 50 Cent - 'Before I Self Destruct'
50 Cent
‘Before I Self Destruct’
(Aftermath)
Grade: C
50 Cent tries to reconnect with his gangster rap roots on his new album, “Before I Self Destruct.” Besides a few Dre tracks and the lead single “Baby By Me,” the album has a consistent and monotonous sound — harshly melodic beats with hard pianos and drums behind them.
With no other guest rappers besides Eminem, the album rests entirely on 50’s shoulders. (Ne-yo and R. Kelly do sing some hooks on the record.)
Such a bright spotlight does him no favors. He rarely switches up his flow, mostly sticking with the same gravelly sing-song rhyme scheme that sounds like he’s talking out of one side of his mouth.
And he’s certainly not the cleverest lyricist, using lazy metaphors like “I’ve got more guns than a gun store” and “I’m like Will Smith in Pursuit of Happyness; in my hood we hustle in pursuit of the same (expletive).” Eminem out-raps him on “Psycho” so badly it’s embarrassing.
“Before I Self Destruct” is a full-throated return to the hardcore lyrics of his underground years: “You want some, come get some / It’s murder one when you see my gun / I just squeeze and squeeze till the whole clip done / You just bleed and bleed until the police come.” That’s the most surprising part of the album - 50 has made hundreds of millions of dollars over the past seven years, yet he doesn’t sound very happy.
The only reason girls have sex with him is to “have a baby by me and be a millionaire.” Even his usually witty one-liners are tinged with bitterness, such as slams against banished G-Unit members Young Buck and Game. The scars from a messy custody battle with the mother of his son are still fresh: “She don’t care about me, she just wants some cash / I’m thinking damn girl we used to be friends.”
But anytime he shows any vulnerability, he quickly scrambles back to the psychological safety of the gangster pose. He mentions the pain he felt when his mother blamed him for the missing furniture his crack-head uncle stole, then immediately boasts “he pistol-whipped that (expletive) till his face was purple” to retaliate.
As “Psycho” shows, a rapper as talented as Eminem and a producer as talented as Dre can make great music about nothing, but 50 doesn’t have nearly the skill of his mentors. He spends most of “Before I Self Destruct” trying to scare us, when it really sounds like he just needs a hug.
Update: This article has been amended to correct the guest rappers. Thanks to our readers for pointing this out - the version we reviewed had the wrong guests listed on some tracks.
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CD review: Them Crooked Vultures - 'Them Crooked Vultures'
Them Crooked Vultures
‘Them Crooked Vultures’
(Sony BMG, DGC/Interscope, Columbia)
Grade: B-
A well-meant ode to goofing off with pals and heroes, Them Crooked Vultures can’t be accused of having a thought in its heavy head outside of “Let’s rock!” Since so few bands aspire to that simple notion these days (what’s up, Monsters of Folk), these guys sound downright outside the box.
It helps that they are a trio of weights so heavy they filmed an “Austin City Limits” episode months before their album was released. John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin, bass, elder statesman), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, drums, alt-rock vet) and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, hard rock’s tallest, most suave man) make quite a crew. And hey, the songs are almost there.
As anyone who saw their “ACL” taping, ACL Fest show or Stubb’s gig know, these Vultures came to boogie. The tracks range from stuff that sounds a whole lot like Queens (“New Fang,” “Mind Eraser, No Chaser,” “Caligulove,” which is the most Queens-sounding song title Homme has ever come up with) to stuff that sounds an awful lot like Zeppelin (“Elephant,” “Reptiles”). “Spinning in Daffodils” is the full-on psychedelic jam, seven minutes of piano intros, Zep riffs, Grohl’s rolling, wonder-thump and general rock ‘n’ roll sprawl. There might be an organ involved in “Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up”; not their best idea.
But hey, there’s nothing here that’s anybody’s best idea. That’s the problem with supergroups — nobody is ever going to hand over their finest notion to a project band, no matter who else in the group that person is trying to impress. Just throw the CD in the car and hit the highway.
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CD review: Kris Allen - 'Kris Allen'
Kris Allen
‘Kris Allen’
(Jive)
Grade: D+
Kris Allen, with his matinee idol good looks and Hallmark Channel-friendly personal story, falls squarely into the camp of utterly unsurprising “American Idol” winners. His second album (but first since participating in the television show) is precisely the sort of pop confectionery you’d expect from a carefully groomed would-be star, a generic outing that’s all soaring harmonies, inoffensive guitar and utter lack of soul.
Single “Live Like We’re Dying” kicks off the album, with cliche lyrics that — aside from, um, urging you to live like you’re dying — elect to go as broad as possible, lest any listener be alienated by an actual glimmer of personality. It’s a running motif throughout the album, which favors almost offensively universal songs modeled after adult contemporary pop favorites like Maroon 5. Allen’s voice is serviceable, but from love song “Before We Come Undone” to “Is It Over,” he fails to make much of an impression, churning out one anonymous radio-friendly nugget after another. Only on a bizarre and fun cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless” does Allen show the promise you would expect of the man who just might be the most musically diverse “American Idol” winner yet.
Update: This article has been amended to correct a couple song titles.
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CD review: Norah Jones 'The Fall'
Norah Jones
‘The Fall’
(EMI)
Grade: B
There are all sorts of ways to interpret a tantalizingly ambiguous album title like “The Fall,” but the most resonant is also the most biblical. Like mankind’s own fall from the grace of the Garden of Eden, Norah Jones’ fourth full-length abandons the sleepy, idyllic jazz sound that characterized diamond-certified and Grammy Award winning debut “Come Away With Me” in favor of a more complicated — but also more intriguing — world. “The Fall” represents a loss of innocence for Jones — and a needed injection of color and musical variety that should help her shake that “S’Norah” nickname once and for all.
Make no mistake, “The Fall” has some vintage Jones, as on the sad, sweetly melancholic “December,” or the smoky piano-infused “Back in Manhattan.” Both songs are rich with the regret that tinges recent breakups — Jones split with longtime collaborator and boyfriend Lee Alexander prior to the album’s recording. Fortunately, she also retains a sense of humor on “Tell Your Mama” — a Southern shouter that evidences that there’s more than a bit of Texas left in Jones — and “Man of the Hour,” a love song penned to her dog.
But “The Fall” really pulses during its more adventurous moments. “Light as a Feather” is a dark, driven dirge of a song, while the steady, strong percussion of “It’s Gonna Be” has a bop not typical for Jones songs.
Lingering electric guitar underlies “Young Blood” and breaks out into a full solo on the album’s best song, “Stuck,” co-written with Will Sheff of Austin’s own Okkervil River. “I’ll go home alone, a sinking stone, a switched-off telephone,” Jones sings, moodily recapping a drunken, unhappy night alone.
It’s a sharply poignant song that reminds the world that even after three best-selling albums, Jones is still a young woman at 30 with plenty of heartbreak and insight left to share.
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Live review: the Swell Season at the Paramount
Harry Houdini once performed at the Paramount Theatre- some of the current ushers might’ve worked that show- but it’s hard to imagine a more magical night at the old grand hall than Sunday, when the Swell Season put a musical spell on the sold-out crowd for two hours.
The night just felt special, like when you can see in the performers’ eyes that this ain’t Dallas.
“The Swell Season” was the name of a 2006 album credited to Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard, which actually came out a year before they “met” onscreen with the beyond-charming film “Once.” But the group now called the Swell Season is Hansard’s band, make no mistake about it, though Irglova certainly had her transfixing moments Sunday.
With Hansard’s old band from Dublin, the Frames, backing up the duo (who switched between piano and guitar), and the amazing fiddler Colm Mac Con Iomaire doing a solo turn on a traditional Irish tune, the show was one of several musical configurations. There was none so pure and powerful, however, as Hansard standing up there all alone with a battered acoustic guitar. His possessed version of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” may have left his strumming hand permanently blurred and “Say It To Me Now” had folks dabbling at their eyes after the Irishman interjected a touching story about how saying something instead of just thinking it can make someone’s day in a deep and meaningful way.
Hearing his voice is the aural counterpart of watching an athlete do something almost miraculous. How can he possibly do that day after day?
Those who came to hear the Oscar-winning “Falling Slowly” and “When Your Mind’s Made Up” from “Once,” were not disappointed, unless they were the impatient type. Both highlights from the film came near the end, both past 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. Of the two, “Falling Slowly” was better; it’s really hard to top the emotional undercurrent of the movie version of “Mind’s Made Up.”
Hansard seemed a bit thrown off by just how pin-drop quiet the scene was, and when the band emerged to encore with “Falling Slowly” he asked the audience to remain standing because it felt better. Indeed, it was a bit surprising that the performance didn’t inspire more standing ovations. If I was in the fifth row, I would’ve been up ten times.
See John Carney’s “Once” (terrible title) if you haven’t. It’s probably the best film ever made about why people make music and how they become connected through songs. The film’s theme was there in the flesh Sunday night, when the audience sang along to an encore number so new it doesn’t yet have a name.
When it comes to Glen Hansard and the Swell Season, “Once” is not enough. But if that’s all you’ve got, it’s plenty.
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November 15, 2009
Live review: Son Volt at Antone's
It’s always been a little difficult to get a bead on Son Volt, the alternative country band formed from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo by Jay Farrar in 1994. Partly that’s because Son Volt’s sound has covered every square inch of the territory of alt-country, from restrained folk ballads to juke joint rockers. And partly that’s because the band has undergone some pretty major shifts, from a six-year hiatus in the early part of this decade to its eventual reformation with an entirely different lineup, Farrar aside.
That quixotic — or, if you were being less generous, schizophrenic — spirit was alive and well at Antone’s Saturday night, as Farrar presented a tale of two Son Volts. One took the stage sounding tight but looking disconnected from its audience, speeding through low-key, often monotonous ballads. The other threw itself into a series of barhouse rockers with a decided energy. Fortunately, by the end of the night the stronger Son Volt had won out and reaffirmed the band’s status as a winning, if inconsistent, act.
The first half of the evening’s set was loaded with several of Son Volt’s slower, more ambling numbers. The band sounded flawless on the slow-paced “Dust of Daylight” but seemed disconnected. On “Pushed Too Far,” an angst-loaded song off this year’s “American Central Dust,” they sounded more studied than engaging. While drummer Dave Bryson pounded out his part with note-perfect energy, Farrar seemed to neglect his role as band linchpin, failing to connect with the audience. For a while — aside from the powerful licks laid down by enthusiastic lead guitarist James Walbourne — it looked like Son Volt might be upstaged by their own opener, the rollicking and very entertaining Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Even a song about Keith Richards’ drug habits (featuring the immortal line “I snorted my father and I’m still alive”) failed to be as amusing as it should have been.
Fortunately, Farrar and his band mates loosened up as the night wore on, leading to a more enjoyable second half that was heavier on the kind of toe-tapping rock songs that Son Volt excels at. On “No Turning Back” Bryson’s drums grew positively bone-rattling, and “Medication,” with its Indian guitar parts and furious dueling solos, was a highlight of the whole performance. Son Volt also popped on “The Search” and “Afterglow 61,” the memorable single off 2005’s “Okemah and the Melody of Riot.” Even the quieter moments — like “Big Sur,” off a Jack Kerouac-inspired collaborative album by Farrar and Ben Gibbard, of Death Cab for Cutie — took on a greater sense of urgency.
By the close of their four-song encore, Son Volt had overcome an initially underwhelming show. When bassist Andrew Duplantis took advantage of the opportunity of one last moment on stage to propose to his girlfriend (she said yes, incidentally), it felt like he — and the band — had earned their moment of celebration.
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Live review: Mike Birbiglia at the Paramount
When comedian Mike Birbiglia played Austin about two years ago, it was at Antone’s opening for a band nobody had heard of. It was good to see a near sellout crowd at the Paramount Saturday night for the Boston storyteller who’s enjoyed a career spike after regular appearances on NPR’s “This American Life” and, to a lesser extent, the nationally syndicated “Bob and Tom Show.”
His hour and 20 minutes Saturday were built on five or six main stories that branched off into hilarious vignettes. Getting regularly beat up in an all boys Catholic school, arguing with his GPS, throwing up on the Scrambler at the carnival, adventures in sleepwalking and urology, and sticking the finish in gymnastics were just some of the topics that had the crowd roaring. During that latter bit, the pudgy comic rolled on the crowd to imitate a fallen gymnast, saying, “this is the opposite of what I’m trying to do.” He’s got the timing of Tommy Chong circa 1973.
He’s really the closest in style and outlook to Jim Gaffigan, who also doesn’t use profanity. But where food is Gaffigan’s main riff, it’s sleep for Birbiglia, who offered a hilariously rich description of what it’s like to be out and about at 4:30 a.m.
For an encore, Birbiglia came out with a guitar and did two songs from the three-year-old album “Two Drink Mike.” That was lazy. He also took requests for retired material and did “Joey Bag-O-Donuts,” about how he survived a tough job by pretending a beloved former employee was his brother. Also lazy, but very funny.
Birbiglia has altered his act slightly as he’s found success with the NPR crowd. There weren’t any hip-hop references- once a big part of his set- and the routines are longer. But he still makes full use of a rare comedic mind and his delivery elevates. Next time through, he’ll play Bass Concert Hall, going from Antone’s to 3,000-seaters faster than anyone since Los Lonely Boys.
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November 11, 2009
Live review: Jay-Z at Erwin Center
Ricardo B. Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Jay-Z at the Frank Erwin Center
It’s safe to say Jay-Z doesn’t want for self confidence.
Over the course of a world-conquering 90 minutes Tuesday at the Erwin Center the world’s most charismatic CEO compared himself favorably to Julius Caesar, Michael Jordan, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and probably could’ve lyrically worked over Jesus Christ and Czar Nicholas II if he’d decided to dip into his mix tape reservoir.
As the old saying goes, though, it ain’t bragging if it’s true and in the space of two dozen songs the man born Shawn Carter made a pretty airtight argument for why his name should one day belong amongst history’s greats.
He had help; a 10-piece band gave different touches throughout like “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and its hot jazz vibe or the hard rock feel of “Empire State of Mind,” and Memphis Bleek served as both hype man and utility verse trader when needed while openers Pharrell Williams (of N.E.R.D.), Bridget Kelly and J. Cole made deserving cameos.
But the show in total was a confirmation of Jay-Z as singular force of nature, the guy who can make an arena pretty much combust at the first notes of “U Don’t Know,” pull 87 lyrical swerves over the course of “Jigga What, Jigga Who” or get away with cramming some of his best or best-known songs (“On to the Next One,” “‘03 Bonnie & Clyde,” “Can I Get A?”) into a medley during the encore.
The scale of achievement going on Tuesday was even more stark compared to a weekend of good-to-great performances at Austin’s Fun Fun Fun Fest by the likes of The Cool Kids, GZA and The Pharcyde, all of them enjoyable and praiseworthy but together not containing one-tenth the ability to keep an audience locked in and riveted on their every word and motion.
For Jay-Z, though, owning the spotlight and the microphone is a way of life akin to breathing or eating. So it’s no surprise he could get audience members in every section of the arena whipping around jackets, towels or whatever they had handy as visual decoration for “Big Pimpin’,” or that he stopped the song when crowd participation wasn’t quite to his liking.
To help the cause, he decided to count down from 10 before starting again. When he reached zero the place was covered-ears loud, imposing another smile on the face of the man who near show’s end claimed he invented the move of wearing a New York Yankees hat turned to the side.
Whether he did or not was irrelevant. On this night every word the man delivered was gospel to the thirsty faithful.
Set List: Run This Town, D.O.A., U Don’t Know, 99 Problems, Show Me What You Got, Give It To Me, Diamond Is Forever, Jigga My N——, Izzo (H.O.V.A.), Jigga What Jigga Who, P.S.A., Heart of the City, Already Home, Empire State of Mind, A Star Is Born, So Ambitious, Dirt Off Ya Shoulder
(encore break)
Thank U, medley (On to the Next One, Excuse Me Miss, Venus Vs. Mars, ‘03 Bonnie & Clyde, Lucifer, Swagga Like Us, Can I Get A?), Big Pimpin’, Hard Knock Life, Numb/Encore, Young Forever
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November 9, 2009
Review: Doug Sahm Birthday Tribute at Antone's
According to Shawn Sahm, who is probably in a good position to know, his dad was probably up in heaven, smiling down on the stage at Antone’s on Friday night—and talking up the World Series. But truth be told, for Doug Sahm — peripatetic musical genius (and baseball superfan) — heaven would have been center stage at Antone’s, talking a blue streak and mixing it up with the myriad musicians come to honor him on what would have been his 68th birthday.
And some birthday party it was, starring Greezy Wheels, the Lucky Tomblin Band, Jimmie Vaughan, son Shawn, Augie Meyers and members of the revitalized Texas Tornados, members of the San Antonio band the Krayolas, and a rare reunion of Paul Ray and the Cobras, featuring ex-Bob Dylan guitarist (and Antone’s hall-of-famer) Denny Freeman.
Besides the celebration, the event also served as a benefit to raise funds for a marker on Doug Sahm Hill, in Butler Park across from Auditorium Shores. Such a memorial would honor the San Antonio native’s contributions to all the genres of Texas music of which he was a master (which is pretty much everything between Van Cliburn and the Geto Boys), and his ceaseless celebration of Austin and its musical community. (For more information on the project, go to http://www.dougsahmhill.com">www.dougsahmhill.com).
With his mane of hair, wire-rimmed glasses and effervescence to burn, Shawn Sahm is the very picture of his dad, and he looked right at home onstage with Doug’s peers, including guitarist Louie Ortega, drummer Ernie Durawa, bassist Speedy Sparks, guest star Joe “King” Carrasco and, of course, keyboardist Augie Meyers, the Pancho to Doug’s Cisco Kid.
Mixing blues, Tex-Mex, horn-driven R&B, country and rock in a characteristically Sahm-ian fashion, the big ensemble romped through hits from the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas Tornados, the two bands which bookended Doug’s career — “Is Anybody Going To San Antone,” “Nuevo Laredo,” “It’s Gonna Be Easy,” “Groover’s Paradise,” “Hey, Baby, Kep Pa So” and others.
Despite all the other great music purveyed onstage that night, the emotional core of the evening resided in that exuberant set of music that could have had only one wellspring — Doug himself. And, in that sense, Doug never left us at all.
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November 6, 2009
Live review: AC/DC at the Erwin Center
“Thunderstruck” whimpered where it once roared, the set sagged badly in the middle half hour, the four new songs were plain awful and “You Shook Me All Night Long” sounded warped, like someone left it out in the sun at the last Yellow Rose picnic. Friday night’s concert at the Erwin Center was far from being the best AC/DC show I’ve ever seen.
And yet it succeeded as a tribute to the awesome power of good, hard, rock n’ roll. The capacity audience of over 13,000 (staging took out about six seating sections) made the show; in fact during the “T.N.T” and “Highway To Hell” chant-alongs, it sure felt like seeing the band in metal-crazed San Antonio. When the two-hour set ended with “For Those About To Rock (We Salute You),” with cannons, of course, the band seemed genuinely appreciative of the energy they got back.
AC/DC hadn’t played Austin in 13 years, but much of the set was unchanged since then. Besides the aforementioned cannons, there’s still the drawn out strip tease by guitarist Angus Young during “The Jack.” Singer Brian Johnson once again took a running leap to ring the bell during “Hell’s Bells” and “Let There Be Rock” ended with the most self-indulgent guitar solo of all time.
But AC/DC is a band you don’t want to change. The show was as much a thanks and celebration of all the great music through the years, as it was a high dollar, two-hour show that found a veteran band proving that they can still do what made them beloved. AC/DC is a memory machine, KISS with talent instead of makeup, taking fans back to their discovery of rock. Where were you when you first heard “Whole Lotta Rosie”?
With the three-piece rhythm engine of guitarist Malcolm Young, drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams clustered together in the back, like they were playing the Continental Club, the throb was relentless on “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be” and “Rosie,” probably the band’s two best songs.
But as Angus and Brian, “the new singer,” worked the crowd shamelessly I had to ask myself if I could actually be this bored during a show by the world’s greatest hard rock band, I couldn’t control the yawns that stretched out during “Dog Eat Dog,” which has no place in a career-spanning AC/DC concert.
Much of the set seemed programmed by the concessionaires, whose favorite words were “Here’s another one from the new album.” The new “War Machine” is quite possibly the dullest song ever played at the Erwin Center during a sold out concert.
Part of the reason I couldn’t get fully into the show is because my seat in section 20, row 16, was separated from a 20-foot drop over an exit by a railing that went up to my knee. I get shoved and I’m dead. (Dying during a concert by my alltime favorite band would’ve made for some nice “at least he died happy” talk, but I’m kinda holding out for the 25-year anniversary show of Them Crooked Vultures.) Even though my seated view was unobstructed, sitting down during AC/DC is like standing up during a lap dance.
It would be a shame if it took the death of a fan for the Erwin Center to rectify this blatant safety hazard. How about some webbing below the rail to catch clumsy fans? Then us 20/ 16 folks can rock out like everybody else.
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November 3, 2009
CD review: Molina & Johnson, self-titled
Molina & Johnson
‘Molina & Johnson’
(Secretly Canadian)
B+
Fans of Centro-Matic frontman Will Johnson know that he’s a prolific musician, from the Centro-Matic sister project South San Gabriel to solo material and a seemingly endless string of collaborations and guest spots with the likes of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James (Johnson is currently touring as drummer for James’ Monsters of Folk Project, which plays Stubb’s on Nov. 13). Jason Molina, who first earned a loyal following in the ’90s with his Songs: Ohia project and later with Magnolia Electric Co., shares Johnson’s penchant for working with others (also including James, on a split EP in 2002).
It makes sense, then, that the two would eventually cross paths. Other musicians are on board as well, including Centro-Matic’s Matt Pence and Texas singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe. The result is an extremely sparse, well-crafted affair, but definitely not a point-of-entry for music fans curious about either artist’s work. Opener “Twenty Cycles to the Ground,” which was released as a single, is the most accessible track here, with Johnson taking the lead on vocals atop the mid-tempo shuffle of an acoustic guitar and some restrained percussion.
Molina, whose smooth folk-singer voice stands in stark contrast to Johnson’s rasp, takes the lead on a few of the songs as well, but one of the most charming moments comes when the two trade verses on “Almost Let You In.” The juxtaposition of voices adds a depth that the album could have used more of; along with “Twenty Cycles,” it also highlights the duo’s ability to get to the bottom of a well-rounded song without relying on too many frills.
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October 29, 2009
Live review: Pogues at Stubb's
The fact that Pogues singer Shane MacGowan is still alive is one of the stranger realities of 21st century pop music.
Much in the way that people of my parents’ generation thought that Joe Cocker wouldn’t get out of the ’70s alive (and yet he thrives), many of us thought that MacGowan’s long-suffering liver would have said, “Right; enough of this” and ejected itself out of his toothless body a long time ago.
Yet there he was, Wednesday night at Stubb’s, 20 years after everyone thought he was a goner, 18 years after he was fired for erratic behavior, the classic Pogues line-up with him, walking out to the Clash’s “Straight to Hell.” (Clash singer Joe Strummer replaced MacGowan in the Pogues for a time in the early ’90s. Strummer died in 2002 of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. He’s gone, MacGowan endures - it is to laugh.)
The band has reunited for some sort of tour since 2001, but this show was the first time they had been to Austin in 20 years.
Every kind of Pogues fan was in the crowd, from middle-age folks in sweaters to crusty punks to frat guys to people trying very hard to look like the just got off the boat from Dublin. Virtually everyone had a drink in his or her hand; most of those were cans of Guinness. Some fans weren’t born the last time the band was in town.
A few minutes into the show, one thing became clear: This was a profoundly damaged man up there singing, decades of boozing and drugging having taken a significant physical toll. The rest of the band looked liked your average 50-something musicians, MacGowan looked liked he had been cursed by a witch to look about 90. His on-stage banter was completely unintelligible.
Here’s the weird thing: He can still sing. It was remarkable to witness.
The first few songs (“Streams of Whiskey,” “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”) were very rough. Things did not look promising, even though the band was (mostly) sticking to tunes from their amazing first three albums (“Red Roses For Me,” Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” and “If I Should Fall….”).
Runs through “The Broad Majestic Shannon” and “Boys From the County Hell” did not fare much better. It was sad to see MacGowan up there, odd top-hat on, staggering around. The Pogues are God’s own bar band, and they were pros, gamely cranking through the songs.
But the epic “A Pair of Brown Eyes” was a revelation. As beers were lifted, MacGowan suddenly sounded like it was 1985 or 1990 or 2001 or 1840. It was one of the best arguments for singing-as-muscle-memory I’ve ever witnessed. “And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go/For a pair of brown eyes,” everyone belted. Then took a belt.
Tin whistle player Spider Stacy sang his “Tuesday Morning,” a rather straight-forward rocker from when MacGowan was out of the band, and Philip Chevron warbled his deeply moving immigrant song “Thousands Are Sailing.” The brilliant “The Body of An American” suffered from some let’s-call-it-shaky timekeeping, mostly on MacGowan’s part, “The Old Main Drag” and “Dirty Old Town” sounded dirty and old. Just like MacGowan.
Good luck with the rest of your life man, clearly someone is watching out for you.
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October 27, 2009
Michael's 'This Is It' provides validation, not fascination
I thought he’d be a bit of a mess, but he wasn’t. He looked almost normal. The most surprising aspect of ‘This Is It’- an hourlong HBO special that snuck into the movies- is that Michael Jackson was actually in pretty good shape in his final days. His dance moves were at about 20% of the vintage ’80s Jackson, with dramatic arm movement more prominent than jawdropping footwork (good night moonwalking), but that’s better than expected, considering the reported drug abuse going on. Also telling was Jackson’s communication with his musicians- he was hands on all the way.
Although he was saving his voice for the 50 London sellouts he and the cast of hundreds were preparing for, there were traces of the old Michael magic in these warmups, especially on the a capella outro to “I’ll Be There.” He lipsynced to “Billie Jean,” just as on the famous “Motown 25” special, but he didn’t have the moves to once again make the fudging a moot point.
One couldn’t help but notice that Jackson, who once stood out in a sea of dancers because he was most fluid, was relegated to leading by gesture and motor memory of old videos. If that other MJ, Michael Jordan, waited 12 years to come back to the NBA after his minor league baseball tryst and died a couple weeks before his big return, “This Is It” would be a documentary about his last training camp. It drags. You’ll be checking your watch like you were at an airport instead of a theater.
These sessions at the Staples Center were more than a soundcheck, but less than a dress rehearsal. Even so, you can see how the shows were shaping up to be spectacles. Critics would’ve been lukewarm- he was just so good before- but the crowds would’ve slurped it up (he was just so good before)..
A noted perfectionist, Michael Jackson would never have allowed this raw footage to be seen if he was still alive. But, then, if he hadn’t died a couple weeks before the shows were to go on, there would’ve been no need for ‘This Is It.’
For the tens of millions of dollars spent on producing a show that never went on, this limited two-week run (then DVD sales) is a bailout, at $8 a ticket. For the thousands of hours giddy dancers and musicians spent getting ready for their big brush with genius, only to cry is disbelief just after buying luggage, this is a consolation.
This is recouping disguised as a concert documentary, but there is a revelation. This tarnished ‘King of Pop’ was ready to shock the world. Onstage.
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October 26, 2009
Live review: Art Brut at the Mohawk
When Eddie Argos shouts “Ready Art Brut!” at the top of each song, it’s not a question but a rallying cry, a giddy exclamation meant to prime the band — and the audience — for a thrilling, brutal blast of rock ‘n’ roll. Even before Argos, lead singer for the German and English rock quintet Art Brut, has crooned — or shouted — a single note, he’s already established the group’s exuberant attitude.
But Art Brut’s enthusiasm was doubly justified last night, as Oct. 25 marked Argos’ 30th birthday. It’s hard to say whether the occasion merited anything special — other than plugging a “Happy Birthday” singalong into the middle of encore song “Good Weekend” — given the band’s usual joie de vire. But Argos certainly appeared to be in a celebratory mood, snappily clad in a formal outfit (“my birthday suit,” he quipped) and belting out the group’s spiky punk rock anthems with a clear fervor. The Mohawk crowd was a bit on the sparse side, but those who showed up were treated to one heck of a birthday party.
Opening with an abridged and rollicking cover of the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” Art Brut packed their set with material from their latest, the Frank Black-produced “Art Brut Vs. Satan.” Argos, looking like the shlubby protagonist of a Judd Apatow film, sang his chipper blue-collar rock tunes with abandon. He packed the show with his signature banter, noting that the album’s title referred not to Satan literally but to “people who don’t like Art Brut” and making repeated references to his own (again signature) drunkenness. The set’s most thrilling moment came with a retooled version of the band’s hit “Modern Art.” Argos, a longtime comic book fan, has rewritten the song to be about DC Comics, and has taken to jumping into the audience midway through to tell a long and rambling story about visiting the DC Comics office in New York — and stealing an issue of “Booster Gold.” Art Brut standbys like “Little Brother” were delivered with the same love as the newer material, and even the set’s closest moments to ballads — like the thoughtful “Rusted Guns of Milan” — were delivered with a hard edge.
Some bands might be overshadowed by such a boisterous front man, but Art Brut’s players kept pace. Guitarist Jasper Future proved a particular highlight, with intricate playing and joyous facial contortions that few could pull off. When the band was given a chance to cut loose, as on “Direct Hit” or “The Passenger” (not, as you might think, a cover of the Iggy Pop song) they managed to be precise while still appearing just sloppy enough to be fun.
Setlist Roadrunner (Modern Lovers cover)
Alcoholics Unanimous
Summer Job
Little Brother
Direct Hit
Rusted Guns of Milan
Modern Art/DC Comics Make Me Want To Rock Out
Demons Out!
Emily Kane
The Passenger
DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake
These Animal Menswear
Encore
Good Weekend (with an interlude of “Happy Birthday”)
Post Soothing Out
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Live review: Dinosaur Jr. and Built To Spill at Stubb's
Dinosaur Jr. lead guitarist/singer J Mascis, backed by massive stacks of amps, was the dominant force during their set on Saturday at Stubb’s, tearing his way through songs from 2009’s well-received “Farm” as well as a few from earlier in their career.
Similar to their Idahoan tourmates Built To Spill, part of Dinosaur Jr.’s charm is their ability to mingle elements of classic rock with a noisier, more contemporary sound. Mascis reinforced this versatility on stage, exploring both ends of his stylistic spectrum, from more traditional, melodic guitar work to the in-your-face distortion that helped solidify the band’s place in music history.
Either way, it was really, really loud — Mascis said he felt the band was “getting swept away” on stage from the sound. After jumping into crowd-favorite “Feel The Pain,” diehards in front started slamming into each other like it was 1994.
Mascis’ guitar work also enlivened a few songs that tended to drag a bit, including “Plans” off of “Farm;” other new songs, including the driving “I Don’t Wanna Go There,” didn’t need any help, demonstrating the band is still vital after 25 years.
Built To Spill, also touring on a new album, “There Is No Enemy,” headlined.
Their set skewed more toward the jam-band side of the band’s personality, with bouncy songs like “Distopian Dream Girl” and “Hindsight” finding Doug Martsch bobbing his head over the poppy guitar lines. The band also stretched a bit with spacey, layered jams on songs like the darker “Untrustable, Part 2,” with the catchy coda that subtly recalls “Also Sprach Zarathustra” as Martsch’s voice climbs along with the guitars as he sings, “whatta gonna do?”
There were a few moments that disrupted the set’s flow, including an out-of-place but unsurprising political rant about the economy, and a moment toward the end where Martsch announced the band was skipping a song (you’re not supposed to tell us we’re getting less music than was planned).
Most was forgiven, however, with the encore, an energized version of “Going Against Your Mind” from “You In Reverse.”
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October 23, 2009
Live Review: Colbie Caillat at Stubb's
Singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat played to a packed house at Stubb’s Thursday night. Those not familiar with the name have probably heard her song, “Bubbly,” or her duet with Jason Mraz, “Lucky,” on the radio or at the mall, as Caillat has risen to a respectable level of pop dominance over the last few years.
Unlike many of the less polished acts that frequent the Waller Creek amphitheater, Caillat’s performance came across as especially made for TV, perhaps the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.
Caillat filled the set, which clocked in at a little over an hour, with a selection of her popular songs, as well as a g-rated cover of the Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha” with “freak” removed from the chorus, and Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.”
Opener Howie Day joined her on stage for “Droplets” during the encore; she closed with “Bubbly.” It’s easy to see why Caillat’s music has become a mainstream favorite, as it epitomizes in many ways the ideal crossover artist, simultaneously fitting into the categories of top-40 pop, country, adult contemporary and rock.
Much of the press that appears on Caillat focuses on her status as a “MySpace” phenom who was signed and became a top-selling artist after developing a loyal fanbase online. Less publicized is the fact that her father, Ken Caillat, who co-produced her albums, also co-produced some of Fleetwood Mac’s albums, including “Rumors.”
At least some of the time spent around industry people as a child must have rubbed off, as Colbie is good at what she does, using banter to create a casual stage presence that goes over well with her oft-screaming fans and even dueling on ukulele with guitarist Justin Young.
She also has quite the business sense. The night was an unabashed exercise in commercialism, with an XBox video advertisement kicking off the show and a running skit in which the stage manager appeared at three different points in the set, each time with Caillat pointing out the fact that he was wearing a different tour t-shirt.
At another point, she donned a homemade shirt given to her from someone in the crowd after an exchange that seemed far from off-the-cuff. Though it’s hard to take her to task for trying to make money, a little subtlety would have gone a long way.
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October 9, 2009
Review: Wilco at the Cedar Park Center
Guitarist Nels Cline was the highlight of Wilco’s powerful but at times strange debut at the 8,000-seat Cedar Park Center on Thursday night. Cline was particularly dominant on material from later in the prolific band’s career, including a soaring solo on “Impossible Germany,” from the 2007 release “Sky Blue Sky,” which served as a reminder of his ability to complement Jeff Tweedy & Co., while at the same time standing out as an exceptional musician in his own right.
The guitarist also shined on “Bull Black Nova,” from this year’s “Wilco (the Album).” The band’s ability to seamlessly weave this and other new songs, including “Wilco (the Song)” and “You Never Know,” into the set served as a reminder that the most recent lineup, which has been in place for a while, has come into its own in recent years. Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt hold court as the band’s veteran members, while keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone operate under the radar until exploding into well-orchestrated cacophony. While they can still play the heck out of the alt-country and classic rock of the albums that preceded 2002’s game-changing “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”—a funk breakdown in the middle of “Can’t Stand It” stood out as a high point—the subtleties of songs such as “At Least That’s What You Said” from 2004’s “A Ghost Is Born,” and “Hate It Here” made the band’s live experience particularly special.
Some of the set’s odd feel came on account of the venue, which Tweedy himself noted a few times, at one point early on jokingly noting, “we’re just hanging out, playing some music in a hockey arena;” he also stated later that he preferred two nights in Austin, implying that he’d rather be at Stubb’s. If you’re planning on attending a show there in the future, be prepared to stand in the will-call line for an excessive amount of time, and be warned that some of the seats off the floor have less leg room than an airplane. Sound-wise, it was a bit muddy from the right of the stage (although people elsewhere in the room said it sounded great), and at times it was difficult to hear various parts of the mix, including when openers Liam Finn and Eliza-Jane Barnes joined the band for a just-okay “California Stars.”
Tweedy also took some of the band’s momentum away as his stage banter increased toward the end. It’s become something to expect at a Wilco show, but it doesn’t do the them any favors. Their practice of two five-song encores has become standard too, but in a more positive way, especially with an energized “Heavy Metal Drummer” and closer “Hoodoo Voodoo,” where Cline and a fired up Pat Sansone lit up the stage with their dueling guitars.
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October 2, 2009
Live review: School of Seven Bells
Opening up the massive Livestrong stage on the eastern end of Zilker Park can be an imposing challenge even for the most energetic of bands, making it doubly difficult for a group like New York electronic shoegaze trio School of Seven Bells.
Benjamin Curtis and identical twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza play the kind of sweeping dream pop that can be atmospheric and fascinating in the intimate setting of a club but somewhat muddled and difficult to parse early in the day at a large outdoor festival. Curtis — looking the embodiment of an emo guitarist with wispy hair and a black outfit — and the Deheza sisters seemed to savor the challenge, purposefully opening their set with some of the band’s slower, more ambling tunes, including an emotionally delivered “Connjur.” Despite a clearly engaged band — vocalist and bassist Alejandra alternated between grinning ear to ear during the lengthier solos and adopting a genuine look of concern during the songs’ angst-filled moments — the set was light on banter and frequently lost in its own waves of synths and reverb-heavy vocals.
Which is too bad, because when the School of Seven Bells managed to pair their technical virtuosity with their more rocking instincts — as on an excellent abridged version of “Sempiternal/Amaranth,” the closer to their set and a highlight from last year’s debut album “Alpinisms” — they demonstrated that they had the chops needed to thrill a large audience.
Jay Janner photo
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September 30, 2009
Review: Night Ranger and Journey at Frank Erwin Center
Deborah Cannon AMERICAN-STATESMAN
On Tuesday evening at the Frank Erwin Center, legacy rock act Journey - and their formidable new frontman Arnel Pineda - went a long way toward winning over fans who questioned whether the diminutive Filipino national with the booming tenor could compete with the near-incomparable vocal prowess of Journey’s former frontman, Steve Perry.
Journey re-entered popular culture when their signature song “Don’t Stop Believing” slow-burned as the soundtrack to the Sopranos’ series finale, and again recently when the cast of the new hit show “Glee” performed an exquisitely arranged cover of the song. The wake of those impressions in the national consciousness - alongside steady touring, new recordings, DVD packages and the reinvigorated band chemistry with Pineda - have given the band the opportunity to fill amphitheaters and small arenas like the Theatre at the Erwin Center.
The line-up was three parts classic, two parts new, including founding members guitarist Neal Schon and bassist Ross Valory, classic line-up keyboardist Jonathan Cain, semi-new drummer/vocalist Deen Castronovo and Pineda.
Echoing the power of the Frontiers tour I attended as an impressionable bright-eyed 12-year-old at the Erwin Center on July 5, 1983, the band began Tuesday evening’s retrospective music odyssey with “Separate Ways.” A few songs later, by the time Schon’s tasty guitar licks launched “Stone In Love,” the audience were on their feet, fist-pumping and hip-shaking their way through lyrics about the tribulations of young love, seemingly paralleled by their own memories of the same.
Pineda’s story must be recounted because it’s so damned compelling, truly an “American dream” story. The Filipino vocalist learned to sing from his mother, who died of cancer when he was a young teen. The cost of her medical bills bankrupted his family, and by his late teens he was collecting scrap metal on the streets of Manila, living in poverty while going days without food.
Cut to 20 years later when he received a call from his rock heroes after Schon viewed him performing Journey songs on YouTube with his cover band in Manila. After a three-day audition, Journey had conquered the seemingly unimaginable task of finding a voice that possessed the same soaring soul of Perry.
Both Pineda and drummer Castronovo (who sang lead on a couple of songs), astounded on “Lights” (including a soaring middle-eight from Schon), “Open Arms,” “Wheel in the Sky,” “Faithfully,” set-closing showstopper “Don’t Stop Believing” and encore “Anyway You Want It.” All the while Schon altered his blurry-fast guitar solos, initiating in different places of the scale from the recordings, shredding through middle-eight bridges with heart-soaring passion.
Schon also initiated one of the most poignant moments of the show as he highlighted the band’s San Francisco origins story, describing how his bandmates used to pick him up after high school to go jam, which led to his stint in Santana and the creation of Journey. Then Schon called up Journey founding member (and Austinite) Gregg Rolie to the stage for an inspired version of “Just the Same Way” with Rolie singing lead as if he’d never left the band.
Night Ranger opened the show with its 1980s muscular hits and power ballads, but in retrospect even their spot-on version of “Sister Christian” proved more bathos than beatific pathos compared to Journey’s one hour and 50 minute commanding performance.
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September 25, 2009
CD review: The Avett Brothers 'I and Love and You'
‘I and Love and You’
(American Recordings)
Grade: A
“I and Love and You,” the major label follow-up (out Sept. 29) to 2007’s well-received “Emotionalism,” as well as two EP’s, “Gleam” and “The Second Gleam,” represents a mighty step forward for the North Carolina folk and Americana trio. With producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin at the helm, “I and Love and You” captures all that was already working for the band and runs with it, beefing up their sound without compromising the simplicity that originally attracted a cult-like following of fans. Catchy songs that walk a fine line between sadness and joy are still there, but Rubin’s production adds a subtle yet complementary polish to the music. A quiet organ lays the foundation for “Ten Thousand Words,” while an extended acoustic guitar solo captures some of the Brothers’ live charm. Similarly, strings, layered vocals and understated percussion bring “Laundry Room” to life. If there’s anything negative to be said about the album, it’s that fans of the band’s earlier work might notice that the material has softened a bit — the bluegrass macabre of older songs such as “Murder in the City” or “Die Die Die” are replaced by songs with a more domestic tilt.
The Avett Brothers play at 2:30 p.m. Friday on the AMD Stage during the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
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September 22, 2009
CD review: Owen 'New Leaves'
Owen
‘New Leaves’
Polyvinyl
Grade: A-
There is a moment on Owen’s second release when Mike Kinsella, the sole force behind the Chicago-based project, raises his soothing voice over his atmospheric acoustic riffs to ask a few female strangers at a bar, “Which one of you poor souls wants to drive me home?” For “New Leaves,” his latest effort, Kinsella moved out of his home studio and employed producers with connections to Iron and Wine and Wilco to control the knobs so he could focus on singing about being “a housebroken, one-woman man.”
These changes of pace will probably have some longtime fans decrying Kinsella for going soft. And in some senses, maybe he has.
But that doesn’t mean he’s lost his edge. Even after he admits his domestic nature on “Amnesia and Me,” Kinsella blows through an electric solo that might make most metal guitarists blush. Other songs, like “Brown Hair in a Bird’s Nest,” once again show Kinsella’s ability to convey complicated emotions in short stanzas, as he simultaneously laments and jokes about his dishonest habits, singing, “I swear on my mother’s gravy/That I didn’t lie to you/I just didn’t tell the truth.” In other songs, such as “Good Friends, Bad Habits,” he subjects even his closest friends to cutting criticism.
“New Leaves” represents many things. In the lush, string-laden title track, the new leaves are the experiences a wayward love interest has chosen over relationship stability. For Kinsella, they are the feelings of fulfillment and contentment he has found in his family life. For the album as a whole, they are the abundance of intricate, orchestral flourishes tastefully worked into each track.
But more than anything, they represent a season in Kinsella’s career that no one could have guessed was to bloom, but that is welcome nonetheless.
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CD review: Girls 'Album'
Girls
‘Album’
(Matador)
Grade: B
Releasing the debut album by San Francisco duo Girls two weeks after Labor Day constitutes a monstrous offense of timing. With its reverb-drenched harmonies, lo-fi production, jangly guitars and simplistic pop lyrics, it’s an ideal summertime record, a sort of Beach Boys-by-way-of-Guided By Voices delight that lends itself well to hot temperatures and lazy evenings.
Vocalist Christopher Owens, belting out his lovelorn tunes in a surprisingly faithful recreation of Elvis Costello’s 1970s croon, kicks things off with pop gem “Lust for Life,” which finds him acknowledging his sins and trying to “make a brand new start.” It’s a promise he makes good on with upbeat, catchy, spare rockers like the surf guitar-inspired “Morning Light” and winning head-bopper “Darling.” He’s less successful on the slower-paced ballads, like “Headache” or six-and-half-minute epic “Hellhole Ratrace,” with its vocals that sound as though they were recorded at least 12 feet from the mic and a guitar that seems to have wandered in, lost and confused, from another song.
But most is excused thanks to the record’s pervasive low-key charm, as Owen paints a picture of a utopia of California girls and beachside relaxation, a season when, as he sings on “Summertime,” he can “grow out my hair, go anywhere, and sleep in until afternoon.”
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CD review: Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band 'Between My Head and the Sky'
Yoko Ono/ Plastic Ono Band
‘Between My Head and the Sky’
(Chimera)
Grade: A-
At this point, the only music fans who have heard Yoko Ono’s extraordinary 40-year body of work and don’t recognize her as an innovator are pretty easily slotted into two groups: folks who are still fuzzy on women’s suffrage and Beatles loons who still blame her for their inevitable disintegration. Even if you don’t have much use for her often extreme music, Ono was there before most folks, pushing envelopes in art and sound and doing it as a woman whom, for a while there, the entire planet seemed to hate just kind of on spec.
This is the first Ono album released with the Plastic Ono name since 1973’s proto-feminist screed “Feeling the Space” and her first all-new studio effort since 1995’s alt-rock infused “Rising.” This new model Ono Band includes her son Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto, and electronic-dance savant Keigo Oyamada, a.k.a Cornelius. “Between My Head…” rolodexes 40 years of Ono’s tricks. “Waiting for the D Trains” opens the album with spikey, no wave guitar flail and wordless yells, while “The Sun is Down” would be welcome at any rave. The jazz on “Ask the Elephant” owes plenty to Ornette Coleman’s harmelodic funk, while “Memory of Footsteps” and “Unun. To” (the latter in Japanese) are meditative, small group sketches which are alternately thoughtful and distressingly Steve Allen-ish. “Calling” could be a leftover “White Album” jam from a particularly “out” afternoon or a Sonic Youth rehearsal tape. In no way is this a bad thing. In no way is almost any of this album a bad thing — it some of the most vigorous, vital rock music a 76-year-old has ever produced.
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September 21, 2009
CD review: Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks
Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks
‘Texas Sheiks’
(Tradition and Moderne)
Grade: A
Apart from being a virtuosic and engaging survey of roots/oldtime/string band music featuring an assortment of musical heavyweights from the Austin and Woodstock acoustic music scenes, this album marks the next-to-last recordings of Austin guitarist Stephen Bruton.
Bruton died in May after a long, brave battle with cancer, mourned and celebrated by his fans, friends and musical peers. But before that untimely passing, a compadre named Roger Kasle put together a pair of recording sessions here in town. The idea was to give Bruton some respite from the pain and indignities of aggressive cancer treatment.
As therapy, the inspiration was ironclad: Bruton never seemed quite fully formed unless he was holding a guitar or a mandolin. And it works as music: Under the stewardship of acoustic music maestro Geoff Muldaur and co-producer Bruce Hughes (Bruton’s partner-in-crime in the Resentments), the Texas Sheiks offer a heartfelt survey of 1920s- and ’30s-era string band music, blues, jazz, swing and pop.
Borrowing from the songbooks of Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, Big Bill Broonzy, Skip James, Bob Wills and lesser-known luminaries such as the Mississippi Sheiks and Buddy Woods and the Wampus Cats, the Texas Sheiks breathe fresh life into old-time music that lives at the crossroads of race, culture, era and spirit, in the heart of what author Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America.”
Besides Bruton (who plays but does not sing on the album), Hughes and Muldaur, the cast is rounded out by steel player Cindy Cashdollar, fiddler Suzy Thompson and boogie-woogie keyboardist Johnny Nicholas, along with a guest turn by jug band patriarch Jim Kweskin.
Nicholas turns in an eerie, doom-fraught falsetto vocal on “Hard Time Killin’ Floor.” By contrast, the jumping, all-hands-on-deck jam session spirit of “Don’t Sell It (Don’t Give It Away)” hints at how much fun the sessions must have been. The hallucinogenic, light-hearted imagery of “Under the Chicken Tree” and “Blues In the Bottle,” the loping, bluesy cover of “Fan It” and the sunny country string band groove of “Sweet To Mama” all breathe life into material that might seem otherwise consigned to sheet music and antique Victrolas.
At the end of the day, a warm and loving cover of W.C. Handy’s “Yellow Dog Blues” provides the sort of bittersweet send-off we associate with New Orleans jazz funerals.
As for Stephen Bruton, let Robert Johnson (in the voice of Johnny Nicholas) in “Travelin’ Riverside Blues” have the last word. Johnson wrote of a woman, “She got a mortgage on my body/And a lien on my soul … ” That was precisely the passionate relationship between Bruton and his muse, a relationship the Texas Sheiks do their best to honor.
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September 20, 2009
Friday night funk: The Big Fat Reds and Living Colour
Friday evening, funk and rock hybrid music permeated Austin both east and west of Congress Avenue during inspired performances by Austin’s the Big Fat Reds and New York City’s Living Colour.
Funk music (yeah, I said the four letter word): the feral, slinky, sexual sounds that make one of your eyes squint while your upper lip curls, rising up at a diagonal when the sounds seep into your ears.
A promising new local act named the Big Fat Reds pricked up ears at Momo’s during a well-attended early evening gig that had audience members moving their extremities (and their collective gluteus maximus). For nearly an hour, frontman Motolove (a.k.a. Eric Scott) belted out power-to-the-people anthems that would have made Public Enemy’s Chuck D feel like a proud progenitor.
With an inspired rhythm section, creative guitar work and a charismatic frontman who can spit miles of verse without a blink, look for the Big Fat Reds to coalesce into a mighty, mighty, fight-the-power, force to be reckoned with in Austin’s highly competitive music scene.
After the Big Fat Reds show, I navigated past the pre-UT vs. Texas Tech crowds, through the Red River District’s grit and grime, right into Emo’s to have my ears and face blasted off by the jackhammer funk-rock sounds of 1990s rock stars Living Colour.
Living Colour - vocalist Corey Glover, guitarist Vernon Reid, drummer Will Calhoun and bassist Doug Wimbish - virtually obliterated the Emo’s main stage with their genre-busting hybrid music, infused with deviations into almost every musical genre associated with the African Diaspora. The band’s Emo’s show was their first return to Austin in more than 15 years since their heyday when they played the Union Ballroom and Liberty Lunch.
When the band raced through the dizzying speed metal of their sophomore album’s title track “Time’s Up,” you were reminded that, much like with Metallica’s music, there are only a handful of musicians in the world who have the dexterity and endurance to play songs at that speed, back-to-back, for two hours straight.
A cursory listen might have you believe Reid and crew were jazz giants slumming in rock ‘n’ roll, but that would belittle the fact that after 20 years, Living Colour are absolutely dedicated to their genre, as evidenced by the killer tracks they played from the adventurous new album “The Chair In The Doorway,” which showed growth while remaining in line with their oeuvre. (And the band has always paid homage to its lineage: The show’s lone cover was Jimi Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic.”)
Glover and Reid wisely dosed the audience with more than an hour of hits before they ventured into tracks from “The Chair In The Doorway,” with “DecaDance” standing out as a highlight. They played nearly all their radio hits from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s including “Love Rears Its Ugly Head,” “Type,” “Middle Man” and their monstrous signature track (recently re-recorded for Guitar Hero III), “Cult of Personality.”
“This song is dedicated to Joe Wilson,” Vernon Reid said before launching into a venomous version of “Funny Vibe,” closing out a blistering three song encore.
Living Colour are back, and they’re as raw, hungry (and funky) as they ever were.
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September 18, 2009
CD review: Pearl Jam "Backspacer"
Pearl Jam
‘Backspacer’
(self released)
Grade: B-
Having long ago shed any pretensions of operating as a radio- and singles-driven band in favor of evolving into one of the mightiest touring acts going, any new release by Pearl Jam almost has to be evaluated through a filter of “how will this fit into the context of its often-mammoth live shows?”
That’s especially the case here in Austin given that the new “Backspacer,” it’s ninth studio album, arrives less than two weeks before the Seattle quintet headlines Austin City Limits Festival and works some of these 11 new songs into a set that’s only supposed to last two hours but will almost surely run past that.
So as more live fodder, “Backspacer” is great. Recorded lean and mean but with plenty of off ramps for live stretchouts, the bulk of it will sound riveting cascading around Zilker Park in amongst material that’s almost two decades old. Album opener “Gonna See My Friend” finds lead singer Eddie Vedder as riled up as ever and rides on top of one of drummer Matt Cameron’s most propulsive showcases since his days with Soundgarden on “Spoonman.”
There are plenty of other keepers. The upbeat solo Vedder ballad “Just Breathe” is a fine candidate for an encore opener that could’ve appended his turn on the the “Into The Wild” soundtrack; “Supersonic” is a two-minues-and-change dumb-as-rocks raveup that’s not trying to be anything more, and “The Fixer” could be the shaggiest up-tempo single they’ve ever release. That’s a compliment, by the way.
As for how “Backspacer” will age after the masses depart on Oct. 4, it’ll probably wind up smack in the middle of the band’s canon (that’s between “Yield” and 2006’s self-titled album for this reviewer) suffering from a dearth of stand-out or even memorable lyrics (when has that ever been a problem for this band?) and a middle third that drags in too many places.
The end verdict, then? Good, but nowhere near great - and making me salivate even more for when the band marches on stage to put its stamp on ACL Fest. Which is pretty much the point of its albums these days anyway. Mission: accomplished.
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September 14, 2009
Review: Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer at Bass Concert Hall
No wonder banjo player extraordinaire Bela Fleck has more Grammy category nominations than anyone else. The 11-time winner adroitly plucks from jazz, classical, bluegrass, the ether, etc. Fleck’s formidable collaborative skills are another reason he’s rightly lauded, Sunday night enlisting Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain and bass anchorman Edgar Meyer.
UT’s flagship venue has hosted many exceptional events, but probably never components of a tabla/bass/banjo triple concerto. The group used Austin as the launching pad for its tour supporting their fresh album “Melody of Rhythm” (E1), and the audience was treated to more than two hours of unparalleled musicianship, infectious camaraderie and aural adventurousness. The full hall — the audience was composed of students, Hindustani music mavens, bluegrass freaks, and Austin music stalwarts — perfectly symbolized the music: a mash-up. But unlike the hit-or-miss, digitally-sutured songs of the same name, this mash-up was spot on.
The three-piece began with the album’s opener “Bahar,” a pentatonic pastoral composition evoking North America’s fruited plain, yet penned by Mumbai-born Hussain and based on an Indian raga. Each artist soloed during the performance, showcasing both skills and restraint. Meyer explored the subharmonic and upper registers of the bass, Fleck used a vocal mic to play banjo slide, and Zakir “Thousand Fingers” Hussain proved why he’s the go-to timekeeper for John McLaughlin and Yo-Yo Ma.
Those seeking to classify the 14 songs were left scratching their cabezas, but perhaps Hussain had the best tag for this mash-up. In an online, pre-show chat with the band, Hussain responded to the genre question with: “This would be best described as music.”
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September 4, 2009
CD review: Jay-Z, 'The Blueprint 3'
Jay-Z
‘The Blueprint 3’
(Roc Nation)
Grade: B+
On the “The Blueprint 3,” Jay-Z boasts he’s gone “from Brooklyn to down in Tribeca right next to DeNiro” and he’s gone from bragging about how many bricks he moved out the back of a rental car to bragging about how good his seats were for the Pacquaio fight. But despite the lifestyle changes, the underlying message remains the same: Jay-Z is still pretty damned impressed with Jay-Z.
Dubbing himself “the new Sinatra”, he raps over a series of glossy, expensive beats full of live instrumentation — strings, trumpets and hand-claps. This is the best production he’s gotten since his comeback from retirement in 2006.
“Blueprint 3” follows in the vein of his first 10 solo albums — all of which, he reminds us, have “gone No. 1”; all morphing elements of his life story (teenage drug dealer “called a camel” to multi-millionaire CEO married to the world’s biggest pop star) into a Charles Dickens story.
On “Empire State of the Mind” he takes a contemplative ride in his new Lexus through the McDonald’s parking lot in Harlem where he bought drugs and to an old apartment where he sold them.
There’s no hint of the actual person behind the story he has constructed for himself, nothing separating Sean Carter from Jay-Z. He only gets emotional when discussing his career, addressing the fans and critics “who want (Jay-Z) to go and fall from the top” on song (“Haters”) after song (“What We Talking About”) after song (“Already Home”) after song (“Reminder”).
He notes he’s “in the hall already, people compare me to Big and Pac already, like I’m gone already.” The guest-list is a glimpse at his mortality: Where the first “Blueprint” had one guest appearance on the entire album, the third is filled with big-name artists (Alicia Keyes, Kanye West, Young Jeezy and Rihanna) and even newcomers like Drake and Kid Cudi. His first attempt at a comeback single — the bombastic “DOA” which called for an end to the auto-tune phenomenon a year after it had already peaked — was met with shrugs. Kanye and Rihanna overshadow him on the first single “Run This Town,” a drastic role reversal from only five years ago, when he was the biggest name on their debut albums.
The album closes with a melodramatic sample of an ’80s glam-rock synthesizer ballad called “Young Forever.” No one actually stays that way, not even Jay-Z.
(Jay-Z plays Austin in November.)
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September 2, 2009
Review: Elvis Costello at Bass Concert Hall
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Elvis Costello’s genre-jumping has gone from parlor trick (his 1980 faux-Memphis soul album “Get Happy!”) to calling card (Classical music? Fake Nashville? Write adult pop with Paul McCartney and Nawlins soul with Allen Toussaint? Done, done and done.)
Even his hardest-core fans — a whole mess of whom were at Bass Concert Hall on Tuesday night to see ol’ Napoleon Dynamite — are probably grateful he’s never made a hip-hop album.
(Note to Elvis: Don’t.)
His latest record “ Secret, Profane & Sugarcane” is another country-ish one, part bluegrass, part Americana and, well, part songs from an unfinished musical about the life of Hans Christian Andersen. As you might imagine, it is intermittently successful at all three.
For the tour, however, Costello decided to bet it all on a faux-grass/drummerless Americana set up.
Opening with “Mystery Train” and flanked by such string-band ninjas as dobro player Jerry Douglas, guitarist Jim Lauderdale and mandolin player Mike Compton, Costello treated fans (or forced them to sit through, judging from a few scattered reactions) to nearly three hours of nearly all of the new album, fresh arrangements of Costello classics and a few covers.
(How long has the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” been part of the set? A few folks who clearly remembered Costello’s angry young punk days looked a little weepy when he started to sing “I lit out from Reno/ I was trailed by twenty hounds….” But the one woman who stood up to do the Dead’s “noodle dance” was thrilled.)
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August 31, 2009
Review: About Blank at Lucky Lounge
Words are meaningless when you have a trumpeter, a trombonist, two saxophonists, two drummers, a conga player, an electric guitarist, an upright/electric bassist, a DJ, and four female dancers with headdresses that the aforementioned bassist, Kyle Clayton, dubbed the Skanks.
It wasn’t that the dancers were “easy” — they wore modest spaghetti-strap tank-tops and long, flowing dresses — but their name hit the spot for “About Skank,” the gleefully spastic ska song Clayton’s instrumental jam band played while the girls busted a move. That song title was in turn a play on the band, About Blank, who at this point in its CD release show for its debut album, “Rise,” had swelled way beyond its normal size.
It’s not exactly kosher to play in Austin and not have words. Sure, Explosions in the Sky pulls it off. But they have a built-in audience from “Friday Night Lights.” Then there’s Ephraim Owens. He makes it happen. But he’s practically a novelty act, in that he’s playing a dying form, traditional jazz. After that it gets pretty thin. This is a singer-songwriter’s town.
No one seemed to know that, though, Saturday at Lucky Lounge. The place was choked with people bobbing their heads in time—and chances are the majority of them came for the drink specials and hadn’t a clue who was playing. There’s hardly a more complimentary acknowledgment of a band’s virtuosity than to win over a crowd without any advance hype.
About Blank did it with endless grooves. And with the dexterous hopscotch matches between the trumpeter, Erik Telford, and the tenor saxophonist, Kevin Gibbs. And, most emphatically, with the avant-garde guitar work of Danny Anderson, who veered with facility between tonal precision and industrial combustion, as on the mind-erasing “Black Magic Marker.”
It’s almost hard to believe this glorious night of accessible fusion was free of charge.
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August 24, 2009
CD review: Arctic Monkeys - 'Humbug'
‘Humbug’
(Domino)
C
The Arctic Monkeys’ rapid rise to rock royalty (their acclaimed debut, “Whatever People Say I Am,” arrived in 2006, followed a year later by the Billboard Top 10 charting “Favourite Worst Nightmare”) could be credited to lead Monkey Alex Turner’s entertaining, detached perspective on newly acquired rock stardom. But it’s easy to see how that act can get old fairly quickly when a band is actually successful. Such is the case on “Humbug,” the band’s first album recorded in the United States, with producers Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco. Turner doesn’t seem to be fully committed to the endeavor this time around; he’s not helped by a collection of songs bogged down by cliched lyrics. Even highlight “Crying Lightning” is spoiled by lines such as “the next time I caught my own reflection it was on its way to meet you,” which renders forgettable an otherwise appealing, spooky thumper.
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CD review: Jack Ingram - 'Big Dream & High Hopes'
Jack Ingram
‘Big Dream & High Hopes’
(Big Machine)
B
Jack Ingram’s career has been on an upward trajectory since the success of the 2005 hit “Wherever You Are;” on “Big Dreams & High Hopes,” he shows no signs of slowing down. Ingram can’t be accused of false advertising on “Dreams;” most of the songs, including the opener “Free” and the title track are the musical equivalent of the “hang in there” cat poster. He adds a bit of darkness here and there when he feels like it; see also the regret-filled “King of Wasted Time.” Singer-songwriter Patty Griffin and fellow country artist Dierks Bentley both make appearances on “Dreams.” Bentley’s guest spot, the barroom stomper “Barbie Doll” — which Ingram co-wrote with Todd Snider — will probably be coming to a radio near you.
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CD review: Willie Nelson 'American Classic'
‘American Classic’
(Lost Highway)
B
Willie Nelson once again stamps familiar standards with his ineradicable musical personality on his new album, “American Classic.” Nelson simplifies and slows down the tempos, then applies his tawny, world-weary voice to mostly melancholy lyrics, as he interprets songs from the mid-century catalog. He leaves it to Joe Sample, Diana Krall and Norah Jones on piano, Christian McBride and Robert Hurst on bass and Lewis Nash and Jeff Hamilton on drums - along with dashes of sax, harmonica and organ — to supply the welcome jazziness. Nelson had perfected this stripped-down strategy on 1978’s “Stardust,” recording immortal versions of “Georgia on My Mind,” “Blue Skies,” “September Song,” “Moonlight in Vermont” and the title song. Nothing on “American Classic” matches those intense refinements. Nelson is weakest here in the duets with Krall and Jones, whose zesty playfulness contrasts with his drifting vocal responses. He regains his storytelling balance on “Angels Eyes” and he unspools homespun joy for “On the Street Where You Live.” Nelson saves the album altogether with his last two cuts, a soulful version of “Since I Fell for You” and a bigger-band retake of “Always on My Mind,” which he canonized in 1982.
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CD review: Richard Thompson box set is a heavy-hitter
‘Walking on a Wire: (1968-2009)’
(Shout Factory)
A-
“Walking on a Wire” is a top-flight introduction to a guy who might be the greatest living British bluesman.
Not in the 12-bar or Clapton sense, but in the sense that Richard Thompson’s music taps into the well of emotional chaos and elemental storytelling that fuels the deepest blues. Then he translates those feelings into a guitar glossolalia that could only come from a son of Albion.
Just as the blues is profoundly American, Thompson’s music is decidedly United Kingdom. With Fairport Convention, he fused the most ancient of British ballads into a vibrant, electric folk rock as thrilling in its own Scots manner as Dylan’s update of Woody Guthrie. With wife Linda, he made some of the 1970s’ most emotionally exhausting rock, peaking with 1982’s no-really-it’s-not-JUST-about-divorce classic “Shoot Out the Lights.” He spent the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s looking for new fans now and then and honing a fan base that just kept getting harder core. A critical darling and commercial nonstarter for most of his career, he can sell out small to mid-sized venues pretty much wherever he chooses to go. Not a bad life, really.
That doesn’t make it too surprising that this is the third(!) box set of Thompson’s career. The first, “Watching the Dark” (Hannibal/Ryko, 1993), was a three-CD affair that mixed studio tracks and rarities (The version of “A Sailor’s Life” on there should get some sort of Nobel Prize.)
The next, “RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson” (Free Reed, 2006) was a five-CD, fanatics-only behemoth with fan-chosen hits, amazing and obscure live guitar blowouts and some of the ugliest graphics in box set history.
“Walking on a Wire” is the opposite, a four-CD overview of his studio output from the Fairport days (“Meet on the Ledge” and the epic “Sloth” still thrill) through the Richard and Linda years to his most recent solo album, the surprisingly rocking “Sweet Warrior.”
Thompson has always quibbled with being called a mope, but the recorded evidence is pretty overwhelming. His isn’t an adolescent, Robert Smithy mope, but one who has a deep-seated knowledge that happiness is an occasion (“Old Man Inside a Young Man”) and the complexities of love often just make things worse (“Withered and Died,” “I Misunderstood”). And his guitar playing lives in those moments when melancholia becomes sublime (“Calvary Cross,” here in its tight studio version, deserves to be heard live).
His ’80s and ’90s output suffered a bit from a long-term collaboration with Mitchell Froom. Froom’s production is often too slick and too vanilla by half, turning solid songs into dad-rock almost by design.
Thompson wisely cherry picks from these albums, and of course most of the songs are from 1991’s “Rumor and Sigh” where the tunecraft was good enough to withstand Froomization. (Or dispensed with it altogether - “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” is just Thompson and an acoustic guitar; it became a live staple, perhaps his all-time most popular song).
But he got over it, and “Walking On A Wire” shows you why people have adored him for 40 years.
These days, Thompson still tours constantly, knocking out studio albums or fan-club records or movie scores or guest spots on other people’s albums, working and playing and playing and working. These days, a young man is inside the old man.
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August 17, 2009
CD Review: Delbert McClinton, 'Acquired Taste'
Delbert McClinton
“Acquired Taste”
(New West)
Grade: B
If you are Delbert McClinton, you don’t mess with the formula. If you could sing like that, would you mess with it? You would not. You would mine that shaft where blues and rock and soul come together for as long as your voice held out. And considering this is the 68-year old McClinton’s 13th studio album, he’s not doing too bad.
But if you are a bluesman getting up in years who do you call? Don Was. It worked for Dylan, it worked for the Stones and it works for McClinton — Was gives McClinton’s voice room to move.
But Was also is a pretty straight-forward producer and even McClinton’s voice can’t quite save songs like “Do It” and the opener “Mama’s Little Baby” from falling into the tepid blues-rock that blues-rock too often falls into. We’re not into Blueshammer territory (anyone remember the movie “Ghost World?” Anyone? No? OK) but there isn’t enough there there.
McClinton can still work the ballads like a pitcher rubbing dirt on a brand-new baseball. “Never Saw it Comin” chronicles a breakup that landed from out of the blue, while “Starting a Rumor” hits on a gal in a roundabout way and “She’s Not There Anymore” finds loss and lust in a tango.
He’s also joined by the late Stephen Bruton on the almost Stonesy country blue “Can’t Nobody Say I Didn’t Try” and it’s wonderful to hear Bruton’s ax and voice. But there’s no question the new Delbert is exactly the same as the old Delbert.
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CD Review: Hot Club of Cowtown, 'Wishful Thinking'
Hot Club of Cowtown
Wishful Thinking
(Gold Strike)
Grade: B+
They haven’t made a studio record since 2002 and they even broke up in 2005, but fans should know that all is well in Cowtown. The trio of singer/violinist Elana James, singer/guitarist Whit Smith and singer/bassist Jake Erwin haven’t budged an inch. James did time in Bob Dylan’s band and played with Her Hot Hot Trio (a.k.a and the Continental Two). Whit Smith’s Hot Jazz Caravan rocked around Austin.
They reunited last year and it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that they still split the difference between Texas swing and small combo jazz. Which means they’re still in love with Bob Wills (“Can’t Go On This Way” opens the album). But they also have time for Tom Waits (a mournful “The Long Way Home”), Hoagy Carmichael (“Georgia”) and George and Ira Gershwin (a torchy “Someone To Watch Over Me”).
Their originals still find emotional purchase. Damien Llanes’ drums add heft to “Cabiria” and “Heart of Romain.” But it’s love’s fallout that the band spends the most time with. “Reunion” could be bitter, but stays ambiguous, a run-in with an ex-boyfriend (and bandmate?) with a smart chorus: “We’re so proud/we’re so pleased/we’re so glad that you’re living your dreams” (you didn’t need to make the boyfriend part explicit, Elana). “What You Meant To Me” contemplates the aftermath of a break up, while Smith’s “Carry Me Close” explores a history of loss. It’s like they never left.
Hot Club of Cowtown is scheduled to play live on Eklektikos with John Aielli on KUT at 11 a.m. Friday. They also play a free 5 p.m. in-store at Waterloo Records and a gig at the Continental Club, both later that night.
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August 7, 2009
Review: Atmosphere at Stubb's
The massive crowd gathered Wednesday at Stubb’s for the show by Midwest indie hip-hop standout Atmosphere was a good mix of mohawks, backwards baseball caps and trendy handbags, a testament to the group’s cross-cultural appeal. Most appeared to be out to hear new material from the group’s latest disc, “When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That (Expletive) Gold,” evidenced by the near constant sing-along that at times nearly eclipsed the band. However, when Slug announced that the “ugliest” girl in Austin requested that the group reach back for “God Loves Ugly” to open the show, the old school fans in the audience made their presence felt. (Knowing Slug, she wasn’t ugly at all.)
In fact the rapper has made an art out of wielding a comically misanthropic stage persona like a mace, something his fans adore about him. This made more sense back when the group’s material was drenched in self-loathing, but is at odds with the comparatively uplifting path they’ve charted lately. Still, thoughtful numbers like “Puppets” and “Guarantees” held the crowd’s attention in between the rugged, hardcore bangers like “Shoulda Known” that got the crowd moving, hands in the air.
The band’s “Kashmir” influenced version of “Vanity Sick” was an impressive example of how far the group is willing to stretch out on stage. The echo-driven guitar licks and raga wailing from the backup singer woke the crowd from their heat induced lethargy just in time for an encore that featured a viscous freestyle and a dreamy version of “Sunshine.”
Despite the sparse, introspective tone of much of the show the highlight of the night was the band’s return to “Seven’s Travels” for a booming version “Trying to Find a Balance.” I’ve been to plenty of hip-hop shows in Austin and have never seen that many hands in the air for the entirety of a song. Whenever the band dropped out to let the crowd fill in the verse, they thundered together in unison without missing a beat.
The party days might be over for this group, but Atmosphere proved they can rock a crowd without the drug- and alcohol-infused material. This is rugged, grimy, thinking man’s hip-hop from a group that Austin came out en masse to support yet again.
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August 4, 2009
Live Review: Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Writers of serial fiction - soap operas, comic books, “Lost,” that sort of thing - have a term for giving consumers the characters and plots that they want.
That term is “fan service.”
Tuesday night’s Dylan/Nelson/Mellencamp show at the Dell Diamond was all about fan service. Here are the songs that you love, folks; we’ll go easy on the new stuff. (Mellencamp even asked if everyone was in a nostalgic mood - um, is there another reason these folks are here?)
Sure, the heat was broiling, but the vibe was exactly like a baseball game. Plenty of beer, sno-cones and hot dogs to go around. The crowd even got to hang around on the field. (Running the bases and sliding into home was not possible.)
The Wiyos opened the show with a half hour set of old-timey string band music with horn lines that recalled Dixieland jazz - spry yet mellow stuff.
Willie Nelson brought the stripped down Family band to Dell Diamond - Willie himself with Trigger, playing his signature oddly shaped solos, Ray Benson on lead (lead and rhythm are slippery terms in this band), minimalist drums, splashes of harmonica and “little sister” Bobbie on piano here and there. It’s a perfect setting for Willie’s country-jazz voice.
“Whiskey River” went into “Still is Still Moving” (wherein lay the best and oddest solo) into the still-politically-sketchy “Beer for My Horses.” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Crazy,” “Angel Flying Too Close the Ground” and “On the Road Again” all received solid workouts and the audience received at least two hats from Willie. Now THAT is fan service.
John Mellencamp’s set was the most flagrantly rock and his on-stage persona alternated between charming (“Give that kid a hand” after a vendor honored his request for a sno-cone) and more-smug-than-funny (subbing in the line “”My wife was 13 years old when I wrote this song” for “met an L.A. doll” in “Small Town” — spare us, Coug, even if the old line was about your ex-wife). “Pink Houses” kicked off the set, violin, accordion and large drums driving the songs. “Don’t Need This Body” mused about death, “Rain On the Scarecrow” sounded ominous in rough economic times and “Hurts So Good” reminded you that, yes, this guy can deliver a whole mess of songs to which you know the words. Fan. Service.
Bob Dylan, on the other hand, presented a different kind of fan service. After a few songs, including opener “Rainy Day Women” (most overrated Dylan song ever or most overrated thing ever?) and a head-scratching “This Wheel’s On Fire,” former Dylan guitarist Charlie Sexton joined the band.
Then he proceeded to own it, his presence seeming to loosen Dylan and kick the energy level up.
Sexton almost flirted with Dylan at points, wandering over to the organ Dylan played for much of the night. This must be what it’s like to play with Dylan but have graduated from touring with him (everyone else stayed pretty much stock still).
Songs such as “Honest With Me,” “Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee” and the almighty “Highway 61” throbbed with Sexton’s trebley solos. “Just Talkin’” sported nuanced interplay and a deep, chewy groove anchored by Donnie Herron’s violin. “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Jolene” and “All Along the Watchtower” were perfect encores, the latter featuring a wicked Sexton solo.
So, speaking of fan service, anyone tape this lovely night?
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July 31, 2009
Live Review: The Great Hangover Tour at Stubb's
Here is a lesson in getting the crowd on your side in about 15 seconds, the Asher Roth way:“When I say ‘Colt,’ you say ‘McCoy.’ COLT!”
“McCOY!”
“COLT”
“McCOY!”
“When I say, ‘Dan,’ you say ‘Buckner.’ DAN!”
“BUCKNER!”
And so on.
It doesn’t hurt if the crowd already relates to you, as nearly everyone at Stubb’s obviously did. Eminem might have been the first white rapper to become a commercial force of nature, but Roth, currently co-headlining “The Great Hangover Tour” with Kid Cudi, is a heck of a lot more like the middle-class kids who filled Stubb’s on Thursday night.
He’s the guy in your freshman suite in college, smoking weed out of apples and watching ESPN until he passes out in front of the TV. Roth’s onstage props included a giant joint and a guy dressed as a pot leaf — between that and his red hair, one could be forgiven for thinking Carrot Top was suddenly a rapper.
Roth is also the sort of fellow who inspires unchecked loathing in certain hip-hop fans, who bemoan, well, pretty much everything about him - his frat guy topics, his smug vibe, his delivery, his popularity. But none of them were at Stubb’s.
After a set from trio Pac Div, rapper Bobby Ray, the artist formerly known as B.o.B., nearly stole the entire show with a sharp set of forward-thinking dirty South hip-hop. Rhyming a capella, playing acoustic guitar, vibing with his backup singers, no wonder Ray’s a favorite for guest spots on songs by higher profile rappers (Big Boi, Killer Mike) and a budding mixtape messiah (check out the “B.o.B vs. Bobby Ray” tape for the full story). His debut album “The Great Adventures of Bobby Ray” is slated for release later this year.
Kid Cudi (say it: “cutty”), on the other hand, nearly bogarted the entire show by taking the stage 20 minutes late, which cut his set in half. (It’s a bad look when the crowd is chanting “CU-DI! CU-DI,” then eventually gives up and goes back to chatting.)
He just had time for demi-hits such as the compellingly menacing “Mr. Solo Dolo,” the skittering “Embracing the Martian” and “Day ‘n’ Nite” a song that leaked online in December 2007. It’s a measure of how fast hip-hop moves that Cudi referred to it as “the granddady of them all.” Invest your money wisely, man.
Roth, on the other hand, was pure showman, leaping around on stage, playing with props and generally acting like a guy goofing off in his dorm room. Dressed in a UT football T-shirt, shorts and no shoes, Roth was a doofus, but he was the crowd’s doofus. He occasionally hit Dr. Phil territory (“If you guys are taking advantage of being yourself, clap your hands”) and smashed into hits such as “Be By Myself” and “Sour Patch Kids.” Roth also made a whole mess of us feel all kind of old during his single “As I Em:” “I was in seventh grade when I heard the Slim Shady LP .” Which arrived in 1999. Ouch.
Roth, his hypeman, his DJ and live drummer even did some unfortunate choreography to Soul 4 Real’s “Candy Rain,” which one has no doubt originated to impress some drunk girls.
Speaking of girls and age, Roth invited a whole mess of them to dance on stage during “She Don’t Wanna Man.” Roth, son, I would check some of those I.D.s very carefully before the after-party jump-off. You aren’t in college any more.
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July 27, 2009
CD review: Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan 'In Session'
Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan
‘In Session’
(Stax)
Grade: B+
Stevie Ray Vaughan’s first guitar heroes were his older brother Jimmie and Lonnie Mack, whose instrumental version of “Memphis” set a young Stevie’s soul on fire. Later, he made no secret of worshipping at the altar of Jimi Hendrix, taking his flashy gypsy garb cue from the explosive southpaw.
In terms of torrid, stinging guitar style, however, there was no greater influence on “Little Stevie” than Albert King. Imagine how Vaughan must’ve felt, during this 1983 recording from Canadian TV, when King played rhythm guitar behind him on “Pride and Joy,” the song that was making Vaughan the first new blues guitar star in eons.
“You’re already pretty good,” the mentor told the protege at one point, “and you’re only going to get better.”
Now, if anyone was fortunate enough to see Vaughan jam with one of his heroes at Antone’s, they saw that he was always respectful and never sought to dust anyone. It was never a duel but a collaboration. But on “Blues At Sunrise,” which King famously played with Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Vaughan really cuts loose on Jimi’s parts, which King answers with his hottest playing on the record. It’s quite the communication in electricity.
After the jam, King talks about “turning it over to you” because his guitar strings needed changing. But he was really signifying the passing of the torch, especially on “Overall Junction” and the set-closing “Don’t Lie To Me,” which show both players at their most scintillating. This is a record that gets better as it plays on.
Originally issued in 1998, “In Session” is loose and sloppy in spots, as any true jam can be. The duo plays only seven songs here, with Vaughan singing lead on only one. They open with the plodding “Stormy Monday,” long “the bathroom song” at blues clubs. But as a document of what was probably one of the greatest nights in the musical life of SRV, this belongs in the collection of every true fan.
King was right; Vaughan would actually get better when he built on the King style instead of just copying it. At the time of his 1990 death at age 35, a sober Vaughan was playing better than ever. He’d tamed the fire, but it still burned brightly, and the afterglow remains brilliant.
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CD review: Rusted Shut 'Dead'
‘Dead’
(Load)
Grade: A-
Rusted Shut have been kicking around Texas since 1986, exhausting even their most hard-core fans with ear-bleeding live shows packed with the ugliest guitar sounds ever produced. This is noise rock at its most willfully obtuse, extended and violent-sounding — these guys feel genuinely damaged. But it’s a good exhaustion, probably like the sort of high runners are always yapping about. And their work ethic is something to be admired. Ten years after they formed, they put out a self-titled CD. The next album, “Rehab,” arrived in 2004 … made with sessions from 1997. Genius!
Some of the magnificently messed-up album “Dead” dates from the Clinton administration as well, but misanthropy this potent is good for all eras. This is a psychedelic noise that transcends micro-genre slotting, a sound filled with shards of punk speed, industrial, black metal, hardcore, free improvisation, random electronics and the sound of falling down the stairs after one too many Jack ‘n’ Cokes. Don Smith’s vocals — harsh, spiteful, sometimes not all there — speak to a life of most things not working out all that well. It’s the sound of true human decay, and it’s very hard to fake.
From the almost-catchy-riff on “Heart of Hell” to the dunder-headed 16-minute jam “Intellect” (hah!) to the ovoid “Bring Out Your Dead,” this is the sort of scuzz that makes one proud to be a Texan, proud to be a fan of this state’s tradition of making big, stinky messes with electric instruments better than anyone else. Most other noise rock looks awfully tepid by comparison. Rusted Shut provides maximum bad vibes for those who love them and, for a small number of people, this is easily one of the best albums Texans will produce this annum.
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CD review: YACHT 'See Mystery Lights'
YACHT
‘See Mystery Lights’
(DFA)
Grade: A
Too often when artists combine elements of different genres, the results sound cobbled together and stale, like a failed attempt to produce fresh moments from an amalgam of sounds that don’t really jibe.
Portland, Ore.-based indie/electronic duo Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans, aka YACHT (the band insists on an all-caps billing), does not fall into this category. “See Mystery Lights” is a delight from beginning to end, a blend of dance beats, “Remain in Light”-style percussion, Evans’ punky vocals and a pop sensibility that lures in the listener with a sense of familiarity that can’t really be pinned down. Beginning on a slightly restrained note with “Ring the Bell,” a slow, densely layered meditation on death, the album works its way toward the infectious wordless chorus of “Psychic City (Voodoo City),” a feel-good pop track with an appeal that extends beyond the sometimes insular world of indie music.
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Review: Tori Amos at the Long Center
(Tori Amos performs July 25 at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. Photo by Cody Duty/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
Through 17 years and 10 studio albums, Tori Amos fans have been to Venus and back and have stood by Amos through a myriad of stylistic shifts and evolutions.
So it’s no surprise that the crowd at the Long Center was on their feet Saturday night as Amos sauntered onstage to the hypnotically plodding rhythm of “Give.” Clad in a flaming orange haute couture number with skin-tight gold hot pants underneath, she looked every bit the scarlet deity the audience was expecting. Amos wasted no time igniting the crowd as she leaned into the microphone for the song’s chorus, “There are some, some who give blood. I give love. I give.”
The front of her dress was cut away so that she could straddle the piano bench and easily reach the synthesizers situated on the other side of her piano. It was impressive to watch her wheel around in a flash of ginger hair and change instruments without missing a beat. Amos gives her audience every ounce of theatrical flair in concert as she does on her records, standing at the piano much of the time in a rock god power stance.
Saturday’s show was not exclusively devoted to material from her new album, “Abnormally Attracted to Sin.” In fact the majority of the show saw Amos cherry picking her catalogue for the moody, bombastic songs that made her famous. She wasted no time in turning to possibly her best known song, “Cornflake Girl,” early on in the set, pausing dramatically during the “peel out the watchword” parts, then bringing the hammer down during the “where’d you put the keys” parts at the end of the song. Afterward, drummer Matt Chamberlain thundered into “Horses” as the lights came down and a constellation of stars emerged behind the performers. Throughout, Amos’s voice was nuanced and idiosyncratic, the perfect foil to the torrential rhythms and heavy bass riffs.
Midway through the set the words “Lizard Lounge” came up in lights and Amos played a few unaccompanied numbers, dedicating Don McLean’s “Vincent (Starry Starry Night)” to her brother whom she described to the audience as a genius songwriter with a less than stellar voice. Her soaring voice quieted the entire room and by the end of the song a few people around me were crying. People in church aren’t always this reverent.
Amos returned to her current album to close out the show with a rocking performance of “Strong Black Vine” that brought down the house before she returned to the stage for a brief encore that featured booming versions of “Raspberry Swirl” and “Juarez” that transformed the usually demure Long Center into a pulsating dance hall.
Thankfully the show was not merely a string of reimagined versions of her best songs, but vibrant, faithful recitations. Well-known hits like “1000 Oceans” sounded as energetic and fresh as when we first heard them. Amos coaxed every bit of venom and vitriol out of her voice during the show’s standout moment, a blistering performance of “Precious Things” that brought the audience out of their seats and down to the front of the stage to sing along and dance. Nothing in Saturday’s concert sounded like it had been dusted off for this tour. Even the oldest songs felt like she’d written them yesterday.
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July 25, 2009
Castanets at Mohawk
Indie folk/blues musician Raymond Raposa, aka Castanets, has been releasing albums on Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty label since 2004. Stevens appears on his last album, and covered Castanets’ song “You Are the Blood” for this year’s Red Hot charity compilation “Dark Was the Night” (one of the year’s best, also featuring Spoon and the Dirty Projectors, among others). At the end of June, Raposa shared a bill with Austin’s Explosions in the Sky and Canadian indie rockers Constantines on the Central Park SummerStage. He’ll release his fifth album in September.
Raposa, who was joined onstage by a three-piece band Friday at Mohawk, included “You Are the Blood,” as well as a selection of songs from his other albums, in a set that at times exchanged some of the quieter, folk-infused moments of his studio work with a much darker and noisier outlaw country sound. This was the mood of most of the set, which began with “Three Days, Four Nights” from the “Cathedral” album, and also included the hard-edged “Prettiest Chain” and “Good Friend Yr Hunger.”
The best moments on stage came when a deeply focused Raposa led the band off into reverb-drenched psychedelia, a small loss of control that many indie folk musicians are hesitant to explore. As interesting as those moments were, however, they were something the too-short performance could have used more of. While there might have been a reason for such an abbreviated set, it felt odd that someone with such an extensive catalog and a new album on the way didn’t spend more time on stage.
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July 16, 2009
Review: Tortoise at Mohawk
Wednesday evening, Chicago’s post-rock, grand experimenters in sound Tortoise owned the Mohawk’s outdoor stage. Mixing rock, jazz, electronica and the kitchen sink, the band played highlights from their recent release Beacons of Ancestorship as well as fan favorites from their more than decade-long career during what would prove to be a warm up for their homecoming appearance at this weekend’s Pitchfork Music Festival.
Musicians and music nerds filled the near capacity audience as the band’s instrumental, genre-melding sounds washed down Red River street from the Mohawk (props to the Mohawk on the quality of their PA as the sound walked the tightrope of being massive, punchy and tight).
I won’t even begin to attempt to provide a setlist as Tortoise’s dulcet songs undulated and careened into one another, although die-hard fans appeared to know where several songs stopped and where others began. The band - Dan Bitney (bass, guitar, percussion, vibes), John Herndon (drums, vibes, keyboards), Doug McCombs (bass), Jeff Parker (guitar, bass) and John McEntire (drums, keyboards) - are phenomenal musicians, long on originality and inventive playing. They all switched instruments, sometimes mid-song, with the sound becoming most explosive when dual drummers were locked in a rhythm, or dual bassists intertwined serpentine melodies.
A couple of tracks recalled the dense arrangements of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks. But just when you thought you had the origins of the groove figured out, the band unexpectedly dropped into a 5/4 time signature or played with such polyrhythm that they made 4/4 feel like an odd time signature.
As strong as Tortoise’s set was, the song cycle they played felt as if they were pulling the reigns a little too tightly. The band’s extended jams could have been further elevated with a little more Ornette Coleman and a little less John Coltrane, more Parliament-Funkadelic, less James Brown, more musical freakouts, less conservative restraint.
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Live review: The Dirty Projectors at Red 7
On a balmy July night under the mercifully super-charged ceiling fans of Red 7, Dirty Projectors front man Dave Longsreth shared a secret with his Austin audience.
“It’s good to see everyone here,” said Longsreth, looking lanky and cheery. “I think this is our first outdoor show that’s actually gone right. There’s no rain and no thunderstorms.”
Those that caught their much-acclaimed set at Bonnaroo last month might disagree with that assertion, but the buzzworthy Brooklyn sextet did deliver a special evening for the hordes of sweaty music fans that packed the outside stage at last night’s sold-out show. The band is riding high on a wave of almost universal adoration in the wake of this year’s “Bitte Orca” (including high praise from this very paper) and took the opportunity of that momentum to deliver an energetic, tightly coiled set that should put to rest any lingering doubts about their ability to deliver live.
After an explosively animated opening from Austin’s the Laughing, the show kicked off with a 30-minute instrumental jam joining Longsreth, Dirty Projectors bassist Nat Baldwin and drummer Brian McComber with legendary Black Flag front man, SST Records founder and noted Taylor, Texas, resident Greg Ginn. As the improvised quartet’s mildly self-indulgent set drew on, slowly but inexorably the crowd’s mood transitioned from one of excitement (“This is so cool and unique!”) to inattention. The dull roar of conversation grew deafening and legions of scenesters unsuited to meandering old-school rock jams turned to their iPhones.
Fortunately, after a 15-minute break, Longsreth and pint-sized singer/keyboardist Angel Deradoorian took the stage for the first song of the Projectors’ set, a beautifully lilting rendition of folk-pop delight “Two Doves.” Replete with strings on album, the stage rendition is necessarily stripped-down, but Deradoorian’s pretty vocals carry the live performance. The result sounds simpler but no less effective, and it set a precedent for an evening of rich, full renditions of technically challenging songs.
The entire band came on stage to thunderous applause for “Cannibal Resources,” the striking first track off “Bitte Orca.” Longsreth’s whisper-thin vocals were joined by the three-part harmonies of Deradoorian, Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle, a sort of cute indie rock girl trinity that’s rapidly infiltrating the hearts of lovelorn hipsters everywhere. The vocal interplay between the three emerged as the night’s unquestionable highlight — at times joined in harmony and at times entering into a pitched battle of unstable warbles, as on a striking performance of “Remade Horizon.”
Ginn rejoined the band for “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie,” one of three pre-“Bitte Orca” songs to show up in the set — and appropriately so, as it’s a cut off concept album “Rise Above,” Longsreth’s attempt at re-interpreting Black Flag’s “Damaged” entirely from memory. And Coffman nearly stole the evening with single “Stillness is the Move,” an almost Mariah Carey-esque nugget of R&B perfection, that climaxed with shirtless drummer McComber disappearing into a hard-hitting blur of skin and drumsticks. Encore songs “Fluorescent Half-Dome” and “Knotty Pine,” penned for the band by the Talking Heads’ David Byrne for charity compilation “Dark Was The Night,” brought the show to a satisfying close.
The Dirty Projectors have something of an inconsistent live reputation, perhaps befitting a constantly rotating band that’s logged 18 members in seven years of existence. But now that Longsreth seems to have settled for a more stable cast of characters, the Projectors have emerged from the relative ghetto of art rock as a surprisingly accessible, genre-crossing act. And that cozy lineup has also resulted in genuine on-stage chemistry and comfort, making for a show that — if not absolutely transcendent — at least lived up the lofty expectations set by one of the year’s best albums.
Setlist
Two Doves
Cannibal Resource
Remade Horizon
Ascending Melody
No Intention
Fucked For Life
Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie
Rise Above
Stillness Is The Move
Useful Chamber
Temecula Sunrise
Encore
Fluorescent Half-Dome
Knotty Pine
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July 13, 2009
CD review: The Dead Weather 'Horehound'
The Dead Weather
‘Horehound’
(Third Man)
Grade: B
Jack White likes surprises. Last year his “other” other band, the Raconteurs, released a second album with almost no notice. This year, White announced a new project, the Dead Weather, fronted by Alison Mosshart of British duo the Kills, with two tracks made available via a stream on the band’s Web site. Now comes the full-length “Horehound,” a gritty exercise in blues-rock a la White. The album will probably in many ways be less of a shock to followers of White’s work than the Raconteurs, a band that, although firmly rooted in classic rock, can also stray off on a decidedly more pop direction.
The Dead Weather are not going to be accused of going soft, but the band unfortunately suffers from an identity crisis that robs the album of any sense of cohesion. Part of that might be because this is a bit of an experiment for White, who exchanges his guitar for the drums . Mosshart, with her dark, raspy voice, is a worthy (and at times better) substitute for White’s vocals, but guitarist Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age isn’t as dominate as White. Fertita does shine on the organ, however, especially on the funk-infused blues thumper “I Cut Like A Buffalo,” one of the album’s highlights. Although there are a few other moments that work, there a plenty that don’t, such as “Rocking Horse” and “3 Birds,” which have a spooky surf rock feel that doesn’t quite belong.
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CD review: The Jayhawks 'Music From the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology'
The Jayhawks
‘Music From the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology’
(American)
Grade: A-
In college, I was introduced to what is often referred to as alt-country — Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt and Whiskeytown — but I never listened to the Jayhawks.
Disc one of “Music From The North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology,” is an excellent primer, but not something that’s going to interest fans of the band. Writer PD Larson, who co-produced the album, expresses dismay in the liner notes that the Jayhawks never really surged in popularity . In that light, the first disc is an argument in favor of affording them more respect, covering 14 years of the group’s career, from the 1989 release of “Blue Earth” to 2003’s Ethan Johns-produced “Rainy Day Music.” A handful of tracks are meant to represent the best of each album, which might frustrate hardcore fans.
For the uninitiated, the songs present a narrative that provides a sense of the Jayhawks evolution. The first tracks on disc one, “Two Angels” and “Ain’t No End,” both from 1989’s “Blue Earth,” have all the elements that drew me to bands that would come later — a genuine appreciation and mastery of the music and musicians that came earlier, such as Gram Parsons, the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, infused with a contemporary sensibility. The next four tracks, including “Waiting for the Sun” and “Martin’s Song,” are from 1992’s “Hollywood Town Hall,” and they illustrate the band’s growth. The singing and songwriting is bolder, demonstrating a growing confidence.
The second disc, which will be of more interest to fans already familiar with the Jayhawks’ catalog, contains several unreleased tracks, including “Old Woman From Red Clay” and an alternate version of “Two Angels” with different lyrics. Also included is a demo of “Won’t Be Coming Home,” a song that would later come to life on Golden Smog’s “Down By the Old Mountain” album (which featured Jayhawks Gary Louris and Marc Perlman and several other musicians from other well-known bands, including Jeff Tweedy). Although not as polished as the other recordings, these songs act as a strong complement to the first disc, providing a sort of behind the scenes look that helps to develop the band’s character.
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July 6, 2009
CD review: Son Volt 'American Central Dust'
Son Volt
‘American Central Dust’
(Rounder)
Grade: A-
First listen: This record is a numbing bore. It wouldn’t be surprising that, after an industrial accident, a heavy machinery operator tested positive for traces of Son Volt in his system.
Second listen: The band, two of the five from Austin, is doing some interesting things with rhythms and textures, creating a subtly subversive backdrop/Crazy Horse lurching. Mark Spencer’s pedal steel guitar makes “Dust of Daylight” and “Pushed Too Far” truly special.
But this record could do without “Sultana,” the sort of heavy-handed tale of maritime disaster that led to the formation of Wilco.
Third listen: Jay Farrar’s voice is mesmerizing in its consistency and commitment. There’s not a note out of place and such songs as “When the Wheels Don’t Move,” about the folks hurt most in a failing auto industry, and the LP-ending “Jukebox of Steel,” sound born sturdy. It’s quite remarkable the way all the pieces come together like a potluck dinner among close friends.
Fourth listen: This could be the best Son Volt record since 1995’s “Trace,” lacking only a “Tear-Stained Eye” to bring in the fence-sitters. “American Central Dust” is about 44 minutes from beginning to end, not the 3:45 that might get them next to Patty (Griffin) on the playlist. There’s not a producer credited, as the CD sounds like musicians left alone with the sounds in their heads and the talent to translate. It’s a mood piece that makes the silence after “Jukebox of Steel” almost jarring.
Someone should do a study on why it is that so many of the albums we love are initially met with disappointment. Raise your hand if you hated “Exile On Main Street” at first. Although “A.C.D.” is not going to be a classic, it’s one of those records that challenge, then reward, those who stick it out.
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CD review: Manikin 'Stop the Sirens'
Manikin
‘Stop the Sirens’
(Super Secret)
Grade: A-
One of the most annoying things about the post-punk revival from a few years ago was some bands’ conviction that Gang of Four was a genre. Manikin managed to avoid this trap altogether and instead figured out that the first couple of Cure albums were ripe for reexamination. Their excellent new album isn’t shy about their interest in Robert Smith’s early trio workouts (they cover “Grinding Halt” from the Cure’s debut “Three Imaginary Boys”), but they also know that playing those sort of spare songs full of flanged out guitar is all the more fun when played fast, teetering on the edge of out of control.
Guitarist Alfonso Rabago belts out every word, his voice caked in echo and fuzz, yelling like he’s gotta get it all out before the song is over, his spiky solos running roughshod over the minimalist grooves. Alyse Mervosh (also the drummer in the excellent garage band Hex Dispensers) and bassist B.J. Schneider drive the songs like freight trains with Bill Jeffery’s trumpet adding weird, unexpected splashes of color. It’s a very Austin touch for one of the year’s best local albums.
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CD review: Deer Tick 'Born on Flag Day'
Deer Tick
‘Born on Flag Day’
(Partisan)
Grade: B+
When Rhode Island’s Deer Tick showcased an impressive new array of gritty, twang-tinged folk tunes at this year’s South by Southwest Festival, it was clear that “Born on Flag Day,” out June 23, was going to be as sharp as a shot of whiskey.
The album is littered with the kinds of one-liners that made “War Elephant,” the band’s 2007 debut, so painfully poignant. “You have my heart/So take my money too,” young frontman John Joseph McCauley rasps on “Little White Lies,” while on “Friday XIII,” he and guest vocalist Liz Isenberg list the gifts they plan to buy each other over a rollicking minor chord romp before she cries, “But all I need is you.”
But when you compare the cuts on “Flag Day” to live performances of the same songs, it almost feels like the young McCauley and his recently formed backing band are still nailing down their studio dynamic. Blues-rocker “Chasing a Storm” chugs forward behind plenty of adrenaline-pumping guitar solo interplay, but when it reaches its bass-thumping climax near the end, the energy falters.
Still, you’d be hard-pressed to find ballads as sincere as “Smith Hill” or “Hell on Earth.” They may come out of the Northeast, but they thump with heart big enough to fill any open Texas sky.
Deer Tick plays Thursday at Emo’s, 603 Red River St. $10. 477-3667; www.emosaustin.com.
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Live review: Bill Callahan at the Parish
“Hello.”
No “I’m Bill Callahan” (the musician formerly known as Smog). No “It’s great to be back home in Austin” (after a monthlong tour in support of the album “Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle”). No “Thanks to all my friends for coming out” (among them, Jonathan Meiburg and Thor Harris of Shearwater, who’ve played with Callahan in various incarnations).
Just “hello,” and then straight into “Our Anniversary,” a long and winding relationship narrative from the album “Supper,” nuanced by sentimental but not sappy violin and cello strings during Sunday night’s jackpot set at the Parish. Callahan has let his songs do the talking for him for 13 albums now. His oeuvre can stand toe to toe with the best in the singer-songwriter game. This is especially true of his three most recent albums, which include the baptism-by-fire “Woke on a Whaleheart” and the autobiographical rite-of-passage “A River Ain’t Too Much to Love.”
It was quite like Christmas morning when you are 5, then, when Callahan followed his opener with “Diamond Dancer” and “Sycamore,” the sublime back-to-back combo from “Whaleheart.” “Dancer” was faster than usual, the sight of one of those hippie chicks at a Dead show twirling into infinity hard to ignore. “Sycamore,” meanwhile, was slower than usual, with Callahan’s drawn-out enunciation of the word “sycamore” invoking more meaning than an entire Leonard Cohen poem.
Callahan and his four backing players also performed songs from the new album, including “Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” a song made memorable not only by its title (no amount of Google-searching yields a translation) but by its refrain, “Show me the way, show me the way, show me the way, to shake a mem-o-ry,” which was sung by Callahan while plinking a keyboard and wearing sunglasses to shield him from the overhead lights.
With the room finally dimmed near darkness, Callahan went all the way back to 1995, with a cryptic, unfurling version of the song “Bathysphere,” about living in the spherical deep-sea vessel. The song was covered in ‘96 by Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power), who, it’s said, was Callahan’s girlfriend, until, of course, one of them said goodbye.
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July 5, 2009
Live review: Maxwell at Bass Concert Hall
The term neo soul may be passé, but you couldn’t tell by the throngs of people queuing up outside Wednesday (July 1) at Bass Concert Hall to see Maxwell. You might have thought Barack Obama was speaking by the level of security as screeners were meticulously checking for recording devices and cameras at the front door, causing a bit of a delay. Inside the building was a hive of excitement; this was the first of only two Texas dates on Maxwell’s current “BLACKsummers’night” tour, and people were in from as far away as Houston and Dallas — two cities strangely absent from the tour schedule.
Irish soul singer Laura Izibor opened the show with a set from her debut album, “Let the Truth Be Told” (Atlantic). Her confident, soulful vocals soared on “Don’t Stay,” a wistful piano introspection on love that is long past its expiration date, and “Mmm,” a gospel affirmation of love’s power. When she emerged from behind her piano, accompanied by only her guitarist, Izibor delivered her hit single “From My Heart to Yours” (recently featured on an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”) with aplomb. No choreography, no props, just rich vocals that filled every inch of the concert hall. Opening for a big name like Maxwell can be daunting, but Izibor made the kind of impression every emerging artist wants. People took notice.
Izibor’s gritty, working class soul was a nice foil for Maxwell’s polished, “quiet storm” of a set. A decade after hitting it big with “Fortunate,” Maxwell still epitomizes the sound that defined the neo soul genre. “Till the Cops Come Knockin’” and Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” generated large sing-alongs with the crowd nearly eclipsing the band at points. “Sumthin Sumthin” fell a bit short despite Maxwell’s attempts to elicit any kind of a response from the crowd. In a moment frustration he asked if they were going to “take it to the Waffle House,” a comical admonition of their indifference.
The best performances of the night came from Maxwell’s newest effort, “BLACKsummers’night” (Columbia), due out July 7. Maxwell and his band turned out powerfully seductive renditions of the album’s standout tracks “Bad Habits,” the quintessential slow jam, and “Cold,” a sexy lament about a female player. Still, it was obvious during hits like “Fortunate” that the audience was there to groove to the older stuff.
Maxwell’s set was thankfully absent of over-the-top choreographed dance routines, although his bump-and-grind session with the mic stand during “Everwanting: To Want You To Want” brought a swarm of women to the front of the stage; some had to be politely shown back to their seats afterward. Maxwell is unapologetic about making music for the ladies. During Wednesday night’s performance he addressed the gentlemen in the crowd acknowledging that in the beginning of his career there was some “hating” going on.
“Now the guys realize I’m just here to get things started,” he said.
Indeed. Judging from the number of smiling couples exiting the elevator after Wednesday night’s performance, Maxwell’s set was surely a preamble to more than a few amorous evenings.
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June 29, 2009
EP review: Spoon 'Got Nuffin'
Spoon
‘Got Nuffin’ EP
(Merge)
A-
I love a good non-album single. They’re almost a subgenre of their own, a cult within the rock ‘n’ roll religion. The format is great — a brief musical comment, no more than three songs, none of the contextual weight of a full album. The only obligations are to be memorable and exist on their own. They hark back to a time when the single, not the album, was the key format. The slow death of the CD has given rise to the individually leaked track, sometimes far ahead of an album, but that’s not quite the same thing. Fugazi’s “Song Number One,” the Cure’s “Charlotte Sometimes” and, say, the Clash’s “Bankrobber” all deserve a place on a nerdy, “non-album singles” playlist. The Smiths seemed to be able to knock them off in their sleep.
Add “Got Nuffin” to that storied list. A driving drumbeat, a droning New Wave bassline, it’s all tension and torsion, with only flashes of fuzzy, spiky guitar solo. Britt Daniel’s high-strung voice flirts with liberation: “I’ve got nothin’ to loose but darkness and shadows/ Got nothing but emptiness and hang-ups.” It’s both classic Spoon and a small twist on their sound and does exactly what a non-album single should do — remind you that the band is still working and still making great music and get you excited for what is to come.
The B-sides are very much B-sides — experiments that escaped from the lab. “Tweakers” is a muddy, ultra-lo-fi mix of a stuttered drum loop and flashes of organ? guitar? It sounds like something that might morph into a higher-rez song in the future. “Stroke their Brains” sounds a heck of a lot like the Strokes and, to paraphrase Ron Burgundy in “Anchorman,” in no way is that a bad thing. None of this small pile of awesome is a bad thing.
Spoon plays three nights at Stubb’s, July 9-11. Information: stubbsaustin.com.
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CD review: Wilco 'Wilco (the Album)'
Wilco
‘Wilco (the Album)’ (Nonesuch)
B+
Jeff Tweedy’s career thrives on twists. He changes up like a major-league pitcher, sometimes slow (there wasn’t too much aesthetic space between the end of Uncle Tupelo and the beginning of Wilco), sometimes faster (the transition from “Being There” to “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” was quite a leap).
“Wilco (the Album)” (which opens with “Wilco (the Song)”) is the former and probably the better for it.
The past few Wilco albums have had the smell of Big Statement about them. This has been an issue for the band since NPR fans turned “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” into “Sgt. Pepper” for people who remember where they were when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. “A Ghost is Born” got artier and oddly heavier, that live album just smoked and “Sky Blue Sky” had folks looking up Steely Dan clips on YouTube. The title of this new one is fitting: It’s the first Wilco record in a long time that sounds exactly like a Wilco album.
Opener “Wilco (the Song)” rewrites the riff from the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For the Man” and assures you that Wilco will love you (don’t think we don’t appreciate it champ).
“Deeper Down” feels like creepy ’60s L.A. kitchen-sink pop — you keep expecting Dennis Hopper to wander past with a 17-year-old gal in tow. “You and I,” a nuanced duet between Tweedy and Canadian singer/Sesame Street guest Feist, shimmers and “You Never Know” splits the difference between country-rock and Cheap Trick.
The secret weapon, of course, is still guitarist Nels Cline, who can move from crafty interplay to noise rock heckler-spray in the same song (“Bull Black Noir”) and figure out a way to rectify the Stones idea of country with the Kinks’ in “Sunny Feeling.”
Dear Wilco fans, they still love you.
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CD review: Levon Helm 'Electric Dirt'
Levon Helm
‘Electric Dirt’ (Vanguard)
B-
Where 2007’s Grammy-winning “Dirt Farmer” ended a 25-year hiatus for Helm, the new “Electric Dirt” is less than two years coming. But where the new album lacks the airy depth and sense of purpose of its predecessor, it’s similarly a labor of love. In fine voice after a bout with throat cancer, Helm leads what sounds like a jam session on songs ranging from blues (two Muddy Waters covers), mountain music (“White Dove”) and dirty dixieland (Randy Newman’s “Kingfish”).
The problem with the covers is that they all pale to the originals. As the last member of the Band still making records, Helm is the godfather of Americana music, but too much of “Electric Dirt” rests on that title. In a sense, this album sounds like little more than an excuse to hit the road to promote it.
But two original tunes from producer Larry Campbell save the record. “Growing Trade,” co-written with Helm, is one of the best songs you’ll ever hear about the plight of family farmers, and “When I Go Away” is a melodic soul stirrer. More time between albums would’ve led to more songs like these.
Helm and his band make their Austin City Limits Festival debut at Zilker Park in October.
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CD review: Regina Spektor 'Far'
Regina Spektor
‘Far’ (Sire)
B+
What a difference some success makes. “Soviet Kitsch” (2004), Spektor’s first album that anyone noticed, lived up to its title — hipster dross for people who fetishized her Russian-Jewish émigré status. But the follow-up, “Begin to Hope,” was a stunner, a wonderful example of how a jump to a major label can focus a songwriter’s work into something both more mainstream and more odd — she was the sexy, spacey piano gal in the apartment next door, the one you can’t get your courage up to talk to even as you thrill to her odd little songs through the wall.
“Far” isn’t quite as revelatory as “Begin to Hope,” but she still balances the mundane and the profound, the serious and the goofy like a born comedian. She gets into God’s (gods’) head(s) around the time of Genesis on “Blue Lips,” and follows it with “Folding Chair,” on which she imitates dolphin squeaks. Croaks. “Machine” sounds like a machine, which isn’t wise, but “The Wallet” is a great little song about a lost one (“I found a wallet/ I found a wallet/inside were pictures of your small family”). Long may she write about whatever the heck pops into her head.
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June 17, 2009
Review: Grizzly Bear at the Parish
Brooklyn-based indie breakouts Grizzly Bear were last in Austin for South by Southwest, when they played a showcase at the Central Presbyterian Church. It was an intimate affair, with well-connected fans sitting cross-legged in the aisles, fighting for space.
Since then the band released the “Veckatimest,” the wildly successful follow-up to 2004’s “Yellow House,” have had their praises sung by just about every blogger and music critic on the planet and even covered “Graceland” (check out an mp3 of the performance here) at a Paul Simon tribute concert that also included appearances by Gillian Welch and Simon himself.
This time around they played the Parish to a crowd that was no less enthusiastic (although probably a bit more tipsy).
Opening was Here We Go Magic, a lo-fi psychedelic project led by Luke Temple. Fans of Grizzly Bear and bands such as Animal Collective will want to check out HWGM for its blend of folky rock songs and layers of percussion, vocal loops and other effects. Temple saved two standouts from the band’s self-titled debut, “Fangela” and “Tunnelvision,” for the end of the set. On “Fangela,” he did too good a job mimicking his muted studio recording; the song suffered a bit as a result. “Tunnelvision,” on the other hand, was sharper; members of the band sang the looped parts rather than producing them on a laptop.
Grizzly Bear set the tone for the evening with a pumped up “Southern Point” and “Cheerleader,” both from “Veckatimest,” and a discordant “Lullabye,” from “Yellow House.” The songs are simultaneously gentle and aggressive, with quiet folk tunes that erupt into noisy jams with haunting harmonies and catchy, not-quite-country rhythms.
The noisier side of the band won out for much of Tuesday’s set, with both Droste and Rossen elevating more sedate numbers with aggressive guitar work, especially the bluesy “Little Brother” and “Fine For Now.” Coupled with spacey lighting, it almost felt like a rock show. The punch of the rougher moments, of course, wouldn’t have been as moving without well-placed quiet, including the sleepy “Colorado,” as well as “He Hit Me,” a dark love song on which Droste’s smooth vocals absolutely shined.
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June 15, 2009
Review: White Rabbits at Emo's
Reviews of Brooklyn’s White Rabbits typically contain some mention of the role that Spoon’s Britt Daniel played in producing their sophomore full-length, “It’s Frightening.”
Daniel’s influence is certainly evident on the album: liberal doses of jingly acoustic guitar here and there with spacy sound effects filling in the gaps.
But it’s not necessarily fair to compare the band to Spoon. Whereas Spoon has allowed the influence of dub and Motown into their work, the White Rabbits have taken a less subtle path with drums leading the way.
The band’s performance Sunday night on Emo’s inside stage (which seemed a bit small for all six members) was similarly percussion-forward with Jamie Levinson and Matthew Clark both contributing to the drum-wallop that anchored the hour-long set.
Vocalist Stephen Patterson (who shares singing duties with guitarist Gregory Roberts) even got in on act during the encore, though he mostly stayed seated, where he complimented the drums with pounding left-hand keyboard lines.
The set included songs from “It’s Frightening” as well as the band’s debut album, “Fort Nightly.”
On “Lionesse,” a song from the new album that’s vaguely reminiscent of the James Bond theme, Patterson, feet flailing, whipped himself into a frenzy nearly worthy of Jerry Lee Lewis.
It was also during this song that the band did the best job of approximating the various electronic pings and whirs that pepper the album, elements that got lost at other points in the night amidst a more aggressive rock sound.
Of the new songs, “Percussion Gun,” is a clear standout and a crowd-pleaser, a powerful number that allows the band to showcase its strengths, but also a song that highlights the fact that the band is still evolving. As evidenced by their live performance, the White Rabbits are clearly already very good at what they do, but “Percussion Gun” hints at an even brighter future.
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June 10, 2009
Review: Matisyahu and Les Claypool at Austin Music Hall
Tuesday night’s “double feature” of Matisyahu and Les Claypool at Austin Music Hall proved an apt combination for two unique musicians who have more in common than an initial listen might suggest.
Claypool - bass virtuoso and founder of the eccentric alt-rock trio Primus - wasted no time displaying why he’s been voted the best player in popular music among both critics and musicians multiple times. Claypool’s hands slapped, sliced and popped his bass strings with machine-like precision. Finding the deepest pockets between grooves, Claypool’s fingers danced around diminished chords and minor triads; he basically delivered a musician’s clinic in modern techniques for creating some of the funkiest, sickest, most whacked out basslines.
Expanding upon the feel of the Isley Brothers’ seminal song “Fight the Power,” Claypool’s set closer “One Better” re-contextualized the groove into a heady rock-funk-hybrid jam. Claypool’s bass solo during the middle section of “One Better” proved one of the best I’ve heard; certainly jazz giant Charlie Mingus would have been proud.
(Gentle reader, if you do no other thing today, YouTube the video for Claypool’s set closer “One Better.”)
“Matisyahu … you’re the real deal,” Claypool said graciously after noting that Tuesday’s show was the last night of their tour together.
Unfortunately for Matisyahu, much of the audience either had a curfew or had to work early Wednesday because the half-full Music Hall really thinned out by the time he was midway through his set. Undaunted, Matisyahu incanted his muse, delivering a muscular set that combined reggae, hip-hop and rock in a fusion mode akin to the most inventive moments of both Sublime and 311.
Matisyahu’s ability to infuse his lyrics with themes from his Hasidic Jewish faith, as well as everyman self-empowerment anthems from Bob Marley and dancehall reggae stars of the late 1970s, resonates with a vast segment of audience that loves underground and “real” hip-hop, some being the same trip-happy kids who enjoy following Phish and the offshoot fragments of the Grateful Dead.
The audience members who did stick around were treated to an extended version of Matisyahu’s breakout top 40 hit “King Without a Crown” and an encore wherein Claypool returned to the stage, beating out submissive grooves on his Whamola (a single string bass instrument descended from the washtub bass) while Matisyahu beatboxed with dexterity. The collaborative encore highlighted Claypool’s and Matishyahu’s common strengths: the ability to make fans of both hip-hop and rock shake off the grit of the material world and get lost in the liberating groove of all things funky.
Matisyahu setlist
(Song titles for some of the new tracks could change; Matisyahu new album “Light” drops Aug. 25, 2009.)
Chop ‘Em Down
Close My Eyes
Warrior
Smash Lies
One Day
Youth
My Beating Heart (with Trevor Hall)
I Will Be Light
King Without A Crown
Encore
Beatbox session (with Les Claypool on Whamola)
Lime Tree
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June 8, 2009
Review: Animal Collective at Stubb's
By any reasonable measure, Animal Collective has hit it big with a certain strain of experimental pop music.
The Brooklyn-via-Baltimore trio sold out Stubb’s days after the concert was announced. Their newest album, “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” has sold more than 100,000 copies.
The Stubb’s crowd Friday night - part jam band fans, part Red River hipster kids, part frat-and-sorority looking folks and part parents waiting for the concert to be over to take their kids home - seemed pretty into every note, even maintaining a respectful silence (more or less) at the show’s quieter moments. This seemed no small feat considering just how chatty Austin crowds tend to be.
But it’s hard to think of a band this popular with a point of view this difficult to discern. Most of the music from members Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist was a gauzy electronic haze replete with sound effects, bent nature sounds and vague synths. Heavily reverbed vocals wandered in an out of the mix. The music was most effective when it was song-shaped or asserted itself rhythmically. Rave culture was very clearly part of the vibe, but chewy drums and techno blips kicked in too rarely. Too much of the set erred on the impressionistic; these guys were going to make you work for the meaning in their haze.
This is too bad: “Merriweather Post” has sold huge because of the stacked harmonies and ever poppier structures. This performance gave away or ignored too much of what makes the Collective individuals.
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Review: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy at Mohawk
Bonnie “Prince” Billy is nobody’s favorite musician. People don’t know the names of his albums. People don’t know the lyrics to his songs. They know him only as that guest musician on that other musician’s album, or as that oddball character in that indie film (he acts under his real name, Will Oldham), or merely as that wildly bearded, mysterious bald guy.
“Texas sweat is thin and insubstantial,” Billy said Friday at Mohawk, ensconced in humidity. He let on that he’s from Kentucky, which is so far from the epicenter of hip that it redefines the very term. “We Hoosiers bleed sweat,” he said.
Billy was speaking to a sold-out crowd that conveyed his widespread influence by virtue of the local musicians who comprised it. Bill Callahan. Christian Bland of the Black Angels. And siblings Black Nasty and Pink Nasty, both of whom have collaborated with Billy.
Six backing musicians—two drummers, the rest on guitar, violin, accordion and upright baby bass—swept Billy across the span of alt-country. They played only a couple of songs from his eminently accessible new album, “Beware.” Other songs were sparse and Gothic, with Billy, the consummate dramatist, waiting until the nanosecond before they fell apart in silence to deliver his lyrics. Other songs still were filthy and rocking, with Billy writhing his arms, hands, and head about in total communion with the music.
The tales he told were of virtue and sin, of the human condition, and of the complicated relationships between man and woman. One of them was “The Girl in Me.”
“There’s a girl in me,” Billy sang, “that makes me wear bright colors when I walk the streets.”
“There’s a man in me,” violinist Cheyenne Mize countered, “that wants to dominate you and put you in your place.”
If this particular song was any indication, there remained no mystery about it: Billy’s just down with his feminine side.
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June 1, 2009
CD review: Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses
Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses
‘Roadhouse Sun’
(Lost Highway)
Grade: A-
The reason Ryan Bingham songs sound so good on the car radio is he makes movin’ music. Listen to “Roadhouse Sun” on your computer and your legs will dance under the desk. This dense and driving album, the prematurely hoarse 28-year-old’s second on Lost Highway, will send you out for a six-pack or at least a ride with the windows down. Gotta get out of the house and play it loud!
Although he’s a former West Texas bullrider signed to a Nashville label, Bingham is no country act. His dust-choked vocals might prompt easy comparisons to Tom Waits, but Bingham isn’t really of the singer-songwriter variety, though he has a way with words. He’s a rocker in a cowboy hat, pure and simple, working in sonic textures as thick as a mix of hard living and hard partying.
The album establishes its Southern rock roots early, with opening track “Day Is Done” going from a wispy tease to a gutbucket rocker in about 15 seconds. “When the day is done/ I was born a bad man’s son,” Bingham sings, as Corby Schraub’s slide work approaches the fervor of sacred steel. Smart move to record with his touring musicians, who tear it up night after night and earn the front cover credit.
Drummer Matt Smith is a steadying force throughout, driving mandolin-flavored songs such as “Tell My Mother I Miss Her So” and “Country Roads” to keep the album’s tempo lively. There’s an underlying rage to “Roadhouse,” brought up top on the epic-sounding couplet of the politically charged “Endless Ways” diving into “Change Is,” with its furious twist of vocals and guitars.
Tender moments come with the solo acoustic “Snake Eyes,” which Bingham delivers with dramatic flair, saying more with his voice breaking than with the lyrics about what it’s like when all the love is gone. “Rollin’ Highway Blues” is another acoustic track seemingly placed just so the rockers don’t run into each other and break something.
Producer Marc Ford (ex-Black Crowes), who also helmed previous LP “Mescalito,” deserves credit for creating a thick sound that doesn’t slow things down, even on the thudding “Bluebird,” a song that never had a chance.
Bingham will play a solo acoustic set Thursday, opening for the Flatlanders at the Texas Union Ballroom. After rocking out to “Roadhouse,” I’d much rather see him with the band.
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CD review: Black Moth Super Rainbow
Black Moth Super Rainbow
‘Eating Us’
(Graveface)
Grade: B+
With the current influx of synth-friendly indie bands, it’s a good time to be Black Moth Super Rainbow, a rural Pennsylvania-based psychedelic outfit with a distinctly darker and more twisted sound than many of their disco-leaning peers. For “Eating Us,” their fourth album and first hi-fi recording, they recruited psych producer extraordinaire Dave Fridmann, whose production credits include the Flaming Lips, MGMT and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, among many others. The result is a polished and spacey mix of electronic and organic sounds: vocoder vocals and eerie synth effects atop human-powered drums, tambourine, guitar and even banjo. Add to that disturbing lyrics such as “neon lemonade/eat my face away,” and a few upbeat moments (“Tooth Decay”), and you get a chill-out album for fans of mind-melting dystopian visions.
(Black Moth Super Rainbow performs at the Mohawk Tuesday night with School of Seven Bells and Balmorhea. $10 adv, $12 door)
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May 24, 2009
CD review: Iron and Wine
Iron & Wine
‘Around the Well’
(Sub Pop)
A
Sam Beam of the Dripping Springs-based folk group Iron & Wine is deceptively prolific. Though he has released only three full-length albums since his debut in 2002, his catalog is overflowing with a seemingly unending stream of EPs, singles, a live album, a collaborative effort with Southwestern rockers Calexico and contributions to various film sound tracks.
No other song epitomizes Beam’s penchant for musical appetizers quite like “The Trapeze Swinger,” which was recorded for the 2004 film “In Good Company.” The song, a nine-minute collage of some of Beam’s favorite themes — childhood, lost love, death and religion — is representative of his best song writing and has become a staple at Iron & Wine shows. It’s not surprising, then, that the title of Iron & Wine’s new two-disc rarities compilation, “Around the Well,” is taken from a verse in the fan favorite.
The first disc in the collection is mostly culled from singles and demos recorded at the same time as early releases such as “The Creek Drank the Cradle.” That some of these songs didn’t fit on the albums speaks to the strength of the material that was actually released. The first track, “Dearest Forsaken,” a bluesy, bare-bones lament, originally appeared as a single along with “Call Your Boys,” which also appears here. Both songs are as strong as almost anything on “Creek.”
Disc one also includes three covers (a fourth, New Order’s “Love Vigilantes,” appears on the second disc): Stereolab’s “Peng! 33,” the Flaming Lips’ “Waitin’ For A Superman,” and “Such Great Heights‘“by the Postal Service. Of the covers, “Peng” and “Love Vigilantes” score higher, mainly because Beam manages to infuse them with a healthy dose of his sing-along campfire twang. Though “Such Great Heights,” which was recorded for the “Garden State” soundtrack and subsequently appeared in a psychedelic M&Ms ad, sounds pretty atop Beam’s sparse guitar, it doesn’t have the same spirit as his original material.
The second disc, most of which was produced by Brian Deck (whose credits include “Our Endless Numbered Days” and “The Shepherd’s Dog”), is a heftier collection of songs. Included alongside “The Trapeze Swinger” are “Belated Promise Ring,” “God Made the Automobile” and “Homeward, These Shoes,” all unreleased tracks also recorded for the “In Good Company” soundtrack. “Promise Ring,” a bouncy, midtempo love song with a delightful piano solo, is the standout here, but the songs all work so well together that it’s not hard to imagine them having been released as their own EP built around “The Trapeze Swinger.”
In addition to the soundtrack material, another highlight of the second disc is the “Shepherd’s Dog”-era “Kingdom of the Animals,” a spacey gospel-style tune brought to life by layers of guitar, piano, drums and accordion. That said, this collection might work better for fans already familiar with the band’s other releases, as it’s more of a companion piece to the catalog than an introduction to the work.
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CD review: Phoenix
Phoenix
‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’
(V2)
B
Say this for French alternative rock quartet Phoenix — they certainly are confident. “Lisztomania,” the opening song and first single off their fourth album, has a title and lyrics that allude to the mania that once accompanied public performances by 19th-century Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt. Whether Phoenix deserves the throngs of screaming fans that besieged Liszt’s concerts is up for debate, but “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” makes a convincing argument. Bubbly and effervescent, it’s an album short on substance but long on charm. The aforementioned opener, a bouncy number tailor-made for high school dance parties, perfectly encapsulates the album’s appeal. The similarly peppy “1901” and “Fences” keep the momentum going, but the album nearly derails entirely with the two-part “Love Like A Sunset,” a largely instrumental bit of sub-Sigur Ros meandering. Although the back half never quite recaptures the energy, even with winning tracks such as “Rome” and ‘“Armistice,” “Wolfgang” still packs enough delights to make it Phoenix’s best yet. Those looking for a pleasant slice of summertime pop to listen to poolside could do much worse.
Phoenix plays the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Oct. 2.
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May 22, 2009
CD review: The Belleville Outfit 'Time to Stand'
(The Belleville Outfit at Shady Grove in 2008. From left: Jeff Brown, Conner Forsyth, Rob Teter, Phoebe Hunt, Marshall Hood, and Jon Konya. Photo by Tammy Perez/For the American-Statesman)
The Belleville Outfit
‘Time to Stand’
(Self-released)
B+
The Belleville Outfit urgently declares its mission statement against a crescendo of stuttering bluegrass swing: “So listen with your gleaming ears, all who walk our broken land,” lead vocalist Phoebe Hunt sings imperviously as the title track’s cascading piano and fiddle duel. “You’ve crawled, you’ve walked, you’ve run away, but now it’s time to stand.” Empowerment snowballs. Clearly building on momentum from last year’s promising debut, “Wanderin’,” this rapidly rising local sextet now forcefully puts pedal to metal.
Velocity rarely wavers. “Time to Stand,” a joyous collection measuring equal parts youthful bravado and cautious hindsight, resonates almost start to finish. Its trump card: electrifying ambition. Kamikaze fretwork boosts both complex arrangements (“Nothing’s Too Good for My Baby,” “Outside Looking Out”) and easier fits (“Let Me Go,” “Flying On”). The spring-loaded group’s effortless interplay makes it nearly incomprehensible that it formed less than two years ago.
Listen for occasional flashes of narrative and poetic depth. Sharply cut lines particularly mushroom “Two Days of Darkness” and “Once and for All” from snapshots into screenplays. “It can catch you in a funny way, like a rainy day or a ricochet,” songwriter and guitarist Robert Teter sings on the latter. “And leave you fallen on your face or blind. All I need is solid ground, but all I see is sand around.” Peel that imagery straight off John Hiatt’s back porch.
Unfortunately, it’s not aces across the board. The serviceable but largely unremarkable ballads — “Love Me Like I Love You,” “She Went Away” and “Will This End in Tears” — slightly dilute the album’s collective potency. Let’s forgive and forget. The Belleville Outfit’s unwavering adventurousness fades missteps to black, spotlighting instead high water marks like Teter’s immediately familiar “Safe.” Count on that melody alone to score plenty of new fans next month at Bonnaroo. The Belleville Outfit plays Waterloo Records at 5 p.m. May 27 (waterloorecords.com) and May 30 at Momo’s.
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May 18, 2009
CD review: Eminem - 'Relapse'
Eminem
‘Relapse’
(Interscope)
B-
“I’m just so (expletive) depressed/I just can seem to get out this slump/ If I could just get over this hump/ But I need something to pull me out this dump” - Eminem, “Beautiful”
Look, we understand Marshall Mathers has had a rough couple of years. His early mentor and best pal Proof died in 2006. Rumors of grief-driven drug use and food binges abounded. Chances of a comeback seemed slim and shady, especially given the strangely placeholding feel of his 2004 album “Encore.”
But there’s depressed and then there’s just being a jerk and there’s no particular evidence on “Relapse” that Eminem knows or cares about the difference. The horror-show lyrics which seemed funny and raw a decade ago, when Eminem was the most galvanizing figure in popular music, seem like weak beer here.
There’s Em as an escaped psychopath, whacked on Klonopin going on a black-out killing spree (“3 a.m.”).
There’s Em turning a rape at the hands of his stepfather into a sitcom in “Insane.”
There’s Em yammering about Mom and her pill problem again (“My Mom”) and complaining about Mariah Carey (“Bagpipes from Baghdad”). Carey seems to have gotten over him; he should probably do the same. Em’s mom probably has moved on, too.
As anyone who has seen the unfortunate video to “We Made You” can attest, for a guy who has spent the last couple of years on his rear watching TV, his cultural targets aren’t exactly up to date. (The most recent one is Sarah Palin, which is at least from the past 12 months.)
Two things saves this slab of bad vibes from complete degradation. The first is Dr. Dre, one of the best beat-smiths who ever lived. Dre discovered Mathers and with him rediscovered himself; Eminem enabled Dre’s career to have the third act virtually unheard of in hip-hop. Having him back at the reins, supplying beats for all but one song, gives the songs deep focus bass and rich drums.
The second is Em’s withering disdain for the celebrity culture he knows he’s a part of. When he takes cheap shots at folks like Jessica Simpson and Kim Kardashian, he must know he’s not that much farther up the celebrity food chain. It doesn’t make up for all the raping and killing and drug-gobbling in the lyrics, which he really should be moving past by now. But it does give “Relapse” a savage cynicism that makes this symphony of self-loathing one of the year’s nastiest albums.
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CD reviews: Passion Pit, John Vanderslice
Passion Pit
‘Manners’
(Frenchkiss)
B+
It’s been a big year for Boston-based psych-poppers Passion Pit, who followed up last year’s well-received EP, a catchy DIY effort recorded by frontman Michael Angelakos as a Valentine’s Day gift for his girlfriend, with a strong showing at SXSW and a tour that will have the band on stage at several high-profile festivals, including Austin City Limits in October. The tour comes on the heels of their full-length debut, “Manners,” on which the full band joins Angelakos for a decidedly more polished set of songs, with the exception of the standout “Sleepyhead,” a holdover from the EP. The production, which is more reminiscent of bloated mainstream pop recordings than of the band’s indie roots, threatens to spoil the album, but Angelakos gets a pass on the strength of his introspective song writing style, which has matured since the release of the EP. Highlights include the punchy, synth-heavy “Little Secrets,” as well as “The Reeling,” an ’80s-esque dance number destined for remixing.
— Peter Mongillo
Passion Pit plays June 3 at Emo’s and in October at the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
John Vanderslice
‘Romanian Names’
(Dead Oceans)
B+
After two musically elegant but lyrically clunky slices of post-9/11 liberal ennui, 2004’s “Pixel Revolt” and 2007’s “Emerald City,” San Francisco’s John Vanderslice returns with a vengeance to relevance in the intriguing “Romanian Names.”
Vanderslice largely abandons politics on his seventh album, settling instead for a series of intimate torch songs that combine his signature hi-fi analog sound with compellingly enigmatic lyrics. Opener “Tremble and Tear” combines propulsive acoustic guitar with vocals awash in reverb for a striking pop gem. Vanderslice even ventures outside his usual boundaries with “D.I.A.L.O.” and “Too Much Time,” both featuring a rare appearance of synthesizers.
That’s not to say Vanderslice never gets dark — the album’s best track, the violent “Forest Knolls,” features a constant heartbeat that evokes Edgar Allan Poe. But even the saddest tracks contain a glimmer of hope.
When Vanderslice pledges to look up to the nautically themed Carina Constellation in the superb song of the same name, there’s a sense that he’s trying to look as brightly on the future as he does on the stars in the Southern Sky. — Patrick Caldwell
John Vanderslice plays in October at the Austin City Limits Music Festival
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Live review: TV on the Radio at Stubb's
First, the TV.
TV on the Radio singer Tunde Adebimpe is a stellar frontman. Saturday night at a packed Stubb’s, he danced around the stage and sang with one arm flailing, his movements varying between metronome and the more obtuse time-keeping of a free jazz drummer - you sort of knew when the arm was going to flail out, but it was always a cool surprise when it did. As this band keeps on its upward popularity swing, his thick, squarish eyeglasses could become as iconic as Kanye’s preppie chic or Tim McGraw’s hat. He’s a riveting guy to watch and he’s about 90 percent of the band’s live stage presence.
Now, the radio.
I have seen TV on the Radio a handful of times in Austin and once at Lollapalooza — not once has the sound been any good. It’s tough to tell if this is the band’s design or if it’s just Austin, a town with far fewer good sounding rooms than the sentence “the Live Music Capital of the World” should indicate.
This was no different at Stubb’s, a venue with a usually reliable mix.
While TV on the Radio albums try to blur sound sources — is that a guitar? A synth? Tunde’s voice? — live, it turned into a baffling smear with Tunde’s vocals, sometimes treated, often raw, vanishing in and out of the mix. Opening with “Dirtywhirl,” lyrics were largely imperceptible, which is too band for a band that has prided itself on wordy smarts. Songs came alive when there was a groove that could be perceived all over the venue, kicking things up a notch, but mostly the sound coming from the stage blended smeary guitar, a sax and ambient bass. From the level of chatter in the crowd - rarely low at outdoor shows, but especially noticeable here - few outside of those at the front of the stage could be bothered to pay attention to the music. (For the record, outside of the first few rows, the sound seemed least awful on the stairs near the stage left bar.)
Even those who enjoyed it seemed surprised by the band’s short set, which lasted an hour, plus a three-song encore. Feel free to insert “this food is terrible and portions are too small joke here.”
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May 14, 2009
First impressions of Wilco (The Album)
On Tuesday, Wilco gave fans a reason to slack off at work by streaming the new album, ‘Wilco (The Album),’ which won’t be released until June 30 on Nonesuch. If you haven’t already, check it out here. Though a stream isn’t the best way to take in the new material, at first listen the album has an energy that was for the most part lacking on “Sky Blue Sky.” Jeff Tweedy seems to have dropped the sense of resignation that hung over the last album for a more relaxed (there is a camel wearing a hat on the cover) and reflective approach, with a strong set of songs that at times recall the band’s “Summerteeth” and “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” days.
Fans that are looking for the band to continue to push the boundaries of their sound aren’t going to find that here. Considering the self-titling of the album and the meta-title track, Wilco (the song), they recognize this, a move that would have left them open to criticism that they were trying too hard to sound like themselves if the material wasn’t so good. There’s something for everyone, from the obligatory, emotional relationship song “One Wing” and the super sweet duet with Feist, “You and I,” to the summer barbecue rock of “You Never Know” and “Sonny Feeling.” The band also stretches out its sonic chops, especially on the tense “Bull Black Nova,” where a chorus of abstract guitars build over foreboding drums.
What do you think of the new music? Tell us in the comments below.
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CD Review: Green Day, '21st Century Breakdown'
Green Day
“21st Century Breakdown” (Reprise)
B+
Green Day has been compared to a long list of bands. Back in the early 90s, they all but embodied the Bay Area’s high-energy pop punk, a mix of the Ramones’ formalism and the Buzzcocks’ devotion to a good hook.
When they went all major label with 1994’s “Dookie,” punk don Ian MacKaye referred to them and the Offspring as the Ugly Kid Joe’s of the ’90s, which might be the meanest thing said about a band IN the ‘90.
Then came a bunch of very professional rock records that made Green Day seem like any other bubblegrunge act, a total prom-theme hit single (“Time of Your Life”) and MacKaye looking prescient.
Oops. “American Idiot” (2004) made them seem political where they once seemed goofy, ambitious where they once seemed tossed off, and was an album that insisted you listen to it all the way trough, which seemed unwise now that we all lived in Downloadland. It sold 12 million copies worldwide.
Which made all of Generation X, who remembered “Dookie” as a fluke, say a collective, “Wait, what?”
Like the Kinks, who seemed to make conceptual rock opera after conceptual rock opera there for awhile, “21st Century Breakdown” feels like “American Idiot 2: Anarchic Boogalooo.”
Billie Joe Armstrong, clearly energized by his career’s surreal lease on life, makes “Breakdown” into pure pomp for now people, power pop overflowing with pianos and giant guitars and sweep and lost souls born on the Fourth of July all packed into 18 songs in 69 minutes - only a little longer than an episode of “Lost” and about as baffling. (The album also rhymes “American dream” and “American scream,” which probably should be illegal.)
Yoked to some sort of story about lovers, Armstrong still worships punk rock goddesses (“”Last of the American Girls”) is confused by religion (“East Jesus Nowhere”), wants to write annoying sub-Beatles ballads (“Last Night on Earth”) and knows how to knock out a killer anthem (“Know Your Enemy,” which will occupy what’s left of rock radio for the rest of the summer). Over and over, the songs aim high and meet their goals. Most banks can’t even do that these days.
Like Pete Townshend in the Who, he’s lucky to have rhythm section pals like Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool; those two haven’t lost a step. Like U2 in 2001, he’s lucky to be here and wants to do something wide-screen and out-sized with his time. Like almost nobody else in rock, he makes it seem like fun to be so ambitious, as if it’s something we should all want to be. No small feat, that.
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May 12, 2009
CD Review: Steve Earle, 'Townes' (New West)
Steve Earle
“Townes”
New West
A funny thing happened to Steve Earle recently: Barack Obama was elected president. Suddenly, the politics that defined the past few years of Earle’s career could be subsumed. Earle could get back to his first love: songwriters he would love to write as well as.
This is an exaggeration, of course. Surely Earle planned to do this 15-track tribute to Townes Van Zandt before Obama won. But if the reality of an Obama administration means nobody ever has to hear “Condi, Condi” again in favor of, say, “Brand New Companion,” so much the better. And who are we kidding? Most everyone with a beat-up acoustic guitar and a notebook worships Van Zandt, perhaps Texas’s ultimate songwriter’s songwriter.
It’s hard to tell if it takes guts to open such a tribute with “Pancho and Lefty” or it’s so glaringly obvious as to be a little too on the nose. Van Zandt’s best-known tune is also one of the most mystifying story songs ever written, a narrative as obtuse as it is riveting.
Sadly, the lyrics also veer toward incomprehensibility in Earle’s rough voice, a problem that plagues this well-curated set. Songs such as “White Freightliner Blues” and the otherwise excellent “Loretta” fare even worse, kicking into high gear when clearer backing vocals kick in (one voice belongs to Earle’s son Justin Townes Earle - Steve REALLY likes Townes a lot). Much like (in fact, exactly like) Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s take on Van Zandt’s “Nothing,” which transformed that spare tune into a guitar thunder storm (just like Led Zeppelin used to do with the blues), Earle turns “Lungs” into an electric stomper, while “Delta Momma Blues” is acoustic beauty.
Reverently played and expertly arranged, “Townes” suffers only from Earle’s own weakness as a singer. And if this well-meaning album does nothing but points everyone back to Van Zandt’s recently re-released studio output, we all owe Earle a beer and a shirt with Townes’ face done Obama-HOPE style. B
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May 11, 2009
CD review: Meat Puppets
Matthew Rogers
Meat Puppets
‘Sewn Together!’
(Megaforce)
B
Thanks to their early association with legendary hardcore punk label SST Records, rock trio the Meat Puppets have long shared a place in the history books among ’80s underground success stories such as Hüsker Dü, the Minutemen, Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. But where those bands combined crushing guitars with alternating waves of rage and melancholia, the Meat Puppets, led by brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood, have blended punk with country and psychedelia to forge an oddball take on Americana that many a desperate music critic has dubbed “cowpunk.”
The lovably easy-going, midtempo form of rock has served them well since breakout 1984 album “Meat Puppets II” and makes for a disarming listen in their 12th and latest, “Sewn Together.” Across 12 rambling, charming, gently psychedelic tracks of alt-country, the Puppets reassert themselves as an act whose work is rarely grandiose or revelatory but a low-key treat best enjoyed casually on the porch with a beer in hand. When Curt Kirkwood advises us on “I’m Not Into You” that “The things I say and do/Should be of no concern to you,” it serves less as angry rejoinder and more as a good-natured guide to listening.
The opening, title track sets an ideal precedent for the rest of the album, with its traditional Meat Puppets guitar/bass interplay and sing-along harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place on “Sesame Street.” Similarly sunny crowd-pleaser “I’m Not Into You” is a rollicking country ditty with a toe-tapping banjo solo. Single “Rotten Shame,” an upbeat rocker imbued with a catchy guitar riff, might be the band’s best attempt at an accessible crowd-pleaser since 1994’s minor radio hit “Backwater.”
The many forays into ballads are less successful. “Go to Your Head” commits popular music’s cardinal sin — being boring — while closer “Love Mountain,” winning tambourine aside, packs an album’s worth of cliches into four minutes.
Fortunately, the missteps are few and far between. Even weak tracks like “Clone” sport odd pleasures, like its nonsensical, surreal fairy tale lyrics, or the cheerful use of whistling on the otherwise somewhat-typical honky-tonk tune “The Monkey and the Snake.” That leaves “Sewn Together” with more than enough high points to recommend it to longtime Meat Puppets fans, though newcomers should start with the more consistent “Meat Puppets II” or “Up on the Sun” and double back only if they like what they hear.
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CD reviews: Mike Farris, Jason Lytle, The Grateful Dead
Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
‘Shout! Live!’ (Columbia)
C+
Farris is a notoriously fiery live performer, but this sounds like “American Idol” goes to church. The former Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies singer possesses an impressively acrobatic voice, and the band’s terrific, but I’m not feeling the soul.
Backed vocally by gospel ringers the McCrary Sisters, who take over on “I’ll Take You There,” Farris traffics in melisma that becomes like vocal traffic over the course of this album. The Larry Bird of hard gospel music he’s not.
This Sunday at a little white church in Fayetteville, Roy Green of the Soul Invaders, not to mention hundreds of other singing preachers, will blow this glorified bar band record away. — Michael Corcoran
Jason Lytle
‘Yours Truly, the Commuter!’ (Anti)
B-
After his band Grandaddy ended its run in 2005, frontman Jason Lytle moved from California to Montana, where he began working on an autobiographical solo effort. While the resulting album doesn’t stray all that far from the lush electronic pop production of his Grandaddy efforts, the most powerful moments come from the sparser arrangements, where Lytle seems more comfortable bearing his soul.
He begins the opening, title track singing, “last thing I heard I was left for dead,” a reaffirmation to himself and his fans that he is still capable of making music. Similarly, on the piano ballad “I Am Lost (And the Moment Cannot Last),” Lytle paints a moving picture of a musician struggling to regain stable footing. Unfortunately, weaker tracks like “Brand New Sun” and “It’s the Weekend” give the album an uneven feel. — Peter Mongillo
The Grateful Dead
‘To Terrapin: Hartford ‘77’ (Rhino)
A
Many fans consider the 1977 spring tour to be the best run of the Grateful Dead’s storied career. This three-CD recording of the last show on that tour lives up to that hype with a set full of vintage Dead moments, including a soaring 19-minute ‘Sugaree,’ as well as a near-perfect version of the operatic ‘Terrapin Station,’ a song that was then new to the band’s repertoire. A groove-heavy ‘Not Fade Away’ has enough bounce that it might almost be confused for Jerry Garcia’s more soulful solo work if the song didn’t segue into the emotional ‘Wharf Rat.’ A lot of Deadheads probably already have a copy of this show, but the crisp quality of this recording makes it worth a listen. — P.M.
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May 5, 2009
Review: Sonny Rollins at Bass Concert Hall
The anticipation was palpable Sunday night in the recently renovated Bass Concert Hall. After a pre-performance lecture by University of Texas professor Jeff Hellmer, the crowd was primed to hear one of the great icons of ’50s hard-bop, Sonny Rollins. Much of the crowd was already on its feet as the 78-year-old tenor player emerged from the wings with his band, applauding wildly for a man who has been a transformative force in jazz for more than 60 years.
With such fanfare it was a shame the night began with a bit of technical trouble as Rollins appeared to have problems with his microphone. After starting the band off on a syncopated Latin groove, Rollins’s first solo was nearly inaudible. The band recognized this and immediately brought everything down a notch, but it was still a strain to hear much of anything. After a quick microphone change during trombonist Clifton Anderson’s solo, Rollins reinserted himself into the mix, this time in full voice, and took a second ride much to the delight of the crowd. He smiled and just shrugged.
Rollins might not have the stamina of a younger man, but time hasn’t done much to diminish his tone. After a few short flourishes to test out the new microphone, Rollins let out a long, sustained note that filled up every inch of the concert hall and brought the crowd and the band back to life. A master of motivic development, Rollins wasted no time in getting “out” before returning to the song’s theme for ideas. Guitarist Bobby Broom’s first solo started out and ended way out, landing somewhere just east of the highway. His solo on “My One and Only Love,” however, was a quiet heart-breaker, silencing the crowd with all the warmth and tenderness the song’s lyrics suggest. Rollins by comparison turned in a long, rather playful solo on this tune, vacillating between slow, passionate phrases and wildly frenetic ones. By the song’s end the crowd was on its feet again for the first standing ovation of the night.
Rollins spent much of the evening dialoguing with his band, chewing up licks from the phenomenal young drummer Kobe Watkins and percussionist Victor See-Yuen and spitting them back. During a calypso number in the middle of the set, Rollins and Anderson improvised simultaneously, occasionally arriving at the same place and harmonizing beautifully. Anderson was on fire Sunday night, at times faithfully quoting Charlie Parker, at times sounding like he was from Mars.
Bass Concert Hall’s recent acoustic redesign was impressive as every thump of the congas and every muted guitar chord was right out front. The crowd’s clapping to the last song of the set, the Chubby Checker classic “Calypso Rock,” sounded as crisp as Watkins’s snare, as if it were mixed through the sound board. Afterwards the crowd stood and applauded loudly and with enough conviction to bring Rollins and company out for an encore of “It’s a Low-Down Dirty Shame,” which featured a gravely Rollins on vocals.
Sixty years has seen the coming and going of most of Rollins’ musical contemporaries - Miles, Coltrane and, most recently, Max Roach. Still, time hasn’t confined him to the rocking chair nor has it made him artistically irrelevant. Rollins turned in a strong performance Sunday night proving he still has the chops that made him famous, and the rich, gilded tone that’s made him timeless.
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May 4, 2009
CD review: St. Vincent
St. Vincent
‘Actor’
(4AD)
B+
There’s a great song from good old 1995 by the (currently Austin-based) songwriter Bill Callahan, aka Smog, called “Prince Alone in the Studio.” Broad and epic, with dramatic strings and stately pace, it imagines Prince perfecting a song. (“It’s three a.m. Prince hasn’t eaten in eighteen hours … It’s four a.m./ And he finally gets that guitar track right.”)
One pictures Annie Clark, former axwoman for the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, alone in the studio working on “Actor,” hour after lonely hour, adding layers of guitar, sometimes heavily distorted, sometimes sparkly. (There are a few additional players here and there, but much of the album was played by her.) You picture Clark double tracking woozy vocals, adding blippy drum machines, wordless choral chants and ethereal synths until it’s just right.
This is a dense, busy album disguised as a languid one, alternately beautiful and gritty and too often too fussy by half. It feels and sounds precisely done, the sound perhaps going through her head on the faintly creepy album cover, where Clark resembles a very lifelike android.
Opener “The Stranger” mixes choirs and smeary amp overdrive, a catchy chorus that goes “Paint the black hole blacker” and this chunky riff that sounds shipped in from a whole other song. “Save Me From What I Want” pulls the same choral trick with glassy, rainy guitar over breakbeats and spacey synths. It’s proggy stuff, indebted to (or recalling) such disciplined rock composers as Robert Fripp, Jim O’Rourke or Bjork.
There are straight-forward moments: “Marrow” futzes with a stiff digital funk, “Actor Out of Work” pounds along Krautrock style, while the chilled-out piano ballad “The Party” channels her inner Carole King. But most of the time, when things get too pretty, she crashes the party with some quick-cut noise guitar or deep focus percussion, as on the creepy, soundtracky “The Bed.”
“Actor,” which hits stores tomorrow, performs complicated moves that reward with multiple listens. Like Callahan says of Prince, “And when it’s all complete/ He feels like a hunter on the street.” Wouldn’t be surprised if Clark did, too.
(‘Actor’ listening party, 5 p.m. Tuesday at Mohawk.)
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CD reviews: Telekinesis, Conor Oberst
Telekinesis
‘Telekinesis!’
(Merge 2008)
B
Seattle-based pop-rock outfit Telekinesis is the brainchild of Michael Benjamin Lerner, who provides vocals and plays all of the instruments on the band’s full-length debut. Lerner comes across as a rosy optimist, especially when he’s belting out lines like “I know we’ll make it through the really hard parts,” on “Look to the East.” Musically, he’s not exactly a depressive either. There is an airy feel to many of the songs, which is due at least in part to producer and Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, who has also produced Portland-based pop rockers the Decemberists, among others. Airiness doesn’t always work in Lerner’s favor, however.
“Awkward Kisser,” a twee ode to young love, falls short compared with stronger rockers such as “Coast of Carolina,” with a more aggressive guitar part that balances out the sweet-sounding vocals.
(Telekinesis plays May 23 at Mohawk).
Conor Oberst and Mystic Valley Band
‘Outer South’
(Merge 2009)
B
With Ryan Adams on hiatus, Conor Oberst has reclaimed the title of ‘most prolific singer/songwriter,’ following up last summer’s self-titled shedding of his Bright Eyes moniker with “Outer South.” The Mystic Valley Band gets a more prominent billing this time around, with other members sharing singing and songwriting duties. “Outer South” also finds the band straying from its country-rock roots, with mixed results. The playful pop of “Air Mattress” and the electric blues of “Roosevelt Room” seem slightly out of place next to the catchy mid-tempo stomper “Nikorette,” where we find Oberst singing, in his own lust-for-life style, “I don’t wanna wear no dead man’s suit.” Another highlight, the haunting “White Shoes,” adds a bit of needed gravity in the spirit of Oberst’s earlier work. “Outer South” isn’t Oberst at his best, but it’s enough to satisfy fans and maybe even earn him a few new ones.
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Review: Death Cab for Cutie at Austin Music Hall
Seattle, Wash.’s venerable indie-ethos rock band Death Cab for Cutie busted out their best Austin show in years Friday night at Austin Music Hall.
Between South by Southwest, Austin City Limits Festival and regular album support tour stops, Death Cab has always put on perfunctory performances, but rarely have they been “one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life.” Seemed it always took them at least half their set to get warmed up. Once during a two-night-stand at Stubb’s on their “Transatlanticism” tour, they didn’t really begin to gel until their final song.
This time it appeared Death Cab had stepped up all elements of their tour production into a multi-bus, multi-semi-trailer truck affair. The PA’s sound engineering was on point (except in the far back) and the stage lighting was choreographed to accentuate the mood and tenor of the songs, creating displays that highlighted crescendos and emotions.
Another noticeable difference in the band’s performance was the depth of their catalog, allowing them to perform a crushingly emotional song-cycle. Frontman Ben Gibbard has always been a songwriter’s songwriter, and more than 10 years of crafting some of the most beloved melancholy indie-pop in the genre has built the band’s song collection into something deep and overwhelmingly powerful. All those years of touring (with basically the same lineup) has also allowed the band to become tighter than many of their peers. The members of Death Cab for Cutie have matured into consummate rock ‘n’ roll professionals.
Gibbard appeared more svelte than in past shows, performing with a relaxed air of assuredness. Highlights included the Los Angeles send-up “Why’d You Want to Live Here” and the dusted-off gem “Photobooth.” The coup de grace encore was delivered with two of their best songs, “A Movie Script Ending” and “Transatlanticism,” Gibbard’s mellifluous voice pulling at heartstrings like a blustery winter break-up.
Setlist:
The Employment Pages
Your Heart Is An Empty Room
The New Year
Why’d You Want to Live Here
President of What?
Crooked Teeth
Photobooth
Company Calls
Grapevine Fires
I Will Possess Your Heart
I Will Follow You Into The Dark
Title and Registration
Cath
Long Division
The Sound of Settling
Soul Meets Body
Scientist Studies
Encore:
A Diamond and A Tether
A Movie Script Ending
Transatlanticism
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May 1, 2009
Review: Sugarland at Erwin Center
(Jennifer Nettles (left) and Kristian Bush of Sugarland perform Thursday at Frank Erwin Center. Photo by Thao Nguyen/AMERICAN-STATESMAN.)
Multi-instrumentalist Kristian Bush’s fedora foretold Thursday evening’s fortunes: Sugarland brought a different kind of hat act to the Frank Erwin Center. Call it thinking man’s mainstream country.
While other radio stars tap kegs for hits, the best moments on this Grammy-winning duo’s latest, “Love on the Inside” — nominated for a fistful of honors at next month’s CMT music awards — spike narrative arcs with unexpected turns. “The whole thing seems like Einstein’s dreams,” Jennifer Nettles sang, as the seven-piece band formed an intimate crescent moon for “Genevieve.” “See the smoke start to shiver. I’d do anything just to forget her.” Easily imagine credentialed folkies like the Indigo Girls, minus the spit-shined “na, na, na, na” refrains, turning that out.
“As a songwriter, you’ve gotta work three times as hard so it doesn’t come out like a (bad) country song,” Bush told us last week. “Sometimes you have to choose the writer-like reference — literary, pop culture, whatever — that not everybody’s gonna get.” Of course, shaking snake oil and roses and a fortuneteller’s son off a coffee-stained page (“We Run”) won’t jangle an arena’s rafters.
Explosive covers will. Sugarland’s spot-on reading of Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” and the ebullient encore B-52’s “Love Shack” — not to mention quick-takes on R.E.M.’s Nightswimming” and Madonna’s “Holiday” — provided easy highlights. (Let’s forgive Nettles’ hokey Kate Pierson impersonation.) Approval greeting the band’s own “Something More” nearly imploded the stage, thanks to a background video swooshing past local landmarks like Artz’s and the Horseshoe Lounge.
Shame they cut the scripted set at 90 minutes flat. It was far too short. Consider: There was no pinch-hitter for Eric Hutchinson, who dropped off the three-band bill on Wednesday. Exiting fans grumbled that Billy Currington, whose deeply soulful cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” killed, wasn’t enough. Next time, Sugarland, at least throw in that cover of “Life in a Northern Town” for good measure.
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April 29, 2009
Review: Mates of State at La Zona Rosa
Reviews of Mates of State often begin with some variation on the idea that even though everyone says the band is too cute to be taken seriously, they’re actually really good. It’s true. Tuesday night at La Zona Rosa, the husband-and-wife drums and keys duo followed an excellent set by indie/dance/pop group Black Kids with one of their own. Female mate and keyboardist extraordinaire Kori Gardner was a rock star, owning her vocals and abrupt tempo changes, especially on songs like “Fluke” and “Ha Ha.” Male mate Jason Hammel, who was great on the drums, was not as dominant a vocal presence as Gardner, but stepped it up on songs such as the infinitely catchy “Fraud in the 80s.”
Brothers Lewis and Anton Patzner, who you can catch with their band Judgment Day on Saturday at Emo’s, provided support with violin, cello, electric guitar and even trombone. On “The Re-Arranger” off 2008’s well-received “Re-Arrange Us,” one brother joined Gardner on the keys as another played guitar, one of the more powerful moments of the evening. If any part of the night could be considered “cute,” it was the slightly saccharine cover of Tom Waits’ “The Long Way Home” during the encore and the Broadway-style drum circle with Black Kids that closed out the night. Even those cute moments were still pretty good, though, and not even close to anything that could have spoiled the rest of show.
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Review: Cake at Stubb's
Cake has this music business thing figured out.
The Sacramento, Calif., outfit hasn’t put out an album of new material since 2004, the last time they were on a major label. (A B-sides collection arrived in 2007 on their own label, Upbeat.) They’ve had a live album on ice for years. During Tuesday’s show at Stubb’s, singer John McCrea said that the bands’ next album would be out “whenever we feel like it,” a comment greeted with wild applause from the extremely sold out crowd.
Judging from the merch table, the band keeps costs low — two T-shirt designs, two colors, $20 a piece. That’s it.
To review: No new album for five years, no exciting merch, yet approximately 2,200 fans showed up on a Tuesday night and seemed fine with hearing new songs, you know, whenever.
Now THAT is brand loyalty. Which is what you need right now. As the music business contracts, it’s bands such as Cake that seem sure to thrive.
For all of their novelty-ish tunecraft and somewhat nerdy lyrics, they are a live band, sharp bass grooves and Vince DiFiore’s keyboard melodies anchoring tight songs (DiFiore’s trumpet splashes are also a signature).
They played two 45-55 minute sets without an opening act and gave away a locally grown tree during the intermission. The band operates sans setlist, so fans never quite know what they’re going to get, which is just another reason those fans adore them.
Now THAT is value for money. Which, of course, engenders brand loyalty.
In fact, those novelty-ish tunes are sing-alongs and most in the audience seemed to know every word of those nerdy lyrics and one got the impression that this was the show of the year for some fans, perhaps the only one they were going to attend.
Songs such as “Comfort Eagle” and “Daria” elicited wild applause. “Mexico” opened with some words about the death of 3/4 time in popular music. “Italian Leather Sofa” pined for a gal lost to a slickster. The Bible and Godot-referencing “Sheep Get to Heaven” elicited the loudest-sing along (“sheep go to heaven!/goats go to hell!”) while their first single, “Rock’n’roll Lifestyle,” recalled Jonathan Richman (the original geek rocker) at his funniest.
Cake can keep this up for only, oh, the next 30 or so years. And those fans aren’t going anywhere.
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Live shots, review: Seal at Bass Concert Hall
Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN
In his appearance Tuesday night at Bass Concert Hall, Seal didn’t make an all-out push to become this year’s Rod Stewart, allowing well-received covers of others’ hits (from last year’s album “Soul”) to overshadow his own pop career.
That was good news, as in almost every case live performance demonstrated what a so-so match the vintage material is for the performer’s talents. On songs like “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” where his husky eagerness to please couldn’t compete with James Brown’s edge, or “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” where his body language looked like talent-show mimicry of Otis Redding’s passion, Seal’s tributes to the past (however sincere they are) felt thin and, well, lacking in soul.
Which is not to say that the large crowd was unreceptive. One middle-aged woman wanted so badly to share the stage with him that, after the singer rebuffed her first approach, she swept back later in the same song and climbed up to embrace him.
But the house didn’t really erupt until the two-hour set’s second half, when covers gave way to a dance club vibe and Seal reminded listeners that his own songs — “Kiss from a Rose” and “Prayer for the Dying” among them — make the most of his distinctive but limited voice in a way that tunes written for miracle-working singers like Sam Cooke simply cannot.
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April 27, 2009
Review: Etta James at Austin Music Hall
Any septuagenarians in need of lascivious role models should have been at the Austin Music Hall, where the 71-year-old Etta James, despite walking tentatively to her center-stage chair, put on such a show that at least one mother was spotted shielding a young child’s eyes.
James’ sexual pantomime on Friday accompanied more than a couple of suggestive tunes, and the singer wasn’t reluctant to hint at the meaning of lyrics like Johnny Guitar Watson’s “I Wanna Ta-Ta You Baby.” Her voice was clear and potent, although her memory might not be quite as well preserved: Throughout the one-hour set, James sang from lyric sheets, lifting her head for expressive gestures that made her look like an actress at a table-reading of a new screenplay.
Fans hoping to hear old favorites from the star’s Chess Records days were mostly left wanting: Songs like “All I Could Do Was Cry” and “My Dearest Darling” were absent, though she did offer a variant of the early hit “I’d Rather Go Blind.” Instead, the seven-piece band (which included two of her sons) delivered solid versions of more recent material like “A Lover Is Forever” and “Come to Mama.”
Only at the end, of course, did James break out the one obligatory hit, “At Last.” Happily, the liberties she took with the classic’s melody and phrasing seemed to reflect a real fondness, suggesting she’s not at all resentful of a song that can make an entire set list leading up to it look like an afterthought.
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Review: James Morrison at La Zona Rosa
James Morrison is riding on the latest wave of British soul to land on American shores thanks to a soaring, often raspy voice that falls somewhere between Stevie Wonder and Rod Stewart. His latest effort, “Songs for You, Truths for Me,” solidified his place among a new crop of young soul crooners, some of whom, though, fall short of their brilliance on wax when they hit the stage. (Robin Thicke, I’m talking to you.) Friday night’s show at La Zona Rosa proved that Morrison has the ability to bring that visceral vocal presence to the stage as well.
His powerful soul-scream was impressive on songs such as “Save Yourself” and “Precious Love,” a gospel-tinged R&B throwback to ’50s soul. (Imagine Joe Cocker singing a Sam Cooke tune). He leaned into this one with a passionate delivery that was sincere enough to rescue it from the cliche “down on my knees, begging you please” parts of the song. Morrison can inject emotion into his voice without falling into kitschy “American Idol” vocal acrobatics. The genuine heartbreak in his voice was enough to breathe life into some of the set’s more saccharine offerings (“Love is Hard” and “You Give Me Something”). Still, Morrison knows his audience and the occasional vocal trill elicited giddy shrieks from the largely female crowd.
“I get a lot of girls that come out to my shows,” Morrison acknowledged before dedicating a song to the “dudes” in the audience.
Surprisingly the highlight of the night wasn’t the hit “Nothing Ever Hurt Like You,” which sounded a bit road weary until midway through the song when the band segued into an up-tempo version of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”. Morrison and company came alive afterwards for a fiery rendition of “Call the Police,” a funky, slow burning number about a violent breakup that erupted with a searing guitar solo from guitarist Matt White. This was a surprisingly abrupt (and welcome) shift from Morrison’s more syrupy breakup pop.
After whipping the crowd up the band dropped off into an excellent stripped down version of Bill Withers’s “Use Me.” The band’s treatment of this classic was mellifluous yet still incredibly funky and showcased the gentler side of Morrison’s voice. He was at his best Friday night in the softer texture of songs like the painful “If You Don’t Wanna Love Me” and “Broken Strings,” a duet with that featured backup singer Beverlei Brown.
Morrison is no one trick pony. He is first and foremost an extraordinary singer, especially when he’s in full voice. But when he doesn’t have to compete with the band for space, Morrison proved that he can take it down a notch and still break your heart.
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Review: South Memphis String Band
It was Luther Dickinson’s turn in Friday’s “guitar pull” at Antone’s. Dickinson and Alvin Youngblood Hart had just finished accompanying Jimbo Mathus on a jubilant song about Jesse James. Now, Dickinson wanted to do his own character sketch. He threw George Washington out to the audience as a possibility. Then he switched gears and started rattling off potential cover material. Robert Johnson. Jimi Hendrix. The Guess Who. “The whole American experience … under this lid,” he said, grasping the brim of his fedora and kicking into Woody Guthrie’s “Hard Travelin’.”
The American experience is the main unifier of this slap happy yet sureshot trio known as the South Memphis String Band. Each player is principally a bluesman but also well-schooled in country, folk and gospel. Indeed, they mined the roots canon with casual combos of steel and acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, harp and “jawbone,” an instrument that looks like a mini-Jaws’ jaws and produces a click-clack sound. The setlist included the Carter Family, Tommy Bradley & James Cole, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmie Rodgers, and Blind Willie Johnson. Recognize that takes much knowledge and wherewithal.
Of course, originals were also played, in between the foot-stomping, hand-clapping, and cutting up that otherwise constituted what Mathus kept calling his band’s “primordial psychedelia.” Dickinson, the little brother, played “18 Hammers” by his blues-rocking main band, North Mississippi Allstars. Hart, the buddha, picked his own arrangement of the traditional “France Blues” from his Delta blues-style solo career. Mathus, the court jester, scrapped his catalog — comprising the honky tonk and Tin Pan Alley days he spent in Squirrel Nut Zippers and His Knockdown Society — and played an altogether new one, “Yo Own Backyard.”
Its refrain, “Stop worrying about the whole world and start worrying about yo own backyard,” is the kind of song you wanna put on during a barbecue to rally your friends. But therein lies the problem. The String Band doesn’t have a CD — only T-shirts and a 15-date tour. Seriously, they’ve only cut two songs, both of which — “Yo Own Backyard” among them — are available only on MySpace. “We decided the South Memphis String Band will never be in a hurry,” Mathus said.
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CD Review: Bob Dylan, "Together Through Life"
Bob Dylan
“Together Through Life”
(Columbia)
B+
The Old Man is in one of his moods again. This time, he’s brought an old pal in from the coast.
Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter last collaborated on “Down in the Groove,” a fairly terrible record with two decent songs, “Silvio” and “The Ugliest Girl in the World,” both of which were Dylan/Hunter joints.
He’s brought back Hunter to co-write nine of the 10 songs on “Together Through Life,” a Tex-Mexie affair (thanks to Los Lobos David Hidalgo’s omnipresent accordion) that sounds like his most tossed-off album since 1976’s hazy “Desire.” This is a marked contrast to his last two albums, “‘Love and Theft’” (2001), where he made a brilliantly well-plotted survey of American songcraft seem like no big thing, and “Modern Times” (2004), which made it sound like hard work.
This is the sound of two old men in a Texas border town motel room, knocking out 10 songs while killing bottles of something brown, complaining about women they’ve annoyed (If you see her sister Lucy, say I’m sorry I’m not there/ Tell her other sister Nancy to pray the sinner’s prayer”) and women who have annoyed them (“I just wanna say that Hell’s my wife’s hometown.” Belch).
Dylan’s 21st century voice, a rough beast to begin with, is at maximum crag here. On “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” and “Shake Shake Mama,” Dylan sounds like he’s seen (or had) a million swine flus and will see a million more. None of the lyrics here sound revised even a little bit. “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I’m reading James Joyce,” he croaks in “I Feel A Change Coming On. “Some people they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.” You can practically hear him hitting “save,” then turning on the ball game while Hunter gets some more ice.
The melodies, powered mostly by Heartbreak guitarist Mike Campbell, are sprightly and bluesy or slow and bluesy, played with the professional pep (or slow burn) of a 1950s session band, which is clearly what producer Jack Frost (Dylan) was aiming for.
Yet, it hangs together shockingly well, it’s tossed-offed-ness part of its strange charm. “Life is Hard” mourns a lost love like the balladeer Dylan wishes he could be. And the closer “It’s All Good” is a brilliantly cranky kiss-off to (or snickering endorsement of) modern apathy: “Building are crumbling/ in the neighborhood/ but it’s nothing to worry about cuz it’s all good.” It’s certainly not bad.
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April 20, 2009
Scene report: Reggae Fest
(Jennifer and Mitch Adair are expecting a baby in the next few months and enjoyed the music and the body paint at this weekend’s Reggae Festival at Auditorium Shores. Photo by V.M. Black/Special to the American-Statesman)
The Austin Reggae Festival benefiting the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas received a little divine intervention from the heavens on Saturday and Sunday as the week-ending thunderstorm clouds dissipated, leaving only clouds of smoke billowing from ornate glass “tobacco” pipes and carefully constructed “blunt” cigars as reggae music chimed through the air.
With the city skyline and Lady Bird Lake posing as a picturesque backdrop, thousands of souls basked in the sun and soaked up the irie, good vibrations music. Despite the $15 entrance fee, the festival appeared recession proof, drawing the same numbers as it did in the previous year according to Kerri Qunell of Capital Area Food Bank of Texas (Qunell says around 20,000).
“People still bring canned food as donations — this is the 16th year — and people are used to doing that. But people are also being really generous with the cash donations,” Qunell said. “The festival just gets more and more popular.”
For one weekend a year, Auditorium Shores resembles Jamaica’s Sunsplash Festival, complete with a family-friendly inflatable romper room, a climbing wall and numerous vendors selling sundry wares. Fest-goers chomped on Henry VIII-sized turkey legs and sipped on beer and other fruity beverages severed in plastic, non-traditional yard glasses.
On Sunday afternoon, Houston’s Los Skarnales combined Latin rhythms and Spanish language with reggae roots, ska and dub music inducing a surreal scene when about 20 people danced with oversized hula hoops that appeared to be lying on the ground for anyone to use. Los Skarnales’ frontman Felipe Galvan rocked steady for nearly an hour, using his overflowing charisma to get the majority of the crowd dancing.
Dancing in front of stage left was soon-to-be mother Jennifer Adair and husband Mitch Adair. Jennifer stood out in the crowd of thousands, her 7-months pregnant belly artfully painted by artist/Fest vendor Joshua Davies with a picture of the Earth and a message for her child: “2009 Welcome to Earth.”
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Review: Old Settler's Music Fest
(The Lovell Sisters play Sunday at the Old Settler’s Music Festival in Driftwood. From left are Rebecca Lovell on the mandolin and Jessica Lovell on the fiddle. Photo by Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
On the first day of Old Settler’s Music Festival, rain sprinkles dropped from ominous clouds as the Gibson Brothers, five guys in crisp black suitcoats, started up the music on the open dance hall stage at the campgrounds.
The band from the Adirondacks marveled at the warm weather and sang about wishing wells, towns left behind and the heavens for their first visit to the fest in Driftwood.
On the second day of the festival, following an early morning deluge of rain, a couple hundred soggy but resolute campers made their way to the indoor Salt Lick Pavilion stage. Fest officials wisely had moved acts there from the stage along the creek, keeping the grass from becoming a mud pit.
This could have been Woodstock Junior, but the single muddy pond behind the main stage was left to the young kids as their parents watched.
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April 16, 2009
CD reviews: Nakia and Black Joe Lewis
Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Nakia
Water to Wine
(Self)
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!
(Lost Highway)
As any good bartender will attest, the secret to a good cocktail is the perfect mix of sweet and strong, smooth and harsh. Good soul music is no different — the most memorable soul artists blend the sweetly positive humanity of gospel with the harsh kick of furious rhythm and blues.
To judge by that rubric, Austin’s woefully underappreciated soul scene is in good shape. The last month has seen debut full-lengths by two of the city’s most highly regarded up-and-comers: Nakia, the Alabama-raised crooner with the full-throated voice, and Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, the garage soul octet that delivers gritty garage soul with machine gun urgency. And though Black Joe Lewis offers up the more compelling debut, both albums herald the emergence of two major talents.
Thousands of Austinites might best recognize Nakia as the unassuming fellow pulled on-stage for a dance with soul diva Sharon Jones at the Austin City Limits Music Festival 2008. She’s not the first genre devotee to see something special in Nakia. His clean, authentic stylings also attracted the attention of veteran local singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso, who co-wrote “Water to Wine.” Seasoned pro and shining newcomer complement each other nicely — Fracasso’s keys and roots rock sensibility are a perfect fit for Nakia’s sugary Southern soul.
Punchy opener “Choose Your Poison” establishes the album’s modus operandi: catchy but not overpowering guitar riffs, Nakia’s rich voice and lyrics that lay bare the record’s themes of discrimination, love, loss and spirituality. “On the Bus” features an Otis Redding whistle, while “There Goes the Neighborhood” is a dizzyingly brilliant array of instrumentation and insightful lyricism. The slightly bitter “Elizabeth Lee” and “Outta My Head,” meanwhile, are frustrated odes to a lost love in the best tradition of Southern blues.
But the album’s glossy, clean production occasionally overpowers its passion, as on the antiseptic, Biblical title track. Nakia’s assembled a talented band and might be Austin’s most soulful singer this side of Malford Milligan, but a handful of the tracks are oddly limp on the recording.
Black Joe Lewis’ “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is” provides an interesting contrast, visceral and gritty as it is. If Nakia’s album is a glass of wine, Black Joe Lewis’ debut is a shot of cheap whiskey — harsh, short-lived, edgy and entirely intoxicating.
The album kicks off with the aptly titled “Gunpowder,” an explosive homage to the best of ’70s Stax. Lewis follows with the call-and-response blues rocker “Sugarfoot.” The lyrics deal with familiar themes for soul: love, poverty and debauchery. Lewis’ cleverest song, “Get Yo (Expletive),” is an unbelievable-sounding tale that begins with him forgetting his girlfriend’s name and closes with him evading the Austin Police Department. It’s probably true.
But it’s the cutting vocals, delivered with razor-sharp intensity and augmented by the Honeybears’ tight, riotous horns and guitar that make “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!” truly special. Despite its release on Lost Highway — reliable purveyors of American roots — and production from Spoon’s Jim Eno, it’s an infinitely rougher-sounding album than Nakia’s “Water to Wine.” Listen to it on vinyl, with pops and hisses intact, and the album could easily be mistaken for a time-lost refugee from soul’s ’70s heyday, a contemporary of James Brown or Baby Huey. It’s not a deep or terribly adventurous album, but it is reliably fun.
Nakia plays a CD release show at 8 p.m. Saturday at Jovita’s, 1619 S. First St. $8. 447-7825; nakia.net.
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April 13, 2009
Review: Ab Baars and Ken Vandermark at Victory Grill
Tenor saxophonists Ab Baars and Ken Vandermark both brought the heavy artillery to the Victory Grill Friday night, but their pairing was not so much a firefight as a joint show of strength. Although Chicago’s Vandermark has toured only once before with the Ab Baars Trio, a staple on the fertile Dutch improvised music scene for some 17 years, he and Baars have such a striking rapport, anyone not familiar with their history might be forgiven for assuming the Trio had always been a quartet.
Baars and Vandemark share, among other things, a muscular, take-no-prisoners approach and an affinity for such pillars of the avant-garde as Von Freeman, John Carter, Roswell Rudd and Sun Ra. Their shared sensibility is highly evident on “Goofy June Bug,” a live recording from their 2007 European tour, and was even more striking seven dates into their current U.S. tour. They frequently played in tight formation, giving incremental harmonic shifts and small changes in tone heightened meaning, and while they each made numerous explosive solo excursions, rather than competing, they reinforced each other, like a well-choreographed detonation team. Precise, sharply executed endings to the compositions brought suitably dramatic closure after cathartic outbursts.
The twin tenorists might have started to seem almost too well-matched after a while, but they mixed it up by switching off on clarinet, jointly or singly, and Baars also played shakuhachi, a Japanese end-blown bamboo flute. The material, mostly from the new album, was sufficiently varied, ranging from Baars’ Stravinsky-inspired “Straws” to Vandermark’s sly, jaggedy “Waltz Four Monk,” where the waltz tempo is a mere allusion. A taut, brand-new Vandermark piece, “7 over 5 is 12,” featured an absorbing, rhythmically assertive riff, and Baars’ bluesy “Goofy June Bug” swaggered with Mingus-style soul.
Most importantly, drummer Martin van Duynhoven and especially bassist Wilbert de Joode supplied kaleidoscopic color, as well as brilliant propulsion. De Joode, while possessed of intense melodicism, often treated his bass more like an upright percussion kit, bashing at the strings, snapping them like rubber bands, or holding a bow at both ends and bedeviling them with it. By contrast, his arco had a chamber-like elegance. His unique fusion of aggression and nuance was both grounding and enthralling.
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Review: Morrissey at Bass Concert Hall
Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday night at Bass Concert Hall, Morrissey reminded his audience just to what extent he was holding them in the palm of his hand.
The moment came after a thrillingly powerful run at the Smith’s classic “How Soon is Now?,” complete with enormous-sounding guitars tremeloed into infinity, thunderous beats on a very large bass drum and Morrissey himself, posed like a corpse, feet on the drum riser, body on the floor. The identically dressed six piece band roared around him, a tiny, crack rock ‘n’ roll army doing his bidding, including lead guitarist (and former Austinite) Jesse Tobias.
After the song shuddered to a halt and the crowd picked up the roar, Morrissey strolled to the microphone, saying: “Is there a better place to be on Easter Sunday?”
Um, no. No, there isn’t.
It was a huge rock star moment that a lesser (or less confident) talent would have parked squarely at the end of the show. This was song number four.
Of course, Morrissey is showman enough to play to the crowd most of the time, handing over the mic now and then. We look forward to his Vegas revue some time in the future. The 49-year old singer ripped off his third shirt of the evening during the line “someone you physically despise” in the song “Let Me Kiss You,” eliciting the night’s loudest laughs and screams of approval.
Mixing older Smiths material with songs from his new album “Years of Refusal” and a good deal from his stellar 2004 comeback album “You Are The Quarry,” Morrissey’s 90-minute set moved from precise rock ‘n’ roll to blown-out, almost psychedelic codas.
In front of a frankly homoerotic (and extremely funny) backdrop of a muscular sailor, opener “This Charming Man” saw our man in a tux, his band in matching black outfits and white ties with their boss’ face on them ($50 at the merch table.) Newer songs (“Black Cloud,” “Something is Squeezing My Skull”, “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris”) amped up the sharp, almost punk verve that’s shot through “Refusal.” The energy of older material (“Irish Blood, English Heart,” the fiercely rockabilly “The Loop”) was scaled up to match.
The Smiths classic “Ask” was stripped of its chime and swing and turned in a driving ode to joy, while “Death of a Disco Dancer” ended with a noisy, emotive jam emphasizing the band’s raw power. Nothing wussy here and no place anyone in that room would rather spend Easter Sunday.
SETLIST
This Charming Man
Billy Budd
Black Cloud
How Soon is Now?
Irish Blood, English Heart
When I Last Spoke to Carol
How Could Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?
I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
Something is Squeezing My Skull
Seasick, Yet Still Docked
The Loop
The World is Full of Crashing Bores
The Death of a Disco Dancer
Goodbye Will Be Farewell
I Keep Mine Hidden
Sorry Doesn’t Help
Ask
Let Me Kiss You
I’m OK By Myself
(encore) The First of the Gang to Die
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April 7, 2009
Review: Jesse Woods at Emo's
In his bio, singer/songwriter Jesse Woods notes that he’s spent a good chunk of the last 15 or so years as an artist living in the Southwest. He then moved to Austin with no money and started recording music in a friend’s garage. He’s not signed to a label yet, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he was soon. Woods isn’t offering up anything particularly radical—his music is solidly rooted in the country singer/songwriter tradition, but his songs and his voice are good enough to separate him from the million other aspiring musicians playing the same type of music.
Monday night at Emo’s, Woods furthered his “where the heck did this guy come from” cred, running through his limited but impressive catalogue with a three piece backing band. Again, there’s nothing off the wall happening here, but all of the elements come together in such a way that it’s hard to turn away from the songs. Woods’ rich voice and pleasing melodies add extra life to already catchy mid-tempo toe tappers. Lyrically, while he deals with typical relationship fare, Woods mostly stays away from cliche, instead relaying stories of love and loss through clever turns of phrase. Highlights included “Sun Moonshine” and “Ugly Dress.” He also threw in a soulful cover of Fred Neil’s “That’s The Bag I’m In” (which Woods pointed out was also done by Gram Parsons) for good measure.
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April 5, 2009
Review: Bruce Springsteen at the Frank Erwin Center
Rodolfo Gonzalez AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Bruce Springsteen at the Erwin Center
- Interactive: Explore Springsteen’s musical catalog
There is nothing cool about Bruce Springsteen.
This is, of course, the key to his genius. He always lets you see him sweat, the Boss who works as hard as anyone on stage with him. A Zen master of the simple riff and the piano hook, he and the E Street Band never met a tunelet they couldn’t turn into a tall tale and blow out and spin around until it begged for mercy.
Sunday night on a bare stage at the Frank Erwin Center, in front of well over 10,000 fanatics, Springsteen did all of that and more.
Not much more, but enough more.
This was just the third date of his tour supporting “Working on a Dream,” the quickly written and recorded follow-up to the holy-cow,-the-Boss-is-back monster “Magic.”
And though that album’s John Fordish “Outlaw Pete” and “My Lucky Day” were the second and third song played, opener “Badlands” set the tone for much of the evening. “You wake up in the night/ With a fear so real,” Bruce sang. These are scary economic times, harsh and mean. Bruce’s music is full of characters trying hard and dreaming big and losing control and making do.
Which meant there was a little preaching, with Bruce asking us to “build a house tonight in this very room,” a house of hope that would turn doubt into faith and fear into love. Fortunately, he let the songs do the sermonizing for the rest of the night.
Which also meant there was a lot from “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” from “Badlands” to the romance of “Prove It All Night” to dying-light rage of “The Promised Land.” Elsewhere in the catalog, “Seeds” slipped into that darkness and “Johnny 99” still sounds better on “Nebraska.”
All this was off-set by some fun ones from “The River:” “Out in the Street” reminded you these guys do epic outros better than anyone, the rarely played “Sherry Darling” gave Springsteen nerds something to talk about and “I’m a Rocker,” in the encore, was pure bar band slop.
There was even music, though the Erwin Center’s brutal acoustics don’t allow for much. On “Youngstown,” guitarist Nils Lofgren kicked up the energy with the solo of the night, a melodic, powerful run that left him spinning in circles. From his lap steel playing to his rhythm work, the musicality jumped a notch whenever Lofgren came to the fore. More of him and less of Steve Van Zandt’s telegraphed solos wouldn’t have killed anyone.
“The Wrestler” and “Kingdom of Days” reminded everyone that “Working on a Dream” is in stores now, “Radio Nowhere” put in a good word for rock ‘n’ roll on the dial, while “Lonesome Day” and “the Rising” aimed for hope over everything else. Set closer “Born to Run” embodied an America that everyone loves, even if it never really existed.
For the encore, Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More” bled into “Jungleland,” a colossally pretentious and baffling stew of prog-rock rambling and cars and the Magic Rat that is somehow a sing-along. “American Land” is a corny reel, but the messy show closer “Glory Days” didn’t fail to push the buttons that Springsteen fans go to his shows to have pushed.
“I’m not kidding,” Bruce said during his sermon. Brother, trust me, nobody has ever accused you of kidding and they aren’t going to start now.
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April 2, 2009
Review: Leonard Cohen, night 1 at the Long Center
Leonard Cohen treated us to a night of blue elegance Wednesday night at the Long Center (he plays a second show Thursday night). More than any song, any moment, I’ll savor the evening for its spirit, for its languid, stylish, melancholy tone. That, and the sheer majesty of the Cohen musical canon, laid out over the course of a three-hour concert that featured four encores.
Cohen’s concert wasn’t so much a presentation of songs as a riveting poetry reading with a klezmer-caberet vibe, a little bluesy, a little jazzy and, above all, literate. For decades, his touring bands have taken pride in being “the quietest band in America.” We hear the words. Cohen’s drummer, Austin’s Rafael Gayol, likes to say it can get so quiet you can almost hear dust collide.
Yes.
Cohen, 74, is thinner, grayer, than that “60-year-old kid with a crazy dream” that passed through Austin on the 1988 and 1993 concert tours. But his ocean-deep bass voice - and his will - are strong. There were moments, in the muscular encore tunes “First We Take Manhattan” and “So Long, Marianne” when Cohen sang powerfully over the top of his angelic, swaying troupe of background singers, led by Sharon Robinson. If you shut your eyes: The voice and the energy suggested a singer whose heart was completely in the present, not the past.
There were great moments: “Bird on a Wire” was so delicate, so rich with quiet space and stately grace, timeless as moonlight. “Anthem,” the closer of the first set, was transcendent, orchestral, presented in celestial light. When Cohen sang “Can’t run no more with the lawless crowd/while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud,” it was not with resignation, but with grit and purpose.
Well, let’s see: Charley and Hattie Webb, his two new background singers, coyly removed their jackets - and then spun cartwheels when Cohen sang the line “You’ll see your women hanging upside down” (or was it “the blizzard of the world has overturned your soul”?) during “The Future.” “Hallelujah” drew a standing ovation in the second set.
Cohen’s spoken-word rendition of “Recitation with N.L.,” adapted from his new poetry collection “Book of Longing,” framed by delicate synthesized keyboards, was a dramatic highpoint in the second set. There was a huge communal sigh in the house — more striking than any applause — when Cohen ended the first stanza with these words: “my mirrored twin, my next of kin, I’d know you in my sleep/ And who but you would take me in, a thousand kisses deep.”
A last word about the staging, the music, and the role of Cohen’s musical director - bassist Roscoe Beck. After working with Cohen for three decades, Beck has skillfully melded his own sophisticated instincts with Cohen’s lyrical power. Beck likes the blues, and he likes jazz. Both energies were palpable Wednesday. The band’s use of Hammond B-3 organ plays to both the sensual and sacred currents in Cohen’s music.
Beck knows this in his head. We felt it in our hearts. It was a soft, lyrical, lovely night.
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April 1, 2009
Review: Neko Case at Stubb's
(Neko Case kicked off her new tour Tuesday at Stubb’s. Ralph Barrera/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
- Photos: Neko Case at Stubb’s
In a recent interview with Paste magazine torchy crooner (don’t you dare call her country) Neko Case said one of her favorite creative pursuits is recording and interpreting her dreams.
There’s trace evidence of this on Case’s albums, where characters from children’s books, cracked antique photographs and a dozen other alternate realities become fodder for her singular songwriter’s touch and extraordinary voice.
But see her live, as on Tuesday night at Stubb’s, and you get an up close look at Case’s dreamscape. Take for example her intro to “The Pharaohs,” from the new “Middle Cyclone,” where she explained to the packed audience and backup singer Kelly Hogan that the song was about her first boyfriend, who was completely imagined; “It was a unicorn, but not just any unicorn. A Burt Reynolds unicorn. Imagine that, it was part Burt Reynolds and part Angie Dickinson … and had on buckskin leather pants like Paul Newman would wear.”
Alright then, but how does Neko Case’s dreamscape sound? In a word, splendid. There was little to indicate Tuesday was the kickoff show of this tour, as Case and her five bandmates wove in and around each other pretty much seamlessly, whether on newer material (“This Tornado Loves You,” “People Got A Lotta Nerve”) or oft-played heartbreakers (“Deep Red Bells,” “Wish I Was The Moon”).
The most striking observation from the show came afterward. Still possessed of a voice powerful enough to be compared to both massive natural phenomena (tornadoes, a tidal wave) and military armaments (bazooka, nuclear warhead), she appears to be reining herself in a bit instead of delivering a half dozen moments where she leans her head back, belts out a passage and leaves the audience dazed and enthused.
There was one bit from “That Teenage Feeling” toward the end of the first set where she turned it up to about 9, but otherwise Tuesday was 90 or so minutes of heartfelt, pitch perfect crooning about characters and places both surreal and simple. And as the cheers and applause from the crowd at night’s end attested, that was more than enough.
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March 31, 2009
Review: Chris Cornell at Stubb's
During Monday evening’s sold-out show at Stubb’s, Chris Cornell rocked, despite the fact that “Scream” - the new album he’s touring behind - is a divisively experimental hot mess.
“Scream” was produced and co-written with hip-hop mega-producer Timbaland (Justin Timberlake, Madonna) and finds Cornell singing over Timbaland’s beats and electro bells and whistles. Fortunately for Cornell’s longtime fans, when he played his new hip-hop-meets-pop songs, he turned up the rock quotient and dialed down the hip-hop beats and backing loops, making the experimental portion of his new songs almost unrecognizable. If you were one of the longtime Soundgarden/Audioslave fans that found “Scream” to be heresy to Cornell’s oeuvre, then the live show should have put your mind at ease quickly.
Show highlights included Cornell’s silvery falsetto on the melancholy, Led Zepplin-bitten “Seasons,” the inescapable groove of Audioslave’s “Cochise” and when the audience sang the entire second chorus of the Audioslave radio hit “Like A Stone.”
And although the live versions of the “Scream” tracks were umpteen times better than the Timbaland recorded versions, the overall performance was still maddening in many ways.
Unlike Audioslave (or Soundgarden for that matter), Cornell’s backing band is not a super-group; they were not up to the task of complementing Cornell’s own good taste in dynamics. His bassist and drummer over-played throughout all the songs. As band leader, Cornell should have put the clampdown on all that noodling during the initial tour rehearsals.
During a pretty faithful version of the Soundgarden hit “Burden In My Hand,” bassist Corey McCormick was playing like a music school grad that can’t help but justify his existence by showing off his chops. Likewise drummer Jason Sutter overused his double-beater kick drum pedal during “Cochise” to the point of distraction.
Despite this, the audience was definitely satiated, at least until Austin’s sound curfew left Cornell with no time for an encore shortly after 10:30 p.m.
“Everybody is still here after 15 minutes (waiting for an encore),” longtime Cornell fan Jamie Wang said. “I’m kinda speechless that he didn’t come back out. Usually (an artist) will come back out and at least acknowledge the audience … it was a good show nonetheless.”
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March 30, 2009
CD review: Uncle Lucius
Uncle Lucius
“Pick Your Head Up” (BooClap)
three and a half stars
Southern rock can be a scary term that conjures a triple bill- $ 10 at the door- featuring Molly Hatchet, .38 Special and the bassist from Wet Willie’s new band. But Austin’s Uncle Lucius takes the ’70s form to a soulful new direction on the debut LP “Pick Your Head Up.”
Big Sandy native Kevin Galloway, who moved to Austin as a solo artist a couple years ago, has a big, clear southern voice and he’s found the perfect sidekick in guitarist Michael Carpenter, an Allman-worthy soloist (“Fire On the Rooftop”) who adds subtle, inventive touches to this quartet’s classic sound. Cut loose on bottleneck at the end of “Hold On Your Heart,” Carpenter saves one of the LP’s more pedestrian tunes.
For the most part, however, it’s the band’s songs, from the slow-building title track, which sprints into a soul workout, to the stirring LP closer “All Your Gold,” that make this album such an unexpected treat. When Galloway sings “Everybody Got Soul” you find yourself rocking in your seat in agreement. Produced by Stephen Doster, “Pick Your Head Up” takes its material seriously, nailing dramatic turns on the “Mississippi Highway,” slipping into the “Liquor Store” just ahead of a John Lee Hooker riff and riding Red Young’s organ to a sweet, familiar place on “A Million Ways.”
This doesn’t sound like a local release.
Dated? Timeless? Little of both. But what’s important is that this album is southern and it rocks. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
Help Uncle Lucius celebrate this accomplishment Saturday night at Threadgill’s South and pick your CD up.
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March 11, 2009
CD review: Riverboat Gamblers: Underneath the Owl
Riverboat Gamblers
Underneath the Owl
(Volcom)
Over the past four albums and 12 years, the Riverboat Gamblers have gotten amazingly good at what they do.
A little punk explosiveness here, a few glammy metal guitar solos there, Mike Weibe’s energetic vocals and world-class stage presence holding it all together. From the wonderfully titled “A Choppy, Yet Sincere Apology” — a pop-punk chestnut that deserves its own single on Lookout Records time-warped back to 1993 — to head-smashingly excellent “Catastrophe,” “Underneath the Owl” (a reference to the Frost Bank Tower) reinforces everything everyone loves about these guys.
There are even signs of depth: “Keep Me From Drinking” can’t figure out whether it’s sincere or not, which is probably fitting for a party-hearty band whose lead singer sees 30 in the rear view mirror. Yet again we have to ask: Why the heck aren’t these guy absurdly famous?
The Riverboat Gamblers play two official showcases during South by Southwest: midnight March 20 at Buffalo Billiards, 201 E. Sixth St. and 1 a.m. March 21 at Emo’s Annex, 600 Red River St.
Watch the Riverboat Gamblers at Waterloo Records on Tuesday night:
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March 8, 2009
Review: Plants and Animals at the Mohawk
The band also shed some of the polish of their studio efforts to offer a sound that was more organic and intimate. On the funky, midtempo number “Good Friend,” singer Warren Spicer recited the line “I want you to sew a button on my shirt” with a playful energy that showed he’s not such a serious guy. Spicer let the music come to life without ever losing complete control.
In addition to songs from their EP and full-length album, the band played at least one new song, which stuck to the same general format as the others — a sprawling composition punctuated by peaks and valleys. It came across as darker than the other material, however. Despite an enthusiastic audience, the band fell victim to an unfortunate time slot, as the bleary-eyed room cleared quickly and many people were probably already spent from seeing Australian psych-rockers Cut Copy, who were holding court with Matt and Kim over at Stubb’s earlier in the evening.
(Photo of Plants and Animals from Secret City Records)
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March 3, 2009
Review: Richard Thompson at Cactus Cafe
Rolling Stone ranked Richard Thompson No. 19 on its 2003 list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” — which is selling him seriously short, as anyone who managed to squeeze into the Cactus Cafe Sunday night would probably tell you.
Sunday’s two and a half hour set was the first of two sold-out solo acoustic shows at the Cactus, and while Thompson unleashed fewer mind-warpingly pyrotechnical solos than on electric guitar with his band at the Texas Union Ballroom last year, his playing was no less thrilling.
Thompson’s dazzling technique is really secondary to his instinct for color and narration. The crowd burst into applause at the ethereal opening arpeggios of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” as carefree and seductive as the flame-haired heroine of the tale, while the throbbing bassline rushed inexorably forward, like the doom awaiting the song’s swaggering protagonist.
On the rockabilly-fired “Valerie,” Thompson threw off a flurry of bent notes that underscored the narrator’s comical exasperation. “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” from Thompson’s last studio album, 2007’s “Sweet Warrior,” is about a confused young soldier in Iraq, and the guitar effortlessly combined the fluid and the percussive as keening, Middle Eastern-tinged lines soared with nervous, rock ‘n’ roll energy.
Thompson’s songs tend toward the dark. He opened with the cold menace of “I Feel So Good” and did not neglect the harrowing “Shoot Out the Lights,” defiant “Wall of Death,” embittered “God Loves a Drunk” or forlorn “Walking on a Wire.” His voice has a reassuring warmth, however, and there were humorous tunes, such as “Hots for the Smarts,” his music-hall ode to brainy women, and “Smiffy’s Glass Eye,” at the request of an audience member.
Thompson’s wry wit lightened the mood between songs. He introduced the hard-hitting unreleased tune “Time’s Gonna Break You” with a soliloquy about Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff and certain politicians and entertainment business figures, lamenting the tardiness of karma with the proclamation “They’re going to fry in hell” and the lamentation ” … but we won’t get to watch!”
Reaching all the way back to his days in pioneering folk-rock group Fairport Convention, Thompson covered Sandy Denny’s haunting “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” and his second encore featured his take on the Who’s “Substitute” that brought out the creepiness and venom of the lyrics. Even when he’s performing someone else’s song, Thompson is a pure storyteller.
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March 2, 2009
Review: The Pretenders at Stubb's
The Pretenders’ concerts remain her own best argument for the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle. In her case, 57 is indeed the new 30: she looked smashing in cutaway tails with a pale pink vest, black tie, and jeans, meshing nicely with Stubb’s black-box stage and bonnet-like white overhead shell. For 95 minutes on a delightfully crisp Sunday night Hynde played hard and sang gorgeously, aided by original Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers and newer members James Walbourne on guitar, Eric Heywood on pedal steel and Nick Wilkinson on bass.
If Hynde and the boys weren’t enjoying themselves, they put on a world-class acting job. “It is a blast to be back in Austin,” the singer told the frothing crowd of young ‘uns and graying rock-war veterans. “Fantastic city! Good-looking guys with long hair, what more do you need?”
Don’t confuse the Pretenders with a nostalgia act. Even if “Break Up the Concrete” - the first studio album in six years - doesn’t measure up to the glory days when the late James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon trod the stage and established the punky-yet-accessible template, the band, now basically Chrissie and whatever other musicians she plays with at any point, never really went away. It may have been a visit from some dear old friends, but heck if it didn’t feel anything but current as a Twitter post.
The newer material tended to drag down the proceedings (save for the kicking opener, “Boots of Chinese Plastic”), but then Hynde would hang on a note in “Stop Your Sobbing” for eight bars, the band would cruise to a ska groove in “Cuban Slide,” and the likes of “Chain Gang,” “Brass in Pocket,” “Precious” and “Tattooed Love Boys” transported the crowd back to sweaty early ‘80s club nights, either in memory or just imagination. They honky-tonked their way through the intro to “Thumbelina,” then sped it up to a startling double-time climax. Just when you thought Americana would dominate, the assertive guitars and heavily miked drums would bring things back to basics. (“We promised you country, but we give you punk,” Hynde said before ripping into “Up the Neck.”) As usual, she acknowledged Honeyman-Scott and Farndon in her intro to “Kid,” saying, “Just wanted to let you know we’re on our way, so put the kettle on.”
Time the avenger, indeed. Some fall by the wayside, some rise again, some just keep plugging away for close to forever. If Chrissie Hynde defies the decades and keeps things vital, so can we all, for an hour and a half at any rate. And the veggie tamales weren’t half bad.
(Chrissie Hynde plays Sunday at Stubb’s. Photo by Jay Janner/AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF)
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February 26, 2009
Review: Joan Baez at Paramount Theatre
She’s now a genuine diva. Not the manufactured, self-labeled kind who keep popping up. Joan Baez earned her diva bona fides over the past 50 years of singing with an ethereal voice and marching with a steely resolve.
So she can raise her hands diva-style all she wants, as she did Wednesday night at the Paramount Theatre, and simply smile at the outbursts of adulation flung her way. The audience members, many of them women of a certain age, knew most of the songs but didn’t need to be led along on the kind of sappy singalongs all too common these days. Instead, they simply took in the songs for all the sincerity that Baez puts into them (except, of course, for the requisite Dylan number mocking his nasal phrasing — this time in a verse of “Love Is a Four-Letter Word”).
Baez’s humor on stage remains a counterbalance to the weighty material about injustice, war, loss and love that she interprets so well.
Her funniest story at the Paramount involved the re-marriage of her 91-year-old, dying father to her mother after a long divorce. She had to talk her mother into the idea and then get him to honor the bride’s single request: that he wear a tux instead of his usual sloppy attire. When Baez, as ring bearer, handed him the band during the ceremony, his addled response was “What’s that for?” She allowed but a brief pause for laughs before singing the gorgeous opening lines of “Forever Young”: “May God bless and keep you always/ May your wishes all come true.”
God certainly was around for this show and its sampling of songs from her newest album, “Day After Tomorrow.” She praised Steve Earle (who produced the CD) before singing his something-for-every-kind-of-believer “God Is God” and thanked Eliza Gilkyson for her timeless “Rose of Sharon.” Then she set sail with “Gospel Ship” and circled back to Earle’s belief in an eventual peace in “Jerusalem.”
With strong backing from three string guys and her son Gabriel Harris on percussion, Baez satisfied with plenty of classics as well, many by or about Dylan. The unexpected turn came when she whispered a change-up to her band and launched into the schoolgirl frivolity of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World.”
For this night at least, the 67-year-old veteran of so many wars and weary times avoided political asides to have a little fun in between calling on a voice that still takes us to a higher place.
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February 23, 2009
CD review: U2 'No Line on the Horizon'
U2
No Line on the Horizon
(Interscope)
The operative words for decoding the new U2 album are: Brian Eno. The longtime U2 producer is having quite the comeback, collaborating with David Byrne here (last year’s “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”), producing Coldplay’s very own U2 record there (the Grammy-wining “Viva La Vida”).
Eno and longtime U2 co-helmer Daniel Lanois both get writing credits on all but two songs on “No Line On the Horizon” and the effect is more in line with Eno’s records with Byrne than something by those four blokes from Dublin.
Gauzy and proggy with spawling outros and angelic synths, think of “No Line,” which hits stores Mar. 3, as an Eno album with Bono belting and warbling over top. The other three are clearly playing - that’s obviously Edge’s guitar in there and Larry Mullen’s signature, militaristic semi-breakbeats abound.
But there’s a disconnect, like the band is playing the complicated songs and saving their creative juice for selling these songs on the road, which is what U2 does best, anyway.
The title track opener pops like the Big Bang, all widescreen atmospherics and some decent one-liners from Bono (“She said, ‘Time’s irrelevant, it’s not linear’/ Then she put her tongue in my ear” Ta-dow!). Bono’s gospel belt on “Moment of Surrender” contrasts nicely with the synth burbles and stealthy melodic lines, while “Magnificent” rhythms harken back to the band’s electronica-inflected 1997 album “Pop.”
In fact, “No Line” seems like a sequel to the much-maligned “Pop,” an album that had nothing to do with its title. Older and wiser now, the band is futzing with the formula, but there’s enough in the songs keeping with the sound of 21st century U2, Inc. that fans won’t run screaming.
“Unknown Caller” brings everything together - keyboard drone, rolling drums, bird calls, strings, interlacing star-light guitar lines, anthemic horns, a slightly goofy Edge guitar solo and Bono contrasting the natural (“Sunshine/sunshine/I was lost between the midnight and the dawning”) with the artificial (“Force quit!/And move to trash!”), a difference Eno has been playing with his whole career.
There’s also a terrible single (“Get On Your Boots”) and two high-octane non-Eno, Steve Lillywhite-produced songs (“Breathe” and the unfortunately titled “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”) that don’t make much sense with the rest of the record, but would have made a killer non-album single, say, eight or so months from now.
But for maximum Bono/Eno (Beeno?) effect, program your CD player 4-3-2-1-7-8-9-11, which carves a spotty 53 minutes into the best 41-minute prog rock album with Bono singing you’re going to hear this year.
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February 13, 2009
CD review: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Self-titled
(Lightning Rod Records)
Jason Isbell kicked up enough red dirt with Drive-By Truckers to forever cloud his sweet home Alabama. The 30-year-old’s ‘Seven-Mile Island’ — a quavering blues fueled by righteous slide guitar, sharp and dirty — swirls the debris. “Mary’s crying because she can’t hold water,” Isbell sings on the album (out Tuesday) opener, “and her clothes don’t fit her right. She used to say that she wanted a daughter, but now she only wants a Saturday night.” Isbell’s hopeful drifters struggle for purchase on sunlit tomorrows before swiftly boomeranging backward.
Trucker deluxe echoes, but Isbell immediately broadens his horizons. Increased ambition redoubles impact. In fact, the most transcendent swatches of “Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit” — a meaty fistful of fuliginous country (“Cigarettes and Wine,” seven minutes straight out of early Jack Ingram), glittering power pop (“However Long”) and tinny funk (“The Blue”) - spider web from Muscle Shoals soul. A significant cut above 2007’s “Sirens in the Ditch,” Isbell’s propulsive yet rather unremarkable solo debut, nearly everything connects.
Especially when he shadows seemingly direct narratives with self-reflection. For example, the gorgeous “Sunstroke,” ostensibly an unsentimental wartime meditation, may peripherally mirror critics’ post-Truckers aims and expectations. “Here it is, morning for some folks,” he sings. “Twilight for those of us left. Answer these questions for everyone, so maybe they’ll stop asking me: What really happened? Where is your masterpiece?”
Try the immediate horizon. This buoyant collection arcs and evolves with a forceful ascent toward the apex. (Check out for-hire Son Volt keyboardist Derry deBorja punching at the moon on “Soldiers Get Strange” and “Good.”) An easy high-water mark, “Streetlights” resonates deeply. Isbell reconciles reach and reproach - “Could my dreams take up too much space,” he ruminates, “I never find a place that’s big enough” - as succinctly and successfully as Whiskeytown’s “Avenues.” Flawless.
Recommended: “Seven-Mile Island,” “Cigarettes and Wine,” “Streetlights”
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Review: Andrew Bird at Paramount Theatre
(Our Matthew Odam’s take on Bird’s show.)
Andrew Bird may have looked lonely standing by himself before the Parmount’s sold-out crowd on Thursday night, but he certainly didn’t sound it.
Armed with nothing more than a violin and an electric guitar, the pencil-thin songwriter took the stage dressed in a sleek navy blazer and brown slacks and proceeded to pluck, strum and draw his bow across his violin to produce sounds that ranged from mournfully sinister to yearningly optimistic.
But Bird rarely let one instrumental part stand on its own for long. Backed by four speakers shaped like giant phonograph horns, he looped countless violin lines over vocal filler, claps and, of course, his impossibly powerful whistles. In effect, what looked like a solo act sounded more like a dynamic, textured, one-man orchestra.
For the first 20 minutes of the nearly two-hour performance, Bird didn’t play a single song from his albums. Instead, he constructed soaring classical compositions that, surprisingly, were some of the most gratifying moments of the set.
“Sorry, I had to indulge myself,” he said as he kicked off his Italian boots. “I played Carnegie Hall the other week, and I think this sounds just as good.”
The album cuts were just as captivating. The plucked violin loops that backed “Plasticities” were so rhythmically powerful they nearly made up for the absence of a drum set. And Bird’s spastic movements and guitar stabs during “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” brought to life the disjointed theme of the song.
Bird left the stage after a few more album cuts and a couple of covers, but was called back twice for an encore. For the final song, he set aside the loop pedals and relied on nothing but his violin and the haunting melodies of “Weather Systems,” showing that no matter how he chooses to play his songs, Bird knows how to make them resonate.
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February 12, 2009
Review: Fred Eaglesmith, Southpaw Jones at Cactus Cafe
Fred Eaglesmith’s wisest cracks are as timely as his tales timeless.
He fired both a mile a minute Wednesday at the Cactus Café. “We were in Houston last night,” the popular Canadian storyteller said early on. “They’re just as out of money as you are. We’re here watching your reverse socialism: taking from the bottom and giving to the top. Castro’s in Cuba looking up like the RCA dog. ‘What are they doing up there?’” As the crowd rolled and hollered, Eaglesmith picked up a yellow bullhorn. “You should try to laugh when you’re alive because you can’t when you’re dead!”
No problem. The Juno award winner, nominated again this year for his rural epic “Tinderbox,” exploded laughter all night. His cantankerous, bone-dry humor well tempered weighty stories wrestling hardship with heart. Eaglesmith and his combustible trio fueled new material - particularly the haunted hymnals “I Pray Now,” “Fancy God” and “Get on Your Knees” - with a zealot’s urgency. “Brothers and sisters,” he howled and growled, hands shaking feverishly, “I’ve been sent to you to save your souls. Jesus told me to save your souls.”
Maybe he did. The relatively sparse group - mostly middle-aged “Fredheads” filling about two-thirds capacity - reacted as enthusiastically as saved sinners. Splitting time between electric and acoustic sets, Eaglesmith climaxed with the greasy cautionary tale “Alcohol and Pills” and Kasey Chambers’ favorite “Water in the Fuel.” The 51-year-old deftly tempered his Dudley George murder ballad with a priceless deer joke. Ask for it in April: Eaglesmith is scheduled to return for the Old Settler’s Music Festival.
Meantime, keep an eye peeled for opener Southpaw Jones. The Austin resident’s cheeky skewers “Legitimate Film,” “The Last Remaining Beatle” and “Fatty Arbuckle” proved an inspired pairing. “Yeah, I lost it,” Jones laughed, butchering a verse. “I hope you weren’t too nervous for me there. I do have a day job.”
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February 9, 2009
Review: Don Caballero at Red 7
Whether it was the result of poor venue planning, overly ambitious supporting acts or arrogance from the headliners themselves, instrumental rockers Don Caballero played a set less than an hour long Sunday night at Red 7, likely leaving some fans feeling shortchanged.
Preceding Pittsburgh’s progressive math masters was DD/MM/YYYY, a hard-hitting five-piece from Toronto that ripped through abrasive guitar riffs and screeching keyboard lines backed by two drummers who banged out syncopated rhythms in off-kilter time signatures.
But by the time the 40-minute performance was done, it was already 12:40 a.m., and Don Caballero had yet to lug their gear onstage. Slowly, the band members rolled out a light orange carpet for drummer Damon Che’s set and readied a video camera to record the performance.
When the headliners eventually started playing a little after 1 a.m., the crowd was ecstatic. Che didn’t exhibit much movement as he pounded out his rapid-fire rhythms, but they often sounded like the work of more than one player.
Guitarist Gene Doyle’s performance was almost as mind-boggling, as his fingers danced over complex riffs that were then looped back through his effects pedals. It wasn’t quite as entrancing as original guitarist Ian Williams’ signature two-hand tapping, but it showed that this latest incarnation of Don Caballero holds its own.
One of the highlights of the show was the performance of “Palm Trees in the Fecking Bahamas,” a simpler, more melodic tune from 2006’s “World Class Listening Problem.” Unfortunately, the moment was short-lived, as the band had to leave the stage a little before 2 a.m. without enough time for even a short encore.
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February 6, 2009
Review: Will Johnson at Mohawk
Although it will come as no surprise to his fans, Centro-matic songsmith Will Johnson can sing. Late Thursday night at the Mohawk, Johnson’s voice was both gritty and melodic, accompanied only by a hollow-bodied electric guitar. Johnson, who recently made an appearance on New Year’s Eve with My Morning Jacket at New York’s Madison Square Garden, seemed at home with the role of solo troubadour.
“My name’s Will,” he said, thanking the audience as he began a set in which he bobbed around on stage with his guitar and poked fun at the fact that “Dances With Wolves” star Kevin Costner was playing across town with his band at Antone’s (“What the hell is going on in there,” he asked). Despite the sense of humor, Johnson remained very focused and serious as he offered up a sampling of his never-ending catalogue, including “Atlanta” off Centro-matic’s 2007 album ‘Operation Motorcide’ and “Closing Down My House” from his solo effort, “Vultures Await.” He cracked a rare smile toward the end of the set when he led a sing-along he admitted was cribbed from the Stones’ “Waiting on a Friend.”
Johnson also played an unrecorded Woody Guthrie song, (“Corrine”?) which he said had been sent to him a day earlier (without music) and was part of an upcoming project being planned for the spring. Guthrie is a good fit for Johnson, whose subtle drawl and messy hair conjures shades of Guthrie’s train-hopping folk singer persona.
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February 4, 2009
CD review: Two Tongues 'Two Tongues'
Two Tongues
‘Two Tongues’
(Vagrant)
As the collaboration between Max Bemis of Say Anything and his idol-turned-best-friend Chris Conley of Saves the Day, Two Tongues seems like the answered prayer of fans of the last decade’s emotionally charged punk.
The band itself even declared months in advance of the self-titled debut that the album would be a cross between Saves the Day’s “Through Being Cool” and Say Anything’s “Is a Real Boy”— a sampling of each band’s most innovative and raw releases.
But while the collaboration is a fun and welcome one, it doesn’t live up to the hype. Granted, when album opener “Crawl” explodes amid a pounding, bass-driven beat, it’s clear that Bemis’ rough-edged snarl was meant for Conley’s nasal croon. And the two certainly know better than most how to alternate between dissonance and melody within the confines of a pop song. The fuzzy, angular riffs that fade in between jutted power chord blasts in “If I Could Make You Do Things” exhibit a perfect play between tension and release.
But the duo misses the mark lyrically. Where Bemis once paid tribute to “this dude, each night, same, table who creates and crumples up … eyes wide from sipping endlessly his endless coffee cup,” and Conley dreamt of a missed one’s face in a stranger’s on a train after “the sun had sunk into New Jersey” through the “glass light conduit,” together they now pine for vague, unnamed female counterparts with words that are practically interchangeable between songs.
Maybe the songwriters no longer see lyrics as their selling points. They certainly put time into their music, from the Beatles-tinged melodies in “Don’t You Want to Come Home” to the bouncy lead work in “Silly Game.”
But if you don’t have something compelling to say, why let your tongue loose in the first place?
Recommended tracks: “Crawl,” “If I Could Make You Do Things”
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February 2, 2009
Review: Broken Social Scene at Bass Concert Hall
Broken Social Scene’s show Saturday night at Bass Hall eally began the preceding night, in Dallas, where they had to cancel because frontman Kevin Drew had the flu.
“I got a lot of hate e-mails from Dallas,” said Drew, a black towel draped over his head.
Drew spent most of the Austin show reiterating how he was still sick, and how he hoped everyone in the 3,000-person, sold-out crowd still liked his performance. It begged the question: Would you rather have a rain check for when the guy’s healthy or watch him go half-speed and listen to him apologize for it all night long?
Lest Drew forgot, he was but one cog in a well-oiled machine comprised of upwards of six other band members, most of whom have their own solo careers. Helping Drew carry the load was bassist Brendan Canning, with the Dinosaur Jr.-sounding hand-clapper “Stars and Sons,” guitarist Andrew Whiteman, otherwise known as Apostle of Hustle, with “Looks Just Like the Sun,” and vocalist Lisa Lobsinger, filling in for Emily Haines, with “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” — all tracks from BSS’ flawless debut album of classic alternative rock, “You Forgot It in People.”
“I’m having fun when I’m not singing,” Drew admitted.
As if that wasn’t enough back-up, the Canadian collective invited former American Analog Set frontman Andrew Kenny onstage to perform “Hard to Find,” from his own catalog.
Hands down the most riveting performance in a set fueled by five-guitar assaults and Tower of Power horns was a slowed-down, spoken-word number, wherein Charles Spearin, on guitar, and Leon Kingstone, on sax, played over a melodic loop of Spearin’s neighbor vocalizing what it felt like to hear for the first time, after a cochlear implant at the age of 31.
“All of a sudden I felt my body moving inside.”
The rest of the band joined Spearin and Kingstone in the refrain.
“All of a sudden I felt my body moving inside.”
The seated crowd began to rise.
“All of a sudden I felt my body moving inside.”
Love filled the room.
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January 31, 2009
Review: Shearwater at Mohawk
On their latest album, “Rook,” Austin’s Shearwater employs a variety of instruments in service of a sound that is at once comforting and unsettling. The various members of the band expressed this sonic diversity Friday night at the Mohawk, at times with a presence perhaps more appropriate for a concert hall than a chilly Red River patio. Frontman Jonathan Meiburg, bravely sporting short sleeves, rotated between guitar, keyboard and banjo, although his greatest asset was his voice, which, with its old-fashioned, folk-singer bravado, was as powerful an instrument as any on stage.
Complemented by a mostly seamless effort by other members of the band, including veteran drummer Thor Harris and Kimberley Burke on cello, bass and glockenspiel, Meiburg’s vocals ranged from quiet foreboding to driving force. On “Rooks,” from the new album, Meiburg sang of an end time foretold by the death of birds; his voice, with an accompanying trumpet, turned an otherwise disturbing song into a beautiful dirge. “Century Eyes,” also from “Rook,” was equal parts sea shanty and Springsteen’s “State Trooper,” with Meiburg offering up an animal yelp at the end of the song.
Harris’ drumming was notable for his attention to detail. Subtleties such as a miniature cymbal attached to a drumstick and tied to the back of his bass drum added another layer to already complex music. Similarly, Burke used the bow from her cello on the glockenspiel to create an underlying ambiance that many bands would probably acheive using a laptop.
Last year, Meiburg talked with Statesman music writer Joe Gross about the end of the world as it related to his writing; Shearwater is certainly dark music for dark times, but it’s a very appealing darkness.
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Review: The Gourds CD release at Antone's
Certain core values hold the power to withstand a recession.
Friday night’s celebration of the Gourds’ latest release, “Haymaker,” bore the proof: as long as you have a group of steady musicians and a solid supply of libations - on a porch, a living room, or a stage in downtown Austin - nothing can really be all that bad.
The Flatcar Rattlers, a local group who formed about a year ago, opened the celebration on a high-energy note with a set of songster punk, uncorking a moonshine-laced attack that sounded as if it was conceived in a room somewhere in the North Carolina Appalachians, between a washtub bass and a stack of records by Hank Williams and the Clash.
The Archibalds followed with a set of solid alternative rock, hard-driven though uninspiring at times.
The Gourds have thrived over the better part of a decade by defying easy categorization, and the songs on “Haymaker” further expand the group’s stylistic reach.
The band opened with a couple tracks off the new disc: tight, accordion-driven “Country Love” and on-the-road dirge “All The Way to Jericho” leading into “Out on the Vine” from the band’s previous release, “Noble Creatures.”
The group controlled the mood expertly between its main poles, Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith, running from soaring multipart harmonies and Cajun-laced gospel to Allman Brothers-inspired roots rock. The thick, funky blues of “Shreveport” fused into the rock-out-loud singalong “Lower 48.”
Russell’s vaudeville delivery on instant-hit “Tex-Mex Mile” balanced Smith’s brooding deadpan on ironic blues-rocker “Luddite,” and accordionist Claude Bernard led a rousing rendition of the Irish traditional “Whiskey in a Jar.”
The audience sang along and some danced, as ounce by ounce the Tecates and Miller Lites lined up atop the group’s amplifiers disappeared into the night.
It was Antones on a Friday night in Austin, Texas. It was the Gourds celebrating a new release. For one evening, at least, troubles faded and everything seemed all right.
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January 26, 2009
First round of Chaos in Tejas bands announced; Amebix rules Emo's
Timmy Hefner, the founder of Austin’s Chaos in Tejas festival of hardcore punk, has announced the first wave of bands playing the 2009 fest, which is May 21-24.
The biggest names thusfar are veteran proto-streetpunk/Oi! band Cock Sparrer and Japanese hardcore supergroup Judgement,
Here’s the list:
Cock Sparrer (U.K., only U.S. show)
Judgement (Japan, only U.S. show)
AI (Japan)
Crude (Japan)
Pierced Arrows (ex-Dead Moon)
_UK
Annihilation Time
Brutal Knights (Canada)
Midnight
Destino Final (Spain)
Young Offenders
Nodzzz
Obliteration (first show, ex-Knife Fight and Mind Eraser)
No Tolerance (ex-Mind Eraser)
the Hex Dispensers
Unit 21
Hefner’s most recent triumph was the Amebix show Saturday night at Emo’s. The bitter cold probably got everyone sick the next day (OK, maybe just me), but man alive, was it worth it.
Locals Mammoth Grinder and Diskonocidos opened the show with solid sets, especially the former.
Severed Head of State was up next, an ad hoc crew, half based in Austin, half in Portland. Guitarist Todd Burdette (Tragedy, Deathreat, Warcry) and bassist Kelly Halliburton (Pierced Arrows) joined Austin singer Jack Control (World Burns To Death) and drummer Chris Pfeffer (the Altars) for a ripping display of recombinant hardcore - a little d-beat, a little hideous thrash, a little rage at humanity. Nicely executed.
Then again, it’s easy to assume that everyone was bringing their A-game in honor of the headliners.
Mercifully, singer/bassist Rob “the Baron” Miller and guitarist Stig didn’t look the least bit punk - just two skinny, older, well-preserved British guys with long hair, dudes you might see poking around the sci-fi section of a used book store or teaching high school physics.
But they delivered utterly, playing deceptively simple songs about the apocalypse and what comes next, powered with precision tooled fury by drummer Roy Mayorga (Stone Sour). Mayorga made everything pulse, roll and move while the Baron was still doing his best Lemmy vocal impression.
It reminded you that Amebix wasn’t just a punk band, but was strongly in the tradition of such heavy British psychedelic rockers as Hawkwind and could match Joy Division mopey vision for mopey vision.
Punks wandered in from as far away as Denver and Minneapolis for this show; locals who usually look angry at everything that moves were sporting massive smiles. The sound of the end times will do that.
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Review: This Will Destroy You, Balmorhea, Chief Rival at Mohawk
On stage, This Will Destroy You live up to the principles set forth in their name. During Friday’s show at Mohawk, the San Marcos quartet drove through a set of familiar tracks with seismic force, treating the subtlety and slow buildup of their recorded material to high levels of sonic exuberance, and to a sheer volume usually reserved for more explicitly heavy bands.
It was a night made for lovers of (mostly) instrumental music. Under-18 group Chief Rival opened with a set of psychedelic shoegaze that started with hints of Jesu filtered through a Jim Morrison sensibility, and moved through tunes bearing the cinematic imprint of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The band may have to sport X’s on their wrists because of their age but already display an impressive level of control and confidence.
Balmorhea’s soft tapestry of tone poems and experimental acoustic compositions bridged the two louder bands. The songs were marked in turn by driving steel-string arrangements, blissed-out melodies hummed — or bellowed — rather than sang, and a swirling, droning interplay of cello, keys, banjo and violin. The venue wasn’t always ideal for a group like Balmorhea; ambient chatter from the packed-to-the-gills room challenged the listener at times. Balmorhea’s March 13 record-release show at Ballet Austin’s Butler Dance Education Center should be marked on your calendars.
This night, though, was a showcase for the headliner. Starting with “A Three Legged Workhorse,” TWDY’s mission was clear from the outset: to deconstruct the band’s post-rock steady-build approach, synthesizing the intricate interplay of their dual guitars into a primal, rib-shattering pulse.
The songs were propelled by rhythm more than melody, with the slower sections on songs like “Quiet” presenting themselves as reflective intermissions between the periods of foot-stomping, controlled chaos.
There were times when the volume came dangerously close to swallowing the songs - if you were familiar with the set list, you sometimes knew what you were hearing more than anything by implication - but the crowd didn’t seem to mind.
In songs like “The World Is Our,” the effect came together euphorically, screaming guitar lines laid over drums crashing to the edge of their limits, locking band and audience together in appreciation of pure sound.
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Review: Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker at Erwin Center
Brad Paisley wanted to make sure that the sold-out crowd of 6,926 at the Frank Erwin Center got their money’s worth.
“With the way the economy is these days, we really appreciate you spending your hard-earned money to come see us,” Paisley said Thursday night. “It’s almost the weekend, so forget about work tomorrow, we’re gonna party all night!”
Paisley throws one heck of a party. His lively 20-song set lasted nearly two hours and was accompanied by custom animation and video on a huge screen behind his band. Paisley, donning his signature white cowboy hat, worked the stage like a pro, shared funny stories, and made sure the crowd knew how excited he was to be playing in what he said is “the best town in Texas.”
The reigning Country Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year churned out hit after hit, including “Mud On The Tires,” “Celebrity” and “I’m Still A Guy.” His latest No. 1 hit, “Start a Band,” featured a video guest appearance from Keith Urban.
Paisley, along with his opening acts Dierks Bentley and Darius Rucker, closed the main set with the feel-good hit “Alcohol.” The performance elicited a standing ovation, while the screen showed shots of Antone’s, the Broken Spoke, and other Austin watering holes.
Big-budget nationwide tours, like the Paisley Party Tour, run the risk of feeling generic and mechanical. But when a show rolls into the live music capital of the world, it’s almost guaranteed to be extra special. Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel joined Paisley on stage for a fun duet of “Miles And Miles Of Texas.”
Austin guitar legend Redd Volkaert also made a special appearance. Paisley and Volkaert dueled on guitar during the encore performance of “Let The Good Times Roll,” which also featured a video guest appearance from blues great B.B. King. Paisley’s encore also included the humorous and cleverly written “Ticks.”
Bentley received a greeting almost as raucous as Paisley’s. He was relentlessly energetic during his 10-song set, running all over the stage and clapping as many hands as he could reach. Bentley rocked out with hits like “How Am I Doin” and “Lot Of Leavin’ Left To Do,” and made the ladies swoon with “Come A Little Closer” and “Settle For A Slowdown.”
Rucker is a crossover artist best known for being the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish. He is still coming into his own as a country singer, but his first single “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It” and the hilarious “Drinkin’ and Dialin’” are sure-fire hits. Rucker’s performances of Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Let Her Cry” and Hank Williams Jr.’s “Family Tradition” were definite crowd-pleasers.
With two fabulous opening acts, plus one pretty amazing Paisley party, Thursday night’s crowd certainly got their money’s worth.
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January 23, 2009
Review: Al Di Meola at One World Theatre
Elegance as a musical property is as hard for a listener to define as it is for a musician to attain - a quality residing somewhere between dogged hours of rehearsal and a searing, restrained passion.
Thursday night at One World Theatre, that elegance resided between the fingers of jazz guitarist Al Di Meola and his accordionist Fausto Beccalossi, toward the closing minutes of virtuoso Di Meola’s first of two shows with his World Sinfonia lineup.
During one of many sublime moments the pair, as the rest of the guitarist’s band stood silent, slowly reconstructed, soft and melancholy, the motif of Sardinian folk song “Umbras.” Then the pair picked up speed, meeting the band’s re-entry with a series of trills until Di Meola dazzled the crowd with a blazing staccato run, impossibly clean, traversing the fretboard from low to high, face contorted with the effort.
The crowd recognized how special the moment was and raised a cheer.
The Bee Caves venue proved an inviting, intimate setting to host one of the world’s pre-eminent guitar virtuosos. Di Meola hewed largely to his more recent, world-inspired material, sticking to his classical guitar for all but one song. From the very opening - “Misterio” from Di Meola’s most recent release, “La Melodia Live in Milano” - throughout the show’s 70-plus minutes, the group maintained a fast pace, moving seamlessly through tango, nuevo flamenco and funk, Di Meola’s furious jazz stylings stamping his signature to each piece.
Di Meola, 55, was discovered in his teens by Chick Corea, the keyboardist he later joined in seminal jazz fusion band Return to Forever in 1974. Collaborations with legendary musicians drove his music to new heights - Astor Piazzola turned him on to tango, while Paco de Lucia drew him to flamenco.
Thursday night, the chemistry between Di Meola and Beccalossi drove the concert, and revealed a new star in the process - the accordionist drew otherworldly sounds from his instrument, between the bandoneon-like tango lead lines and complex jazz runs that complemented Di Meola’s playing.
Late in the evening, Di Meola asked the crowd, “Where’s Willie (Nelson)?”
Now that’s a collaboration we should pray happens.
(Al Di Meola at One World Theatre, photo by Joel Weickgenant/special to the AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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January 20, 2009
CD review: Andrew Bird's 'Noble Beast'
Andrew Bird
‘Noble Beast’ (Fat Possum)
What you get from “Noble Beast,” Andrew Bird’s fourth solo album since breaking with the Bowl of Fire, is what you’ve probably come to expect from the experimental pop song writing violinist: whirling whistles, swirling strings and a healthy helping of vibrato in every honey sweet harmony.
Rather than making his repertoire seem redundant, the reappearance of Bird’s signature touches makes “Noble Beast” a welcome addition to his already cohesive catalogue, right down to the lyrics. The first few lines of album opener “Oh No” continue Bird’s knack for making the scientific seem poetic with mentions of calcified arithmetists and sociopaths, while the title of the second track, “Masterswarm,” seems to be a callback to the peaceful “Masterfade” from 2005’s “Mysterious Production of Eggs.”
Still, the album manages to pack a few surprise punches. “Not a Robot, But a Ghost,” starts with what sounds like percussion you’d find in your kitchen and quickly turns into a haunting, electronica-tinged rocker. The jazz-fusion breakdown in “Anonanimal,” on the other hand, makes for an unexpected mid-song shift.
But the most moving moment comes from “Souverian,” which begins with a bubbly piano line and transforms into a swelling ballad that closes the album with a sentiment that’s hard to shake when the music fades—“Birds will sing/Still my lover won’t return to me/They promise spring/Still my lover won’t return to me.”
Recommended tracks: “Oh No,” “Not a Robot, But a Ghost,” “Souverian”
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January 5, 2009
CD review: The Gourds, 'Haymaker!'
The Gourds
‘Haymaker’
(Yep Roc!)
4 stars
The party line goes something like this: The Gourds should be, as Puffy and Mase once elegantly put it, bigger than the city lights down in Times Square. Their recombinant rocky-tonk jam-folk is equal parts Louisiana humidity and Austin wit, though they’ve never really been able to decide if their wiseacre streak is a plus or an albatross. Frankly, they’re almost a smaller-scale version of the Drive-By Truckers, rootsy lifers who find success and a seriously bonkers core audience well after many lesser acts have called it quits.
Depending how you count soundtracks, “Haymaker” is their ninth, tenth or eleventh album in 15 years, another rock-solid effort from guys who figured out long ago that as good as the CDs are, they’re still just fliers for the live show, even if family commitments keep them more off the road than on.
There’s a strong sense of place on “Haymaker!,” at least on Kevin Russell’s tunes. ‘Country Gal’ shouts out the swaying nymphs that populate the jammy, outdoor festivals the Gourds deserve to headline and “Tex-Mex Mile” puts in a good word for the South Austin of the mid-’90s when life was good and rent and weed were the only concerns (“I was Rip Van Winkle but I thought I was Apollo Creed”).
“Shreveport” misses home while “(All the Way to) Jericho” longs to hit the road. Smith’s tunes stick to girls like “Bridget” (too young for him) and the oddball “Fossil Contender” (related to the Band’s “Jemima Surrender?”). Let’s hope for their sakes “Haymaker!” is the roundhouse they were looking for.
Per usual, it will at least knock you flat.
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December 28, 2008
Old 97's show love for home cookin'
Among the lessons learned at a pretty packed La Zona Rosa on Saturday night: the Old 97’s know how to cook.
Not in the culinary sense - though something suggests bassist Murry Hammond has got some “Top Chef”-level game - but in that way that only sun-seared southern roots and country bands can pull off.
It’s what happens when a song’s closing bridge turns into a greased lightning race track and every member of a band stays locked into a girder-strong rhythm playing faster (Faster, FASTER!) and not really soloing (despite guitarist Ken Bethea’s fingers literally dancing across his instrument’s neck) so much as twisting the song’s dominant key and melody inside out.
The Dallas combo’s old-reliable lament “Doreen” was the first song of several songs that cooked on Saturday, issuing a clear reminder that its country roots still run deep despite the Graham Parsons-meets-Big Star territory mined in recent records.
All facets of the Old 97’s were on display Saturday, from the power pop of “Murder (Or A Heart Attack)” and “Rollerskate Skinny” to rootsier back catalog stuff (“Barrier Reef,” “Here’s To The Halcyon”), making a case for the band as one of the more underrated of the last decade.
Not that any of that was on the foursome’s minds. Instead they were clearly unwound and carefree, “It ain’t punk, but it’ll do for now,” Hammond quipped about 90 minutes into a show that clocked in about two songs shy of two hours.
After an almost non-existant encore break, lead singer Rhett Miller returned alone to play a song destined for his about-to-be-recorded solo record (“the Old 97’s keep turing it down,” he joked) that we’re guessing is called “Two Is Enough, And You’d Make Three.”
After a Miller/Hammond on the pretty, yearning “Valentine,” Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples took their spots again for a powerful stretch run that included “Four-Leaf Clover” and closed with the band cooking again on the burly oldie (for them) “Time Bomb.”
Earlier in the night Hammond shared that with the band members now living in different part of the country it’s a treat to return to see family in Texas during the holidays and let loose at shows with familiar fans.
And it’s hard to argue with him. Clearly, the home cooking has done them good. —Chad Swiatecki
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December 15, 2008
Review: Ice Cube at Mohawk
Like Will Smith on a smaller scale, Ice Cube doesn’t have to rap to pay the bills. A riveting presence in “Boyz n the Hood,” he seemed destined to take himself way too seriously in issue films or lousy actions flicks. Instead, wisely, he’s established himself as a viable comic actor in comedies such as “Friday” and Barbershop” and family fare such as “Are We There Yet?”
But unlike Smith, he’s also one of the most charismatic, galvanizing rappers who ever lived. His group, N.W.A., formed when he was just in his teens, shifted the balance of power in hip-hop from the East to West coast for nearly a decade. Dude has some game.
And it was on display Sunday night at the Mohawk. Considering the controversy surrounding the opening act Trick Trick, it was a little disappointing to see a nice chunk of the crowd present for Trick Trick’s set, even if there were scattered boos. (Many of us wished he could have rapped to an empty room, even if that would have meant missing the excellent local act Gerald G.) That said, Trick Trick’s beats were classic West Coast thunder-funk, spare, bone-rattling bass and lots of gun sound effects. He also won over the crowd with a “(Expletive) Oklahoma” chant regarding the BCS standings.
Like many rappers of a certain age, Cube is essentially working a nostalgia circuit, playing club-sized rooms where he once commanded stadiums. No matter, the man is still riveting. And has a much deeper catalog than you might remember.
He opened with the comparatively obscure “Natural Born Killaz,” a 1995 single that reunited him with N.W.A. producer Dr. Dre. and segued into “Hello” (“I started this gangsta (expletive) and this is the (expletive) thanks I get!”). Deeper cuts such as “Why We Thugs” alternated with bigger hits: “Check Yo’ Self,” “Bow Down,” “Good Day” and “Bop Gun” got huge reactions.
But nothing like the N.W.A. set, which saw hundreds of (mostly white) arms frantically waving and jumping up and down to “Gangsta Gangsta” and “Straight Outta Compton.”
This is why N.W.A. were “the world’s most dangerous group.” Not the songs about the police, not the chatter about life in the Los Angeles ghetto. Ice Cube’s music changed lives, the majority of whom were white, because the majority of people in the country were white. Along with the rest of the hip-hop generation, they smashed open racial barriers that older Americans didn’t even know existed. Why do you think we have a black president coming into office?
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Review: AC/DC in San Antonio
A trainload of heavy guitars rumbled into San Antonio’s AT&T Center Friday when AC/DC conducted a rock ‘n’ roll thrill ride that shook the crowd all night long.
Back after eight long years and playing to a capacity audience of nearly 15,000 (many wearing flickering red devil horns that glowed to the rafters), hard rock’s legendary mischief-makers opened with “Rock ‘N’ Roll Train” from the chart-topping, new album “Black Ice.”
With a derailed locomotive lodged into the backdrop and video screens flashing animated flames, girls and railroad imagery, singer Brian Johnson barreled on stage in a sleeveless work shirt and low-tipped cap.
Looking like a steelworker at happy hour and mustering his indestructible cigarette rasp, the grinning, wild-eyed Johnson was in strained, but surprisingly strong voice considering his long-abused 61-year-old pipes should now be rusted shut. By second song, “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be,” Johnson gleefully prowled the catwalk making special efforts to shake mitts with youngsters hoisted forward by excited fathers.
Guitarist Angus Young, now 53, is balding and slightly less prone to violent neck-snapping, but still does the duck walk to frenzied effect. In various states of undress, his trademark schoolboy uniform now makes him look more like a naughty professor than saucy brat. Stripped to his shorts during “The Jack,” Young and AC/DC reveled as unsuspecting women in the crowd were randomly implicated on overhead video screens as the song’s trampy subject.
Backed by guitar-playing brother Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams and cig-smoking drummer Phil Rudd, the iconic guitarist and roughneck singer jack hammered such crowd-pleasing classics as “Back in Black,” “Dirty Deeds,” “Thunderstruck,” “Shoot to Thrill,” “Hell’s Bells,” “Let There Be Rock,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “TNT,” “Whole Lotta Rosie” and fiery, cannon-blasting encores “Highway to Hell” and “For Those About to Rock.”
Still electric after 33 years, AC/DC delivered a hell of a jolt.
Note: Opening act, the Answer, was rendered unseen and unheard because of a $15 parking fee ambush that necessitated a retreat to an ATM. Buyer beware.
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December 11, 2008
Review: Peter and the Wolf
In both sight and sound, Peter and the Wolf’s Red Hunter is the epitome of a seasoned traveler. The young songwriter, with his full beard and shoulder length hair, played a short but surprisingly energetic set on Thursday night in the garage of the Rancho Relaxo for the house venue’s final show.
Though the album versions of Hunter’s poetic folk songs are typically stripped down and lo-fi, the addition of a bass player and drummer took the live performance to a new level. Hunter almost never stood still, constantly jumping up and down while singing songs about adventures on tropical islands and trips by sailboat.
Further adding to the exotic feel of the set was Hunter’s use of the kalimba. He pounded out alternate renditions of songs spanning many of his albums with the tiny African thumb piano, including lesser-knowns “Strange Machines” and “A Race Around the Earth.”
But all the songs — from “The Ballad of Red Hook,” a tribute to a forgotten New York Town, to “City Birds,” an ode to a homeless fisherman — conveyed a sense of fluid movement and longing.
As the show came to a close, Hunter passed around a bowl in hopes of gathering $32 in donations to finance his trip to the West Coast the following morning. Yes, $32. “That’s really all you need to get across the country these days,” he said.
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December 10, 2008
Review: David Banner, Bun B and Z-Ro at Austin Music Hall
David Banner would like you to feel him. Indeed, he demands it.
The Mississippi-born rapper, actor and activist always lets you see him sweat, whether he’s doing back flips across the stage, bounding into the crowd only to surf it and climbing on the balcony only to walk on the edge and jump off.
The dude absolutely owned the stage Tuesday night at Austin Music Hall, reminding the crowd just how galvanizing live hip-hop can be when it’s done right, with things like solid sound (at Austin Music Hall, no kidding) and good lights. (Openers Da C.O.D. even brought out Gary Clark Jr. on guitar, a good call for both parties.)
Which isn’t to say that it was done perfectly. Too often, acts rapped along with pre-recorded vocal and instrumental tracks, which is a bad look no matter how charismatic you are.
And the usually excellent Z-Ro, who can communicate menace effortlessly on CD and is profoundly popular in Austin, was hobbled by his backing track being louder than he was.
The sweetest moment came at the very beginning of Banner’s set. He wandered out without fanfare at the end of Bun B’s set to note the former UGK member’s legendary status and how silly it was for Bun to open for him (Banner).
Cheesy? Sure. False? I don’t think so.
Bun isn’t just a Texas legend, but a genuinely nice man in an industry not known for same. (Bun was equally gracious - “this man has earned the (expletive) right to headline!”). Bun’s attitude comes from the inner confidence of a guy who knows just how good he is. He cranked out hits and oldies like the pro he is, moving from the Texas tributes “Draped Up” and “Swang on ‘Em” to the Jay-Z song “Big Pimpin’” to the R-rated “Give Me That” to the lyrical wonder “That’s Gangsta,” the UGK classic “Pocket Full of Stones” and “Get Throwed.”
A live band would have been nice, as Bun works with them as well or better than anyone in hip-hop; he always impresses, no matter what the setting.
But nearly anyone would have looked off their game next to Banner. He was pure energy, a riveting presence whether ripping through “9MM” or lecturing on the importance of taking care of high blood pressure while getting in shape (“I hear folks say ‘David Banner lost 50 pounds, (expletive) think he cute”).
He turned “Cadillacs on 22s” into an a capella ballad, shouted out the president-elect (“When I say ‘O,’ you say ‘bama!”“), and gave some love to “the white people” by playing a few bars of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and using the aural excuse to crowd surf. (Not sure when “Teen Spirit” became the official song of white people, but, well, here we are.)
It’s virtually unheard of to have a live hip-hop show get you excited about the genre in general, but that’s what Banner did. Yeah, it was probably wise to have him headline.
Click here for more photos from the show
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December 8, 2008
Review: Anthony Hamilton at Austin Music Hall
Anthony Hamilton, R&B’s certified country boy/soul singer/preacher, was earnest, affable and intense Saturday night at Austin Music Hall. In a soul environment where his contemporaries are pretty young things like Ne-Yo or Chris Brown, who sing about independent women and hot girls, Hamilton is a proudly Christian family man who sings about love, self-empowerment, health, God and joy.
Where pure sexuality and romance infuse the soul game, Hamilton offers stamina, verve and a voice that belongs in the company of legends like Donny Hathaway and Luther Vandross. Saturday, he combined offerings from his first album, “Coming From Where I’m From,” with “The Point of It All” his latest release out this month, but he also added a stirring rendition of the Sam Cooke classic “A Change is Gonna Come” to a show that felt more like a church service.
His playful demeanor and rich voice were off-set by his boundless dancing — like that of a teenager hyped up on caffeine — which he maintained for more than an hour straight. Those other guys might have legions of squealing women tossing undies onto their stages, but Hamilton is content to inspire a call-and-response kind of adoration, the kind of “Sing it, Anthony!” reverence that he earned from the audience.
The highlights of the show were the beautifully rendered performance of “Pass Me Over” and the athletic “Soul’s on Fire.” Until the very last song, “Cool,” he claimed the stage with his b-boy swagger and eventually danced and sang his way through the aisles. By then, everyone else had caught the spirit, too, and the dancing continued as the crowd sang along.
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December 5, 2008
Live Review: Deerhunter at Emo's
Deerhunter leader Bradford Cox likes to keep things moving, at least in the studio. His work with Deerhunter has moved from oddly aggressive ambient music to weirdly passive punk to songs that could pass muster as stadium-ready Radiohead outtakes (note: not an insult).
With his side project Atlas Sounds, he added more colors to his palette - bedroom dub reggae, goof-offs, ephemera that hangs together more as flights of fancy than the finished work of a potentially major indie artist.
But live at Emo’s Monday night, Deerhunter moved in a different way. The quintet’s best moments were the heads-down, three-guitar juggernauts, focused jams driven by the propulsive, future-now beat associated with ’70s Krautrock. Bassist Josh Fauver and drummer Moses Archuleta made all of this stuff work brilliantly.
Drawing on the band’s breakout 2007 album “Cryptograms” and this year’s tighter, more songful “Microcastle,” Cox’s vocals moved from a mumble to a wail, sounding at points like a frail, American Bono. (It’s easy to tell Cox is a fan of Brian Eno, the polymath producer who has had a hand in about a billion good albums, including U2’s finest work.)
Openers Nite Jewel played no wave-style aggro-synth-duo rock as derivative as it was forgettable, but Times New Viking delivered primitive basement rock in the tradition of Guided By Voices at its simplest and noisiest. Emo’s harsh, unforgiving sound worked shockingly well for them; they may be the only band in that club’s history who sounds better outside than inside.
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November 25, 2008
Review: Blind Boys of Alabama and the Preservation Jazz Hall Band
Common musical roots and similar demographics certainly make the the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Blind Boys of Alabama a logical pairing. But what elevates their joint Down By the Riverside tour to the match-made-in-heaven level is the joyful spirit these ensembles share.
Whether playing separately or in combination Sunday at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, members of Preservation Hall and gospel’s Blind Boys seemed to be having the time of their lives, which, considering their average age, is saying a lot. The Blind Boys formed in1939. The Preservation Hall venue was established in New Orleans in 1961, and the oldest current member of its house band is the effervescent clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, at 76. Both groups are veritable institutions, having survived numerous personnel changes over the years. Yet each not only demands top-notch musicianship, but allows plenty of room for individual personalities to express themselves.
Preservation led off Sunday with a set of firmly traditional but never musty jazz, accented by plenty of comic moments. Bassist Walter Payton played a clever, elegant solo on “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down” that managed to incorporate snatches of both “Shortnin’ Bread” and Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser,” and he plucked one note so loudly and percussively that pianist Rickie Monie pretended to start from his seat. Trombonist Frederick Lonzo delighted the large crowd with his vintage tailgating style, nipping at the heels of Marcus Belgrave’s soaring trumpet, and also played his way right out into the audience, taking a woman by the hand and promenading her gallantly up the steps and across the stage as he continued to play one-handed.
Blind Boys singer Ben Moore and singer-guitarist Joey Williams came out for the exuberant gospel number “Glory Land,” and musical director/tuba player/backing vocalist Ben Jaffe called Austin’s Dan Dyer up to play piano for the finale, in which the band led a sizable second line around the floor of the auditorium for “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Longtime Blind Boys leader Clarence Fountain is virtually retired, but Jimmy Carter has no difficulty taking on his frontman role, with an earthier voice but a light-hearted manner that is two parts preacher, one part James Brown — especially funny given his elfin physique. In a running joke, the assistant who guided the men onto the stage and guitarist Williams, who is younger and sighted, kept having to restrain the gentlemen from popping up from their chairs or launching themselves off the stage from their stations in front of their microphones. During the rousing “Look Where He Brought Me From,” Carter, Moore and even the portly Billy Bower were pogo-ing like New Wave teens.
Of course, even if they stood stock still, the Blind Boys could move an audience with their glorious three- and four-part harmonies, whether singing traditional numbers such as “I’ll Fly Away” and “Uncloudy Day” (from their recent album featuring Preservation Hall, “Down in New Orleans”), Curtis Mayfield’s R&B clasic “People Get Ready” or Ben Harper’s folk-gospel tune “There Will Be a Light.” Bowers’ resonant voice was particularly stirring, raising up like a luminous cloud on “Spirit in the Sky.” Members of Preservation Hall who came out to accompany the Blind Boys’ musicians on several numbers sang along without mics, out of sheer enjoyment. The two groups closed the night with a rousing mutual rave-up on “Down By the Riverside.”
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November 24, 2008
Review: The Black Crowes at Austin Music Hall
Chris Robinson offered a faith healer’s remedy first thing Saturday night. “It’s all right, sisters; it’s all right brothers,” the Black Crowes front man implored as the band coaxed to life “Movin’ on Down the Line.” “Keep the curtain drawn and the record on.” That key Utopian principle supports this soulful outfit’s very foundation: When hopes fade to black, cue the tunes. In other words, this righteous rock ‘n’ roll will exile your demons and fears.
Yes, indeed. If the Black Crowes’ 135-minute swamp-groove fireworks at Austin Music Hall serve as a beacon, it’s still an ambitious and profoundly moving revolution, too. Eyes toward the future: Forget hearing fan favorite “ She Talks to Angels” when newer “Warpaint” material like “Evergreen” burns so white hot. “Welcome to your little Saturday night slice of rock ‘n’ roll pie,” Robinson said gleefully early on. “We hope it’s tasty and fresh and all that stuff.”
Luther Dickenson ensured it. The irreplaceable for-hire lead guitarist’s turbine slide work — even sharper and more crisp than with his own North Mississippi All-Stars — shocked a pioneer’s urgency into “Oh Josephine” and “Sting Me.” Meanwhile, his blinding blue streak from “Only Halfway to Everywhere” to “Thorn in My Pride,” punctuated by Robinson’s yelping and screeching, buoyed a sparring-axe tsunami with founding guitarist Rich Robinson. Unforgettable.
Ditto Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle.” Almost impossibly, Chris Robinson — gyrating spastically like Joe Cocker, clapping like Robert Plant and purposefully strutting like Mick Jagger — fused his most overt influences into a singular serpentine by song’s end. Even better, it was only the second finest cover of the evening: The Black Crowes’ chugging heavy-metal hootenanny redefined Bob Dylan’s languid “Girl from the North Country” as an unrepentant steam train. Only the jellied teardrops Dickenson summoned to accent “Wiser Time” sounded sweeter.
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November 21, 2008
Review: Q-Tip, Cool Kids and the Knux at Stubb's
About 40 minutes into an across-the-board smash of a live show Thursday at Stubb’s, veteran emcee Q-Tip took his first moment to address the crowd.
“Hello, I’m Q-Tip. You might remember me from my old group, A Tribe Called Quest.”
Yeah, Tip, we remember. And after an honestly spectacular performance the natural question to ask is: Why you been gone so long?
Sure, the Queens native has been kicking around in the decade since Tribe called it quits, first with the excellent 1999 solo joint “Amplified,” selected guest spots and a brief Tribe reunion last year for the Rock The Bells package tour.
But he hasn’t been a Kanye- or even Common-level presence on the cultural landscape, and for 75 minutes Thursday he made a pretty air-tight case that that’s where he belongs.
Following promising newcomers the Knux and brainy party rappers the Cool Kids (who earned the rare supporting act encore calls), Q-Tip took the stage in front of a full band — guitar, bass, keys, drummer, DJ — and embarked on a set that was always grounded in hip-hop but took diversions into hard funk, soft soul and touches of jazz, which was often Tribe’s foundation sound.
Not surprising but still pleasant to see was how the rapper’s solo material (“Let’s Ride” or the almost ballad “You” from the new album “The Renaissance”) fit so seamlessly next to classics Tribe cuts like “Date Rape,” “Bonita Applebaum” or “Scenario” even though those songs were mostly limited to one or two verses because of the absence of original members Phife Dawg and Jarobi.
Balancing confidence with sincerity and studied showmanship with enthusiasm, Q-Tip was a singing, rapping, dancing phenom — even with that pinched nasal delivery — from the moment he took the stage to the sounds of a Barack Obama “hope”-heavy campaign speech and asked the crowd to point their index fingers toward the sky in remembrance of legendary producer J Dilla.
Those fingers, hands and arms didn’t get much rest all night, whether they were waving, bouncing or clapping as the man born Kamaal Fareed explored the journey from hip-hop’s roots (with slices of Funkadelic songs), its early ‘90s Golden Age (“time for some old ((expletive)) from ‘92”) to its present day.
And how about the monstrous home stretch of “Check The Rhyme,” “Vibrant Thing” and “Award Tour,” which found him crouched atop the tin-roofed shed at far stage left, looking down on the half-full venue (there is no justice) and furiously rapping like he’d never play to another crowd ever again.
After that it was time to unfold the landing gear, winding the night down with the earthy soul-hop of “Wefight/Welove” that allowed Q-Tip and his band a chance to stretch out and revel in the feeling of a magnetic, still-on-it performer meeting an adoring crowd on a night no one involved will soon forget.
(Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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Review: Mike Kinsella of Owen at Emo's
After two and a half years, his fourth full-length and a slew of international dates, Chicago’s Mike Kinsella of Owen returned to Austin to play Thursday at Emo’s, much to the excitement of a group of dedicated fans.
As Kinsella took the stage after fellow indie-icon Caithlin De Marrais, formerly of Rainer Maria, the crowd began clamoring before the stage in hopes of seeing some of Kinsella’s intricate acoustic riffs in action.
And even though live the songs were stripped of the many instrumental layers that make his albums so engaging, Kinsella’s unconventional tunings and complex guitar lines made the music sound full. “Bad News” created the illusion of two guitars, while during “Playing Possum for a Peek” the rapid classical fingerpicking brought the crowd to a hush.
“How do you do that?” one listener called out during the latter.
Between songs, Kinsella was laid back and conversational. He talked to the crowd about everything from the recent election to their drinks of choice for the night. During songs, he seemed enthused by the audience’s response. He belted out an energetic rendition of “Nobody’s Nothing,” and sang just above a whisper to the tongue-in-cheek “Good Deeds.”
He even had some listeners singing along to “Good Friends, Bad Habits,” despite telling them beforehand that they probably wouldn’t be familiar with the hard to find track.
Near the end of the show, Marrais and openers El Mays joined Kinsella onstage for a playful blues-rock version of Huey Lewis’s “If This Is It” to close out the night.
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November 9, 2008
Review: Dangerous Toys
Santa’s worst enemy returned with a bang Saturday when Dangerous Toys reloaded at Red Eyed Fly for a one-night stand of hair-metal mischief.
As Austin’s late-’80s bullet-belt rock champs, the Toys once played in the same box as L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat and other mid-level motley crews. Tours with Alice Cooper, Judas Priest and the Cult kept the carousel spinning until the life of leather and leisure disappeared in the gloom of Nirvana.
To the delight of Saturday’s 200 Backroom refugees, the Toys still enjoy random returns to the playground.
Opening with “Gunfighter” from the the 1991 sophomore album, “Hellacious Acres,” singer Jason McMaster screeched with the red-faced fury of Janis Joplin while guitarists Scott Dalhover (bald) and Paul Lidel (hair to spare) traded sharp jabs of shredded blues. Bassist Mike Watson sported a bandanna-beneath-a-backward ball cap and was returned to health after illness postponed the gig a few months earlier. Curtain-haired drummer Mark Geary caffeinated the pulse.
The hard-charging “Outlaw” was followed by “Sugar, Leather & the Nail,” the bluesy bop of “Take Me Drunk” and the teeth-chattering scat of “Gimme No Lip,” which melted into a snippet of Iron Maiden’s “Runnin’ Free.” Somewhere in the flashback, a shout of “Watchtower” referenced McMaster’s pre-Toys thrash band and drew a raised eyebrow and appreciative grin from Austin’s well-traveled, current Broken Teeth singer.
As expected, the radio and MTV hits were greeted like high school crushes. Peppered among gems from the Toys’ overlooked third album, “Pissed,” the hits included the jet-engine vocals of “Queen of the Nile,” the sing-along shout of “Line ‘Em Up” and the silly slyness of “Sport’N a Woody.” A rarely heard “Demon Bell” was summoned from Wes Craven’s schlock flick, “Shocker,” before the two-hour gig came to a close with a bump-and-grind punch of “Teas’N Pleas’N” and “Scared.”
All told, the Toys were sturdy as a Tonka, skinny as a stick and still a whole lotta fun.
(David Glessner is a freelance music writer in Austin.)
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November 3, 2008
Review: Mountain Goats at Antone's
The nasally sneer of the California-based Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle doesn’t appeal to everyone. In fact, to many, it’s downright annoying.
But just a couple songs into the band’s set on Saturday at Antone’s, it was clear that despite his off-putting vocal inflection, Darnielle delivers his expertly crafted words with more passion and precision than most of his folk-rocking peers.
During each song, the singer was animated, strutting around the stage in staccatoed movements with his acoustic guitar, but always returning to the microphone in time to belt his vibrant verse in perfect pitch. His backing band, made up of nothing more than a bass guitar and drums, pounded out energetic rhythms that gave the simple, lyric-driven songs a surprisingly dynamic sound for a three-piece.
The sold-out crowd was with the band completely. They cheered ecstatically as the hard-driving numbers reached their climaxes, and when Darnielle sang subdued songs like “So Desperate” in a voice that barely reached above a whisper, they were so silent that you could hear the whoosh of passing traffic just outside the venue’s doors.
This undivided attention did not go unnoticed. After playing “Dinu Lipatti’s Bones,” Darnielle explained the song’s despondent origins and thanked the crowd for singing along. From that point on, he delivered similar monologues between songs with words almost as eloquent as the lyrics of the songs themselves.
Opener Kaki King joined the Mountain Goats onstage near the end of the set to perform songs she and Darnielle wrote for their recently released “Black Pear Tree” and “Satanic Messiah” EPs, before the Goats burst into an uptempo encore of “This Year.”
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November 2, 2008
Review: Carrie Underwood at the Erwin Center
Elvis and Priscilla were there. Betty Boop and Marilyn Monroe, too. I even saw a few dozen Tony Romos. Carrie Underwood’s Halloween night concert at the Frank Erwin Center brought out more characters than an “American Idol” audition.
There may have been more costumes than cowboy hats in the audience, but “Idol’s” country queen stayed true to form. Her powerhouse pipes were spectacular and her dazzling stage presence could be felt all the way up to the top row of the mezzanine.
The newest Grand Ole Opry inductee must have had her Vitamin Water, because she was tirelessly energetic throughout the 19-song set. She brought the house down with numbers like “Last Name,” “Get Out of This Town,” and her opener “Flat on the Floor.” Before Underwood performed her current hit “Just a Dream,” opening band Little Big Town came out and joined her in a rocking rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.”
The confetti-filled encore was the icing on the cake. Underwood gave Axl Rose a run for his money with her cover of “Paradise City” and pleased the crowd with her smash hit “Before He Cheats.”
Underwood may not have worn a Halloween costume, but some of her outfits were a little gaudy. The iridescent lavender ball gown that transformed into a mini-dress was a bit over the top. And the what-was-she-thinking strapless denim shorts-jumpsuit and matching stiletto boots were just tacky.
But what she lacked in style she certainly made up for in personality. Underwood’s sweet, soft-spoken demeanor was charming and her banter with the crowd seemed genuine.
Opening act Little Big Town certainly got the job done. With their southern rock attitude, they got the crowd on their feet with songs like “Bones” and their biggest hit “Boondocks.” The talent is all there, as they show with their remarkable four-part harmonies, so with a little more exposure they could easily headline their own tour.
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October 31, 2008
Review: TV on the Radio at Stubb's
A band as tirelessly innovative as TV on the Radio shouldn’t play the same songs in the same order back-to-back nights, but that’s exactly what happened Thursday at Stubb’s. The disappointing realization that a facsimile of the Houston show from the night prior was being transmitted — sure, practice makes perfect, but not when it comes at the expense of improvisation — only exacerbated sad but true comments made by a random concertgoer who came only for the opening band the Dirtbombs: TVOTR’s music is cold, dense and lacking in hooks.
Come to think of it, there aren’t many parts to their songs that you find yourself singing over and over in your head. But that doesn’t mean the words and melodies buried in the Brooklyn prog-rockers’ enthralling mix of industrial-strength loops and jazz-funk instrumentation aren’t poignant, because they are. Nor does it mean the show wasn’t any good, because it was.
A frantic, sped-up “The Wrong Way,” from their debut album “Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes,” had co-frontman Tunde Adebimpe likening himself to Barack Obama, when he sang about a new politician stirring inside him. This foreshadowing of change was taken to the next level on the next song, “Golden Age,” from TVOTR’s new album, “Dear Science.” Fellow co-frontman Kyp Malone sang about the utopian future that could result from said politician, while someone disguised as a ginger man cookie — perhaps in homage to TVOTR’s second album “Return to Cookie Mountain,” definitely in homage to Halloween — bounded about onstage.
Subsequent “Cookie Mountain” cuts “Province,” “Dirtywhirl” and “A Method,” with their a capella doo-wops and unified hand claps running up against the seven-piece’s guitar squalls, droning synths and skronking horns, continued to define TVOTR’s brand of music as the shape of things to come for soul. There just wasn’t much soul in the rehearsed way that sound played out.
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October 28, 2008
CD review: Pink's "Funhouse"
“Funhouse” (LaFace)
It’s the worst song on the radio. It’s the best song on the radio. The inane na-na-na-na-na-na sing-song of “So What” opens the new Pink album, which hits stores today. Then on the chorus, this force of nature in tattoos and platinum blonde hair explodes with so much melodic defiance that “So what, I am a rock star/ I got my rock moves/ And I don’t want you tonight” sounds like the soul’s refrain. With this album, both forceful and delicate, Alecia “Pink” Moore emerges as the biggest American rock star since that skinny guy from Detroit who made an earlier record called “Funhouse.”
First off, Pink’s an exceptional singer, with an extra gear to give a chorus a boost when it seems she’s already aired it out in full. As evidenced by the gorgeous new ballad “I Don’t Believe You,” which looks to be the hit to knock the career into the stratosphere, Pink just seems to feel more than other singers. “Crystal Ball,” guided by a lone acoustic guitar, is another song that skillfully mixes the Philly gal’s strength and vulnerability. Some artists you applaud, but you root for Pink.
“Funhouse” sounds like Pink, who’s still only 29, got married to professional bike-flipper Carey Hart just so she’d have a great divorce record. The Chic-influenced title track likens marriage to a carnival attraction that’s so giddy at first, but turns into a den of twisted clowns. “Once a tickle now a rash,” she sings, before starting a countdown to burn this funhouse down. Without issues, Pink makes albums like “Try This.”
The dysfunctional family of “M!ssundaztood” has given way to struggles with sobriety and emotional betrayal. “I gave you life/ I gave my all/ You weren’t there/ You let me fall” Pink sings in the bridge of “So What” that’s its own song.
Pink’s voice elevates weaker tracks such as “One Foot Wrong,” which nicks Nirvana’s “Lithium” and the formulaic “It’s All Your Fault,” which brings tedium to the whisper-to-a-scream dynamics Pink first unleashed on “M!ssundaztood” in 2001. But those tracks are soon automatically skipped for heavy relistening. The first time you play “Funhouse” it may take an hour or so to get all the way through because eight of the twelve tracks are automatic playovers.
Recorded in Stockholm, Los Angeles and New York City with a host of co-producers, “Funhouse” is a big-sounding record that would be called overproduced if the singer wasn’t Pink. Like her heroes, Bette Midler and Janis Joplin, her honesty always shines through, which is why she gets away with self-conscious material that would sound forced by lesser personalities.
Who wants to hear Carrie Underwood’s break-up record?
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October 27, 2008
Review: Kings of Leon at Austin Music Hall
Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill cut his locks and still the ladies flocked. He jeered UT’s football team and still he was cheered. He and his band of two brothers and one cousin played vapid arena rockers from their hollow new album, “Only By the Night,” and still the sold-out Austin Music Hall crowd sang along. Kings of Leon could do no wrong Saturday, as they put on a clinic in setlist sequencing.
They started with “Crawl,” one of the new album’s better songs, and moved backward — a song from each of their three previous albums — until they reached their hallmark, “Molly’s Chambers,” from their debut album, “Youth & Young Manhood.” The crowd was lathered. It was time to complete the bait and switch.
“Sex on Fire,” their anthemic new single, led off a four-song string from “Only By the Night.” Caleb wrote the album’s melodies and lyrics in a post-surgery haze induced by pain pills and wine. A downside to the solipsism inherent in that was the song “Be Somebody,” wherein cousin Matthew’s guitar-playing with his teeth had to salvage Caleb’s overly earnest refrain, “Given a chance, I’m gonna be somebody.” (What are you waiting for?) An upside, though, was “Closer,” a sinister and soulful slow jam about a lovesick vampire, the likes of which can only be conceived in an altered state.
A hard right put Kings of Leon back in the stomping grounds of “Aha Shake Heartbreak.” A raunchy, boogie-woogie romp through some of that album’s greatest hits — “Milk,” “Four Kicks,” and “The Bucket” — brought it back to how it was when everyone was first turned on to the Kings. Pogo-dancing and fist-pumping on par with a high school house party abounded, and only occasionally let up through the rest of the set. Even Caleb, usually a cardboard-cutout, moved his skinny hips.
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Review: Willie Nelson at the Backyard
God, with the assistance of Willie Nelson (or maybe it was the other way round), wrote a fitting close to the 16-year run of the Backyard on Sunday night.
Nelson was wrapping up his 90-minute, 31-song set just after midnight with a rousing rendition of “I Saw the Light.” As he was singing the final choruses, the first assertive drafts of a cold front began to shake the limbs of the big oaks around the venue. The temperature dropped precipitously, the big Texas flag behind the stage threatened to break loose and the capacity crowd felt the tang in the air that presages true autumn.
The signs seemed clear: Seasons change. Nothing is forever. Things end.
Or maybe not. Earlier in the evening, the Backyard’s owner, Direct Events head honcho Tim O’Connor, stood proudly by a series of architectural drawings detailing a “new” Backyard to be built—possibly—on land nearby the current venue. He seemed—and it’s an uncharacteristic stance for him—coy about the joint’s future. “Well, we’re not quite done,” he told a reporter, although after being pressed for a definitive answer on the prospects of a new venue, he retreated into “No comment.”
“I don’t know” if O’Connor will pursue a new incarnation of the Backyard, said Eric Herron of Sixthriver Architects, who generated the sketches of the proposed structure. “But if he can’t recreate it better than it is, I don’t think so.”
Still, at the end of the night, O’Connor, with members of his staff onstage, ceremoniously took down and folded up a large Backyard flag. The implication being, of course, that it might one day fly over a new iteration of what had been one of the city’s most beloved performance spaces. It was, he said, “the end of a great run.”
The last day at the Backyard was something of a great run in and of itself, a 10-hour extravaganza that featured the cream of Austin’s musical crop, including the Gourds, Ruthie Foster, Carolyn Wonderland, Grupo Fantasma, Kelly Willis, Jimmie Vaughan and others.
By the time Nelson took the stage about 10:30 p.m., the crowd had been treated to blues, gospel, country, cumbia, Western Swing, indie rock and more. The show resembled one of Willie’s famous Fourth of July Picnics in microcosm.
Even after such a musical banquet, the crowd’s enthusiasm for Nelson’s set remained palpable. His opening-season performances at the Backyard have, over the years, become one of the rites of spring and, as O’Connor noted, there were people at the show who weren’t even born when Nelson and his Family Band started playing the joint.
Limbering up with “Whiskey River” (one of the constants in an ever-changing universe) and “Still Is Still Moving to Me,” Nelson eased into his vintage medley of “Funny How Time Slips Away/Crazy/Night Life.” His stoic lyric, “Ain’t it funny how time slips away,” had a fresh resonance under the circumstances; “We’re happy to help you close this beer joint,” he said to O’Connor.
The hits flew by—“Yesterday’s Wine,” “Georgia,” “Me and Paul,” “I Gotta Get Drunk,” “On the Road Again”—and for a time it was possible to pretend that the Backyard hadn’t been gobbled up by a dubious vision of “progress.” The nighttime shadows and the big trees almost—but not quite—obscured the strip mall that has engulfed the once-isolated venue.
There was a sort of a balm in Nelson’s timeless music, played one last time under the ancient oaks, as they began to stir under the rush of wind coming down from the plains. Time slips away all right, but, as Willie sings in “Yesterday’s Wine”: “Miracles appear in the strangest of places.”
Perhaps—just perhaps—the last chapter in the Backyard’s storied saga has not been written just yet.
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October 24, 2008
CD review: John Legend, 'Evolver'
Evolver
(Sony)
John Legend’s debut album “Get Lifted” seemed like the start of something big. It had an inventive new sound (a fusion of neo-soul, gospel and hip-hop) backed by both critical acclaim (three Grammy’s including Best New Artist) and commercial success (2 million records sold). Most importantly, it had “Ordinary People,” a star-making turn that featured only a piano and rightly became his signature song.
But in the years since “Get Lifted,” Legend hasn’t quite lived up to his name. After his debut’s success, he branched out on his own, leaning less on mentor and producer Kanye West. His last album, 2006’s “Once Again,” came and went with little fanfare and even fewer memorable moments.
His new album “Evolver” (out Oct. 28) is more of the same. It has all the trademarks of a John Legend album - the understated ballads, the earnestly soulful voice and, of course, the ever-present piano. There are a lot of impressive musical moments; yet somehow “Evolver” is less than the sum of its parts.
He tries to incorporate a more uptempo and less piano-reliant sound, most notably on first single “Green Light.” His smooth vocals give it a danceable melody, but as soon as Andre 3000 starts rapping, Legend’s vocals are pushed into the background. 3000 adds the star-power and charisma largely missing from Legend’s recent work.
In an interview with MTV, Legend said that “Evolver” is a collection of good songs without any over-arching lyrical theme. It’d be a shame if his career turns out the same way.
Recommended tracks: “Green Light,” “If You’re Out There”
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October 21, 2008
Review: Girl Talk at Emo's
Think of popular recorded music as a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal. About a three-to-one ratio of those mealy oat bits to sugar-loaded marshmallow pieces, which seems to be about the same rate that bona fide thrilling musical hooks emerge out of mostly nondescript sonic gunk.
Therein lies the fuel behind the rise of DJ superstar Girl Talk (nee Greg Gillis); he knows the marshmallows are all that matter on the dance floor.
They were flying left and right Monday night when Gillis took to his laptop on the stage at Emo’s and set to his musical alchemy, creating a bizarro world where samples of tracks by Sinead O’Connor, Lil Wayne, UGK and Rage Against The Machine not only coexist, but dare you not to dance feverishly.
Gillis has said in reports that each minute of his records take about a day’s worth of tinkering and mixing to produce, with his live shows serving as a sort of test tube where he can judge what combinations will and won’t work on record. Judging by Monday’s show, he isn’t cooking up a whole lot of new stuff since his set consisted of lots of familiar moments (with slight tweaks) from his breakout albums, 2006’s “Night Ripper” and the new “Feed The Animals.”
And it worked since fans got to hear thrilling pairings like Avril Lavigne and Toni Basil double teaming T-Pain, or Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” underlined with Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” at ear-shattering volume.
That last pairing is pretty much Gillis’ “Stairway To Heaven” (which shockingly he’s never sampled. Yet.), a signature moment that’s at the top of fans’ lists when pondering his body of work. It was among the highest peaks he reached during his respectable but still kinda brief 90 minute set Monday, though it wasn’t like too many in attendance were complaining as they left, dazed, sweaty and nearly sugar-shocked from all those marshmallows that got tossed their way.
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Review: Weezer at Erwin Center
That Weezer made room in their set Monday night at the Frank Erwin Center for covers by Pink Floyd (“Time”) and Nirvana (“Sliver”) is certainly a barometer of their admirably catholic taste, but the show indicated something more significant and encouraging: They are, as advertised, having fun again.
This is very good news. Although always a polarizing presence in the indie-pop landscape, there’s no denying that singer-songwriter-guitarist Rivers Cuomo writes irresistibly catchy songs, equal parts sunshine and sludge, and could probably come up with hooks in his REM sleep that REM would kill for. But by the last time they stopped here a couple of years ago, they seemed a little deflated. They were touring to support “Make Believe,” also known as “Worst. Album. Ever.,” and in their co-headlining bill at the Bowl with the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl and his bunch pretty much mopped the floor with them.
Wearing matching white jumpsuits or coveralls (which they later shed to reveal … red jumpsuits or coveralls), the band this time came out of the blocks hard with “My Name is Jonas,” the opening blast from 1994’s so-called “blue album.” Fairly predictable, but soon enough it became apparent the band would be changing more than their clothes, and that Weezer is now not just Cuomo and three other guys. Bassist Scott Shriner handled vocals on “Keep Fishin’” and “Dope Nose,” Cuomo played some drums, drummer Patrick Wilson played guitar — the guy can really play, too — and Tom DeLonge, the singer for opener Angels & Airwaves, helped out on “Undone — The Sweater Song.”
Were some of the songs a little ragged? Sure, but it was plain the guys in the band were having a great time and it was hard not to get swept along — the whole thing felt goofy and audacious, not a gimmick cooked up by a tired and desperate band. Then, in a move that harkened back to their recent “Hootenanny” mini-tour, they hauled maybe three or four dozen people onto the stage, people who played everything from guitar to banjo to trombone and sousaphone — who knows, there might have been a theremin up there somewhere — to play, or rather get through, “Island in the Sun” and “Beverly Hills.” They they shuffled the civilians off and reclaimed the stage, encoring with “Buddy Holly.”
By that point Cuomo had stripped down to his Motley Crue T-shirt, a reminder that he was once a desperate kid who believed in the redemptive power of music. And now he’s a rock star, maybe the first one ever to sing about Rogaine (and if he’s not using it, his thinning crown suggests he should). How cool is that? How cool is Weezer? The answer, although it will not please the haters, is this: a lot cooler than you thought. So there.
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October 20, 2008
Review: Hotel Cafe Tour with Ingrid Michaelson, Meiko, Priscilla Ahn, Erin McCarley and Laura Jansen
The Hotel Café Tour hit Austin’s Parish on Friday with an all-female lineup, showcasing talent from five up-and-coming singer/songwriters.
The Tour, named after a coffee shop-turned-venue in L.A., has been a performance outlet for a rotating cast of musicians for four years. It doesn’t emphasize headliners, but instead encourages performers to share the stage.
Friday’s show featured Ingrid Michaelson, Meiko, Priscilla Ahn, Erin McCarley and Laura Jansen. When they needed backup, each of these artists were accompanied by the same band for their separate sets. They also enlisted each other’s help for some songs.
The rapport between the musicians and the ease with which they engaged the crowd between songs and sets made the show as a whole feel intimate and lively.
The music was equally enjoyable. Ahn and Meiko mostly played solo acoustic numbers, but Ahn’s looped melodies gave her songs a full, orchestral sound, while Meiko’s soft arrangements stood well on their own.
Jansen also played solo, but her songs were of the piano-driven pop variety. The explosive power of her voice was most evident, however, when the band joined her for the reggae-infused “Soljah.”
Michaelson and McCarley both played power-pop rock songs. McCarley’s low register melodies in particular bounced beautifully between well-placed pauses on “Blue Suitcase.”
But one of the best aspects of the show was its format. Each musician played two short sets over the three-hour period. The music moved at a brisk pace, ensuring that the audience never grew restless.
This format also gave each musician the chance to play in both earlier and later time slots in the performance, so most audience members got to hear every artist, no matter what time they arrived at the show.
The Hotel Café Tour will continue through the U.S. this fall. As always, the roster of artists will vary. Some proceeds from this round of all-female musicians will go to UNFPA and Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.
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October 16, 2008
Crowd lukewarm to Luis Miguel
Ricardo Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN
It was something I never thought I’d see: a concert crowd that didn’t completely rise to its feet to welcome Mexican pop singer Luis Miguel.
Maybe it was the strain of seeing a high-energy concert on a Wednesday night. Maybe concertgoers at the Frank Erwin Center were peeved that the concert started 30 minutes late given that they were missing the last presidential debate to be there. Maybe gente were thinking about their 401ks.
Whatever the reason, Miguel’s mix of sensual ballads, dance pop and reworked mariachi music didn’t connect with the Austin audience the way it did three years ago when the singer gave a powerhouse performance that shook the foundation of the flan-shaped arena
After an unbearably gooey video intro (birds, tropical beaches, gauzy curtains; no Latin music video cliche was left unused), Miguel emerged, wearing an expertly tailored suit. His every move was broadcast on a mostly unnecessary set of huge video screens. The largest of them projected an enormous, messianic image of “Luismi,” as his fans know him. His unfathomably white teeth have never looked bigger or brighter. But the big screens disconnected the singer from the crowd instead of making the concert feel more intimate.
The singer ran through new songs from his latest album “Complices,” but the audience hungered most for the more traditional material of his previous album, “Mexico En La Piel.” Songs like “Y,” “La Bikina,” “Suave” and “Si Nos Dejan” received enthusiastic applause, but nothing matched the previous concert, when Miguel was joined by a full mariachi band.
Though his voice sounded as smooth and as powerful as ever, Luismi’s showmanship wasn’t at the same level. His material is made for big spaces, but Miguel never got the entire audience to rise as one, even as he was saying goodnight. Some of that might have had to do with the sound: the music blasted so loudly that all subtlety was lost. On some songs, everything but Luismi’s voice became a chunky wash of sax, synth and percussion. You couldn’t blame much of the audience for feeling pummelled and listless.
The show ended at an hour and 45 minutes with no encore, leaving many to wander out surprised, likely wondering if they could still catch the debate replay on CNN.
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CD review: Kings of Leon
Kings of Leon
“Only By the Night” (RCA)
Four stars
Have no idea what’s on the cover and can never remember the title so I keep calling it “Because of the Night.” On the surface. Kings of Leon don’t seem like they desperately want to be huge.
But then the disc plays and you can hear a g/g/b/d band grow bigger with each cut. This band of three brothers and a cousin, all named Followill, plays with sibling harmony usually restricted to vocal layers.But it all starts up front, with Caleb Followill’s voice that’s indie and classic rock at the same time.
If it’s possible for a hetero male to call an album by guys “sexy,” without coming off a little gay, well you can put me down for that, more for the slinked-out “I Want You” than the catchy, ska-laced “Sex On Fire,” a huge hit in the U.K.
With just a grandiose pop/rock singer and a drummer with powerful feet, KOL would already be ahead of the pack. Add crazy color guitars, an overall consistency of songwriting and a glorious new anthem in “Use Somebody” and (gotta look it up again) “Only By the Night” is the likely breakout album in the U.S., which has not yet embraced the Kings like the Brits have.
This is an album like the ones we grew up with, where we’d put it on and leave it alone because almost all the songs are good. It’s an Elton John record with guitars and swagger instead of pianos and aplomb. Strong melodies, like those that engulf “Revelry,” are anticipated and so the album plays in your head seconds before it does from the speakers. There will no doubt be cries of “sellout” with this pop album, but it’s actually a bolder move, this unleashing of accessability. This record certainly rings truer with what the band’s about.
There are a couple of groaning moments, as KOL aims at the Majic FM crowd with “17” and “Notion,”. The latter tune’s “don’t knock it you’ve been here before” sing-song chant is worthy of an Eddie Money album, albeit the one Eddie Money LP to own if you can only own one..
Of the album’s 11 tracks, only a couple are chuckable and three- “I Want You,” “Use Somebody” and “Manhattan”- are pretty amazing. The numbers say this is the best Kings of Leon album yet, though they’ve yet to rock quite as hard as on the EP version of “California Waiting.”
If you look too close at the ink blot-like cover of “something something ‘Night’” you can’t make out anything. But stand back a few feet and you see, roughly, the letters “M” and “X.” More logo than photo, it’ll make a cool concert tee. They’re out of the garage, out of the rock clubs, out of the too-cool-for-school school; Kings of Leon are a big picture rock band at last!
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October 15, 2008
Magnetic Fields review
Fans intimidated by the eponymous noisy effects of the recent Magnetic Fields album “Distortion” had nothing to fear from the group’s show Tuesday at the Paramount: While a guitar amp sat toward the rear of the stage, the evening’s musical offerings were as undistorted and sonically sedate as ever.
Despite adding a second female vocalist, Shirley Simms, to the group’s core quartet, their onstage dynamic remained a two-personality affair: Pianist and singer Claudia Gonson did most of the talking, trying to maintain a baseline level of cheer while songwriter Stephin Merritt occasionally mustered the will to speak in his need-some-stimulants voice. Aside from occasional instrumental highlights for Sam Davol’s cello (on “Courtesans”) and John Woo’s guitar (in “Xavier Says”), those two men sat between the singers as unobtrusively as hired hands.
If Merritt displayed little love for his fans (his greeting to the crowd: “Are you ready to rock? Then go somewhere else.”; later, he responded to a shouted request by telling Gonson he thought there were insects trapped in the hall.) Gonson worked the “hello, Austin” angle in her restrained way by namechecking the local store, Fiddler’s Green, where the group stopped to replace its ailing bouzouki, and by declaring her love for the sound of grackles.
A solid helping of “Distortion” songs (like the racy but perfectly rhymed “The Nun’s Litany”) were joined by not only favorite album tracks but songs drawn from various side projects like Merritt’s music for the Lemony Snicket books and the “Pieces of April” soundtrack.
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October 14, 2008
Review: The Cardinals Featuring Ryan Adams
Wildly prolific, alt-country whiz Ryan Adams went from starving for attention to not wanting any attention at all. Were it his decision, he’d file “Cardinology,” his new album out Oct. 28, under “Cardinals,” the handle for his four-piece backing band, instead of “Ryan Adams.” But the idea of ditching his brand name was apparently nixed by his label, leaving the marquis last night at the Paramount to read “The Cardinals Featuring Ryan Adams.”
Adams’ newfound appreciation for humility was probably a response to the bad rep he’s gotten for his verbal jarring. He walked the straight-and-narrow at the Paramount by letting the music speak for itself for most of the first set of a muscular, two-and-a-half-hour, two-set show. In between instantly intriguing “Cardinology” numbers including “Fix It,” “Magick,” and “Cobwebs,” wherein he and fellow guitarist Neal Casal harmonized “If I fall, will you catch me?,” Adams blew his nose and bit his lip through a barrage of playful catcalls and unsolicited song requests.
Eventually the urge to banter became too much. Adams ribbed Casal about Casal’s new guitar, which Adams had anointed “Sparrowmyth.”
“Only this guy could come up with that,” Casal confided to the audience.
“It’s a play on Aerosmith,” Adams countered.
A repartee about Joe Perry, coke, and barbecue sauce ensued between the two. It was so quick and witty, it was either rehearsed or Adams and Casal are two totally synced-in dudes. The second set didn’t nullify the former, but it definitely affirmed the latter.
Under a backdrop of two entrancing, blue neon roses, Adams and Casal — augmented by Chris Feinstein on bass, Jon Graboff on pedal steel, and Brad Pemberton on drums — let it ride with “Off Broadway” and “Two,” from last year’s “Easy Tiger,” and “Cold Roses” and “Easy Plateau,” from the double-disc “Cold Roses.” And then the show, tainted only by a limp cover of Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” came to a resounding end when, for the first time all night, Pemberton banged on the gong behind his drum kit.
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Review: Kal at the Cactus Cafe
The Balkans came to campus Monday night, as Belgrade’s Romani band Kal made its way to the Cactus Cafe fresh from a weekend at San Antonio’s International Accordion Fest. Tour manager and Roma activist Sani Rifati provided a long introduction, warning an obviously savvy audience not to expect the “bandanas, hoop earrings, and gold teeth” that are clichés of “gypsy” music, a label rejected by many Roma.
Instead, listeners saw a muscular hybrid band that (taking cues from the border-free world music of Manu Chao) fused traditional sounds with rock and various other influences, often playing at furious speeds but never veering toward punk or noise, as Gogol Bordello does. Adding dual accordions, a violinist and percussionist — who occasionally stood up for solo vocalizations suggesting an Eastern European human beatbox — to a four-piece rock lineup, the group never lacked for activity, but bandleader Dragan Ristic, on guitar and vocals, provided a charismatic focal point.
Ristic tossed off acerbic jokes about misperceptions his people have endured, encouraged audience participation, and even made a convincing substitute for Montenegran rapper “Rambo Amadeus” on “Komedija,” a track from the band’s self-titled debut CD. But he didn’t have to do anything to encourage dancing: Even before the show’s organizers offered extra room in front of the stage, what open floor space could be found was filled with more self-made means of bodily expression than the Cactus has probably seen in years.
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October 13, 2008
CD reviews: Lucinda Williams, Todd Snider and Ben Folds
Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Lucinda Williams
‘Little Honey’
(Lost Highway)
Like most folks, Lucinda Williams is happiest when she’s … how to put this delicately … gettin’ some.
She’s spent most of her career mourning men who have wronged her, her bad luck with men and various ways men have let her down. Not that she hasn’t gotten a wealth of excellent material out of it, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a point at which you have to wonder just how bad her taste in men is and whether she’s ever going to snap out of it. Add death to that, as in last year’s “West,” and you wonder if she’s ever going to be happy.
No more, apparently. In a stable relationship with manager Tom Overby, Williams is suddenly producing the highest-octane music of her career. “Little Honey,” out Tuesday cranks out rocker after rocker, including an album closing cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top.” Gone is most of the moping, replaced with love and lust. Lots of lust. “You squeeze my peaches” she belts on “Real Love,” a decent song that I nevertheless wished was a cover of the Mary J. Blige classic of the same name. “Now I got your sweetness/ all up in my hair” she howls on “Honey Bee” — um, thanks for that, Lu.
She calms down a bit on “Plan to Marry,” which makes a case for love “when leaders can’t be trusted/ Heroes have let us down.” Elvis Costello moans along on “Jailhouse Blues.” “Well Well Well” is a leftover from ‘92, while “Circles and X’s” and “Wishes Were Horses” date from the 1980s, when Williams’ slow-burn country-folk was defining what became alt-country.
Especially for a gal who made her bones on being all literary ‘n’ all, her lyrics can scan as lazy by half: see also “Honey bee, I swear/ we make quite a pair” and “You tried to steal my truck but/ that’s not what this is about.” Ouch.
The epic “Little Rock Star” cautions the Amy Winehouses and Pete Dohertys of the pop world that their death wish is showing. But most of the time the deaths she’s singing about are the little French kind and that’s a lot more fun.
Recommended: “Wishes Were Horses,” “Little Rock Star” — Joe Gross
Todd Snider
‘Peace Queer’
(Aimless)
Todd Snider’s “The Devil You Know” — the songwriter’s most seamless weave of sketch comedy and social commentary yet — captured a deeply troubled American spirit. The 2006 album’s key political fulcrum: “You Got Away With It.” While the more indelible morality play “Happy New Year” filtered sunlight through a doublewide, Snider’s acidic presidential satire stationed only thunderclouds. Working class anthems like “Looking for a Job” and the title track deepened the grays.
Look left: Snider’s astonishing reinvention of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” extends that disillusioned labyrinth. Boy, talk about raw anguish. Cupping a plagued harp, Snider blows a thousand combat wounds straight back into the heart of wartime darkness. The abyss beckons. Haunted morning rises. There is, of course, no resolution. Instead, Snider simply gives pollutants room to multiply, leveling little judgment as his beliefs belly up.
“I may share my opinions with you,” he explains later. “(But) I don’t share them because I think they’re smart or because I think you need to know them. I share them because they rhyme.” The barefoot broadcaster alternately reinforces blue-collar snapshots with roadhouse rock (“Stuck on the Corner”), summery swamp grooves (“The Ballad of Cape Henry,” with Patty Griffin) and staccato blues (“Mission Accomplished”). “I’m so turned around, I could calm up a riot,” he sings. “Fighting for peace is like screaming for quiet.”
Similarly loping wordplay energizes companion pieces “Is This Thing Working?” and “Is This Thing On?,” but neither particularly resonates. (Though Snider’s recitation of the latter was fall-down hilarious last week at the Cactus Cafe.) No matter. Download this robust EP free at the singer’s Web site (www.toddsnider.net) throughout October. “I only want to sell this to people who have heard it and want it for sure,” Snider told the Statesman recently. “My friends tell me this record isn’t as ‘political’ as I say it is, which makes me happy. Most political singers seem like folk Nazis to me.”
Recommended: “Fortunate Son,” “The Ballad of Cape Henry,” “Ponce of the Flaming Peace Queer” — Brian T. Atkinson
Ben Folds
‘Way to Normal’
(Sony)
When Ben Folds leaked “fake” versions of songs from “Way to Normal” that he and his band wrote and recorded within the space of eight hours at a studio in Dublin last summer, the natural assumption was that the actual “Way to Normal” tracks would surpass their surprisingly decent joke counterparts.
But many of the songs on “Way to Normal” improve little on the craftsmanship or lyricism of the fake tracks, so the album just feels lazy. The fake version of “(Expletive) Went Nuts,” for example, tells the story of a guy whose liberal girlfriend takes too many drugs and begins ranting at a corporate Christmas party. The real version tells the similar story of a girlfriend who lashes out inappropriately after getting dumped.
Still, the album has its high points. “You Don’t Know Me,” a jazzy duet with Regina Spektor, features bright horn and string sections beneath irresistible harmonies lined with simple but poignant lyrics about the fleeting nature of relationships. “Brainwascht,” on the other hand, sees Folds’ quirky humor at its best, as he challenges a fellow songwriter to a dance-off in response to a mean-spirited pop song jab. Other songs, like “Dr. Yang,” harken back to the raw energy of Folds’ earliest days with the Five.
But whether the songs on “Way to Normal” hit or miss, the refreshing thing about Folds is his humility.
“If this record is great, it is a testament to the quality of the people in my life,” Folds writes in the album’s liner notes. “I will however take responsibility for any possible overlooked moments of less-than-greatness that may exist on this album.”
Recommended: “You Don’t Know Me,” “Brainwascht” — Alex Daniel
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September 22, 2008
Review: Pinback at the Mohawk
Take one listen to the clockwork precision on any of Pinback’s angularly constructed indie rock albums, and it’s immediately clear that the driving forces behind the band, Rob Crow and Zach Smith, never let a beat or note fall by the wayside.
Pinback proved that their live show is no exception when they played to a tightly packed crowd on Saturday night at the outdoor stage of the Mohawk. On both upbeat numbers like the hard-driving “From Nothing to Nowhere” and more subdued ones like the melancholy “Blood’s on Fire,” the clean chords of Crow’s guitar slid and stuttered in perfect time with Smith’s bass lines, while the drums pounded out tight rhythms. For the majority of the show, Smith strummed chords on the bass, which added depth and texture to the set.
Stripped of the many vocal layers present on the band’s studio albums, Crow’s vocals in particular floated atop the mix with surprising clarity. He dashed the verses of the classic “Penelope” with graceful shouts and touches of vibrato, which showcased his vocal control.
Unfortunately, a few minor setbacks on the technical side made for a tedious wait between many songs. The band even stopped in the middle of the last song in their four-song encore, only to pick up a minute later.
A new keyboardist joined Pinback for this performance because their usual keyboardist, Terrin Durfey, is again battling cancer. Posters that featured the album artwork of their latest effort, “Autumn of the Seraphs,” were available at the merch table in exchange for donations to the Durfey family. Additional donations can be made here.
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Review: Ani DiFranco at Stubb's
With a new baby in her life and a new album on the way, it’s a wonder that Ani DiFranco has time to prepare for the demands of live performance. But judging by her show Sunday at Stubb’s, musical endeavors simply come easily for the singer/songwriter.
DiFranco’s backing band, which consisted of a drummer, stand-up bassist and xylophonist, perfectly complemented the frantic dissonant sounds of her guitar and the rapid staccato rhythms of her vocals. This chemistry was apparent early with the performance of “Here for Now,” which featured a xylophone solo over energetic tango percussion.
DiFranco’s set offered an eclectic glimpse of her catalogue. She performed songs from classic albums such as “Little Plastic Castle” and even reached back to her second release, 1991’s “Not So Soft,” for the song “Anticipate.”
More than any other album, however, DiFranco played from her forthcoming “Red Letter Year,” which drops on Sept. 30. Some, like the title track, which twisted the innocence of a cliché nursery rhyme with the harshness of a drug reference, showed that she is still a master of lyricism. Others, like “Smiling Underneath,” were simply cliché. But because her vocal delivery was so clear and her band’s performance so tight, the audience never grew bored or agitated when these new, unfamiliar numbers showed up in the set.
In fact, one of the highlights of the show was “Way Tight,” a lullaby off the new album with a jazzy, unpredictable chord progression that danced up and down the fret board. For this song, DiFranco’s band left the stage to let the rich, soothing melodies of the song shine.
Luckily for fans, the new album was available for purchase. If the show was any indication, they won’t be disappointed with the new material.
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September 16, 2008
Review: Ratatat at Stubb's
In a city where fans of indie rock generally meet live music with little more than approving head nods, it can be hard for bands to get crowds to actually dance.
But the instrumental outfit Ratatat did just that Monday night at Stubb’s. Usually a duo, guitarist Mike Stroud and multi-instrumentalist Evan Mast were joined by a keyboardist for 15 rounds of searing prog riffs backed by face-shaking hip-hop beats that had the sold-out crowd waving their hands, jumping and moving without shame to the music.
In Ratatat fashion, the entertainment didn’t come solely from the sounds produced by the band. The visual sequences projected on a screen behind the band were genuinely bizarre — one showed Buddhist monks with iridescent blocks of light shielding their eyes while they clutched ropes between their praying hands and Hebraic texts scrolled on the walls around them.
But from the set-opener to the encore it was clear that the images were carefully chosen and flawlessly synced. The tropical sounding “Brulee” was backed by flowing waves, while more aggressive numbers featured explosions typical of action movies. In every case, the movement on the screen punctuated the hard-hitting moments in the songs.
The music alone would have made Ratatat’s performance memorable. The harmonized notes of Stroud’s solos glided through each number with grace and a sense of metal melody, while the thundering bass of the backing samples pulsed with an energy that is hard to match on a home stereo. On fan favorites like “Wildcat” and “Seventeen Years,” many audience members were too busy dancing to watch the displays anyway.
Mixing and matching musical genres and live performance techniques is disastrous for many bands, but Ratatat does it well.
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September 15, 2008
Review: John Hiatt and Joan Osborne at Austin Music Hall
With values volleying going on at the political nets again this election, an upright son of the Midwest stood tall at the Austin Music Hall Sunday night. John Hiatt, who introduced his new love songs in praise of Mrs. Hiatt and 22 years of marriage, reminded that rock ‘n’ roll can still work as good, clean fun.
Too bad Hiatt doesn’t write soaring anthems or either presidential campaign could play his music. I have no idea which candidate he’s supporting, but his “Have a Little Faith in Me” from 1987 seems appropriate in this economy with its start about “when the road gets dark.”
What Hiatt does best is take a simple emotion and wrap his considerable lung power and driving beat into a full-on assault, which he did Sunday on “Perfectly Good Guitar,” his scolding of any musician who trashes an instrument on stage. There’s no doubt, as the six-string-loving Hiatt sang on “Riding With the King,” that he’s “gonna play that thing until the day I die.” (That Hiatt blues belter gave B.B. King and Eric Clapton a title song for their Grammy-winning collaboration.)
Watching the lanky, clearly enunciating Hiatt on stage is a treat compared to more staid singer-songwriters. Grinning, mouth open wide enough to see his tongue darting in and out, kicking out a leg, he literally throws himself into songs.
Side strings work by Doug Lancio, who has long played for Patty Griffin, added more depth as Lancio switched to a new axe for almost every number. The crowd was on their feet for the solo and windup of “Slow Turning.”
Hiatt acknowledged the pain Ike has inflicted on Galveston and Houston residents, and he noted the Austin show’s move from the outdoor Backyard was a wise precaution. Then he offered “Crossing Muddy Waters,” his own tragic ballad of a family’s loss to a swollen river.
Not on this set list was the gushy “Same Old Man,” the title of his new CD. That’s just as well since Hiatt never seems the same old anything and acts like he’s still a kid with a new guitar and a lot to prove.
Nearly as many songs Sunday came from opener Joan Osborne, whose sultry stances and vocal range were worlds apart from Hiatt (or at least the distance from her New York base to his Nashville home).
“Hallelujah in the City,” the first track from her just-out “Little Wild One” album, put the audience on notice: She can be hell and heavenly. Osborne’s straightforward narrator declares herself unfaithful and returning to a relationship with redemption in mind. Then the ever-escalating hallelujahs begins with no need for a choir.
Of course the crowd wanted and got “One of Us,” Osborne’s musings about whether God might be walking around among us. But do they remember that song came on the same major-label debut that contained “Let’s Just Get Naked”?
Osborne, towering over her band members in heels and a summery black-on-white dress, can vamp it up with the best blues divas. The sly smile goes away, however, when she cranks up her pipes for a finish that’s all business.
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CD review: Will T. Massey's 'Wayward Lady'
Will T. Massey
‘Wayward Lady’
(Self-released)
It’s been a year of remarkable comebacks, with Roky Erickson emerging from decades of mental illness and Alejandro Escovedo bouncing back from near death. The story of San Angelo native Will T. Massey, signed to MCA at age 21 and hailed a West Texas Bruce Springsteen, is an equally amazing tale of a musician pulling himself out of a deep and dark place. After his self-titled 1991 debut and a move to Seattle, Massey started losing his mind. An involuntary admission to a mental facility turned him to the streets when he got out. For 13 years his illness — schizophrenia — went undiagnosed. “Whatever happened to Will T. Massey?” was a question that would come up every once in awhile.
But three years ago, after a move back to Austin, he found a doctor he trusted, who prescribed the medication that helped get Massey’s mind right.
“Wayward Lady” (released last week) is an album about coming out of a long, bad dream to find a country gone wrong. “You’re a wicked woman, but I love you,” Massey sings on the title track. “You Work For Me,” is his defiant message to President Bush, who’s portrayed in brutally unkind terms throughout the album. “Peace Train,” meanwhile, tells the story of a woman saying goodbye to her baby as she’s shipped off to Iraq. Based on the experience of Massey’s stepsister, the song, quite lovely, ends on a hopeful note.
The album ends with “American Seance,” in which the deadpan Massey wonders “America, are you in the room? It’s a seance, you died too soon.”
It’s all a little heavy-handed, this album of dour protest songs by an artist who’s 10 times more songwriter than singer. But Massey’s gift as a tuneful, evocative storyteller has undoubtedly returned. Help him celebrate the release of this album Friday at Threadgill’s North.
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CD review: Redd Volkaert's 'Reddhead'
Redd Volkaert
‘Reddhead’
(Telehog)
The list of Austin treasures includes Barton Springs Pool, breakfast tacos and Redd Volkaert, all of which one can experience on a Saturday afternoon, when Volkaert puts on a guitar clinic at the Continental Club. Many a budding axeman has traded in his Telecaster for a bass or keyboards after witnessing Merle Haggard’s former lead guitarist play with such dexterity, such tone, such soul. This town was truly blessed when Volkaert and his encyclopedia of hot licks moved here from Nashville in 2000.
The point of his new “Reddhead,” which hits stores Tuesday, might be to show that Volkaert is more than just a guitar player. He writes or co-writes seven of the 14 tracks and his rich, deep voice is featured in the mix, but ultimately the CD comes off as an instrumental album with vocals. Whether he’s exploring western swing on Bob Wills’ “End of the Line” or blues with “Call the Pound” or his caustic relationship ditties (co-written by Laura Durham) such as “Is Anything Alright,” “We Need to Talk” and “Just Because I Don’t Care,” the lyrics seem to serve as spacers between all the spectacular picking. In every genre he tackles, Volkaert can hold his own with anyone.
Those wary of claims that Volkaert is the best guitarist in town should listen to his cover of “The Letter” by the Boxtops. The song is about a man hungry to get home after receiving a love letter and in Volkaert’s solo of frantic percolation you can hear all the determination of movement in the protagonist’s mind. Volkaert isn’t a ripper, he’s a gripper. When he follows that cover with a jazzy country take on Buddy Emmons’ “Raisin’ the Dickens’,” there’s no denying that we’re hearing a master at work.
As a singer, Volkaert is functional, if not a little flat at times. His voice neither astonishes nor gets in the way. But when he ends this CD, his first in four years when you don’t count the recent Heybale release, with a cover of Hag’s “I’ll Break Out Tonight,” the lifelong sideman steps to the front with a flourish. After seven years backing Haggard, the vocal nuances have sunk in. There’s no substitute for seeing Volkaert live, at his Saturday afternoon gig or Sunday nights with Heybale. But if you’re looking for some music to play on the way to the gig, or at home on nights you can’t go out, “Reddhead” will serve you right.
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September 14, 2008
CD review: 'Acoustic Arabia'
Various artists
‘Acoustic Arabia’
(Putumayo)
Putumayo the record label arose as the sonic air-conditioning of an international clothing outlet of the same name.
Founder Dan Storper clearly has a good ear, as the imprint was launched in 1993 and since has released dozens of titles, including works by Miriam Makeba and Kermit Ruffins. But compilations highlighting a particular style, region or mood are Putumayo’s bread-and-butter.
Their newest, “Acoustic Arabia,” presents sounds from Morocco to Syria, Sudan to the Sinai peninsula. The 10 contemporary, mid-tempo tracks feature mostly Arabic lyrics and acoustic-based instrumentation, with variations in texture and tone.
Gamar Badawi’s opener “Jamal Porto” hits like a lost track from famed Nubian oudist, singer and world music icon Hamza El Din. Realized in a different language, Les Orientales’ “Alger, Alger” could easily be mistaken for a French cafe or fado number. “Ghir Enta” is a sleepy, silken Mediterranean soundtrack by Algerian chanteuse Souad Massi, while instrumental “Mada,” by Lebanese artists Charbel Rouhana and Hani Siblini, is propelled by a jazz-inflected, serpentine melody.
“Acoustic Arabia” is distinguished twice — by the prevalence of female musicians and the inclusion of an instrument not often associated with Arabic music, the piano. Algerian ivory tickler Maurice El Médioni, who blends North African melodies with boogie-woogie rhythms, is still kicking it in his 80s, with “Tu N’Aurais Jamais Dû” coming from his recent collaboration with Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez.
A fitting bookend to “Acoustic Arabia” is the gracefully elegant “Wijjak Ma’ii.” Performed by Syrian-born Austin resident Zein Al-Jundi (who also wrote liner notes and assisted in track selection), the cut finds piano, hand percussion and violin supporting her honey-hued pipes in a performance seemingly plucked from a smoky Paris nightclub.
An added bonus: Putumayo will donate some proceeds to the nonsectarian and nonpolitical KRS Foundation, which supports disadvantaged children in the Middle East.
Recommended:“Wijjak Ma’ii,” “Tu N’Aurais Jamais Dû” “
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September 9, 2008
CD review: LL Cool J 'Exit 13'
LL Cool J “Exit 13”
(Def Jam)
LL Cool J named his new album “Exit 13” because it’s his 13th, and final, album on Def Jam. It follows in the footsteps of 2000’s “G.O.A.T.” (as in the Greatest of All Time) and 2002’s “Ten” (his 10th album). At this point, the most interesting thing about LL Cool J is his career.
Within rap his longevity is unprecedented: His career has spanned 23 years and several generations of rappers. When he released “Radio” in 1985, mainstream rap was still in its infancy. He complains “when I walk into a room, young boys look at me strange / as if I am a relic from some long-forgotten game.”
Some of it is stylistic. He brags more about his mike skills than his money, and when he makes club songs, he compliments women rather than demeaning them.
Some of it is technical. He sticks to the simplistic rhyme schemes of early rap and rarely varies his flow.
Indeed, the entire album has a retro feel. His collaborations with 1980s-era producers like DJ Scratch (“Rocking with the G.O.A.T.”) and Marley Marl (“You Better Watch Me”) could have been released in the 1980s.
But what set him apart all these years was charisma and song-writing. And though “Exit 13” proves he can still command a mike and rock a crowd, it’s the rare LL Cool J album without a genuine hit track.
And with no big tracks, all that’s left is a remarkably backward-looking album. He spends a great deal of time defending his rap legacy: reminding us of past success (“Launched the greatest label in the history of rap / For 23 years I carried it on my back”) and making outlandish claims of greatness (“I am the undisputed King of all Hip-Hop / Everything after is my legacy, like it or not”).
But the more he makes mediocre albums like “Exit 13” defending his legacy, the more his legacy will need defending.
Recommended tracks: ‘American Girl,’ ‘Baby’ (Rock Remix)
(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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September 8, 2008
CD review: Okkervil River rolling
While recording “The Stage Names,” which Harp magazine named the best album of 2007, Austin-based Okkervil River was moved by a simple mantra: Be generous. Give the fans more of everything. The lyrics were the easy part, as prolific frontman Will Sheff has become something of an Oscar Wilde of the Pitchfork set, but the band would also give their fans more instrumentation, more musical ideas, more styles to latch on to.
The generosity continues with “The Stand Ins,” in stores today, which is built on songs written for “The Stage Names.” The original plan was to record a double disc, but humility prevailed.
“It just seemed too much,” Sheff says from Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lives when not touring or visiting his bandmates in Austin. He has nine more phone interviews after mine, so the time limit is 10 minutes, and Sheff, 32, spends most of it talking about just how crucial the upcoming presidential election is. But he does eventually address the double CD idea and how the more ridiculous it seemed, the more it appealed to him. Half of the 16 songs Sheff brought to the band and producer Brian Beattie in late 2006 seemed to be about the other half; why not put them together? “But eventually we decided it was better to concentrate on two short sets than to put out this big, bloated thing,” Sheff says.
Unlike the 1991 “Use Your Illusion” project — two single discs released the same day by Guns N’ Roses — Okkervil put a year between “Stage Names” and “Stand Ins.” But spiritually they’re a double CD, with both discs loosely themed on the effects of fame achieved and denied.
If you place the album cover of the new one under last year’s, the drawings fit together. Also, the credits and “thanks to” pages are almost identical. Both CD booklets isolate snippets of “Okkervil River,” the book by Russian writer Tatyana Tolstaya that gave the band its unwieldy name 10 years ago.
But where “Stage Names” was an instant delight, shattering the “lit rock” tag with big guitar riffs and a touch of mascara, “The Stand Ins” is a more difficult record. After the joyful opener “Lost Coastlines,” featuring a duet with Sheff and recently departed Jonathan (Shearwater) Meiburg, it seemed somewhat dense and dreary on first listen.
The albums you love the most, that stand up over time: Doesn’t it seem that those are the records you didn’t like much on the first couple of listens? I’m thinking about Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and “Get Happy!” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions and everything by the Velvet Underground. We want to be entertained, not challenged, but hang in there and you just may have a friend for life.
So although I was initially disappointed by “The Stand Ins,” I wasn’t too worried that Austin’s gift to the indie rock world had shoved out a dud. Out of respect for “The Stage Names” and 2005’s “Black Sheep Boy,” the album that put this River on the map, I played “Stand Ins” about every two or three days. I quickly came around on “Starry Stairs,” the companion to last year’s “Savannah Smiles,” told from the point of view of the suicidal porn star Shannon “Savannah” Wilsey. And sly rocker “Pop Lie” soon proved to be this year’s “Our Life Is a Movie or Maybe.” But most of the other songs sounded too long. Of the painfully slow “Blue Tulip,” I wrote in a notepad that it was “a cattleguard for further listening.”
Then one morning I woke up with a melody on my mind, one I knew was from a record I’d been listening to, but which one? It sounded vaguely like a Will Sheff song, so I put on “Stand Ins” and found the unshakeable ditty was “On Tour With Zykos,” a song I hadn’t thought much of before. After “Zykos” played, I listened to the whole album, and I know it’s a cliche, but I “got” it. The complicated succession of musical tones all made sense, as if Sheff (like Robert Pollard from Guided By Voices) possesses this magical gift to pull melodies out of his pockets like candies for begging children.
“The kids all waited to meet the man in bright green who had dreamed up the dream that they wrecked their hearts upon,” Sheff sings in “Pop Lie,” continuing, “He’s the liar who lied in his pop songs, and you’re lying when you’re singing along.” The song is clearly not autobiographical.
Has any other Austin band created such an extremely high level of recorded music in such a short time?
No.
“The Stage Names” and “The Stand Ins,” tributaries that meet at a larger body, are the local scene’s “Exile On Main Street” (another classic I didn’t like much at first). There’s just so much in those records. Be generous, indeed.
As “The Stage Names” ended with “John Allyn Smith Sails,” a last look at life from a bridge through the eyes of poet John Berryman, “The Stand Ins” closes with another tragically misunderstood figure whose promise turns to depression and then death. “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel 1979” is based on little-known ’70s rocker Jobriath (real name Campbell). The year 1979 was the midpoint between when Jobriath was dropped by Elektra after dismal LP sales and when he succumbed to AIDS.
“Bruce Wayne Campbell” is the most difficult song on a difficult album, a weary tale of a sad, proud man who never had everything he was told he’d get, yet still felt as if he lost it all.
Sheff’s voice breaks under the weight. The air becomes uncomfortable. But as the song goes on, there’s something happening musically; a line of sweet nostalgia inspires a happy rhythm. A string section, stray horns, galloping drums and carnival steel guitars converge in a gorgeous blast of dignity. It’s not “Sloop John B,” but it’s all right.
That’s something good about splitting a double CD: two endings.
ACL Fest: Okkervil River will play the fest, Sunday, 5:30 p.m., AT&T Blue Room stage.
(Photo by Steve Gullick JAGJAGUWAR)
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September 7, 2008
Review: Squeeze at La Zona Rosa
At La Zona Rosa Friday night, new wave hitmakers Squeeze had no comeback record to promote. Instead, they stuck with oldie-goodie types, pleasing a full house that, minus one or two faux-blokes who tried proving their British sensibility by yelling “Oi! Oi! Oi!,” was attentive if not over-effusive.
Fastball set the stage with new songs (from an album they intend to release next year) and crowd-pleasers “The Way” and “Out of My Head.” The headliners arrived with a “Strong in Reason” that sounded substantially friendlier than the original recording but, like most others here, was still pretty close. Standing before a video screen offering footage that was sometimes obvious (vintage percolator ads to accompany “Black Coffee in Bed”), sometimes clever (a slide show of difficult duos like Abbott & Costello and Sonny & Cher for “If I Didn’t Love You”) but most often a repetitive distraction from the band, they focused on their earliest albums with exceptions like the later U.S. hit “Hourglass.”
Aside from coaching the crowd good-naturedly on the proper way to sing along with “Coffee” — those trying it at home should repeat the “last four syllables” of each line — singer Glenn Tilbrook hardly spoke between songs but was in beautiful voice during them, his high notes demonstrating none of the 30-plus years since the group’s start.
Returned partner Chris Difford was a touch less lively, with a perfunctory backup vocal on “Tempted,” but shone on some of his own songs and in the killer double-barrel tune “Take Me I’m Yours.”
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September 4, 2008
Review and live shots: GZA at Emo's
Rapper GZA of the WuTang Clan was in the house for Emo’s 16th birthday celebration last night. Check out live shots from the show.
- Photos: GZA at Emo’s
Orson Welles had it easy. Shackled as he was throughout his career by his early greatness, and inability to replicate it, at least he didn’t have to trot around the globe doing stage renditions of “Citizen Kane” every time he needed to score a buck.
Which brings us to Wu-Tang Clan shining light GZA/Genius, who should just have the phrase “performing ‘Liquid Swords’” legally added to his name at this point since he’s been operating under the shadow of his monstrously revered debut album for the better part of a decade.
It was there on the bill for Wednesday’s show at Emo’s, attracting a mix of hardcore hip-hop heads who were either hip to GZA’s precise lyrical dexterity from the beginning or latched on as “Sword“‘s reputation blossomed through the years while his able followups have foundered.
That’s what the jam-packed crowd came for though, and they were happy from the moment the Long Island MC stepped onto the stage — outfitted simply in a black GZA T-shirt and backward ball cap — and laced into the razor-sharp lyrics of classics like “Duel of the Iron Mic” and “Swordsmen.” It was obvious GZA hasn’t lost any skill or enthusiasm for this material and on Wednesday seemed much more engaged than during a particularly lackluster “Liquid Swords” Revue in March at Stubb’s during SXSW.
The downfall of the revue approach, though, is that it caters to the past and that the few cuts from “Beneath The Surface” or the new “Pro Tools” scattered in the 85 minutes got a merely polite reception when they deserve much better.
The ravenous cheers were, of course, reserved for classics like a verse from deceased Wu-Tanger Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” or the mere mention of “Clan In Da Front,” his standout track from Wu-Tang’s artform-changing debut.
By that point it was clear that for GZA and his fanbase “Clan” and “Liquid Swords” have become their answer answer to Welles and Charles Foster Kane’s “rosebud”; an escape to an earlier, simpler time that gains luster through the fog of years.
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September 3, 2008
Praise for Slipknot's 'All Hope is Gone'
When Slipknot emerged in the late ’90s they were pretty much considered a freak show by the mainstream masses (all weird masks and black coveralls) but they have, seemingly against all odds, become an arena band, with Grammys and platinum albums to their name.
This recent album, the band’s fourth studio release and co-produced with Dave Fortman of Evanescence fame, is a furious percussive assault on the psyche that not only beats you into blubbering submission but cleverly incorporates not inconsiderable melodic nous. Tracks like ‘Sulfur,’ ‘Gehenna’ and ‘Butcher’s Hook’ all predictably suffer from atypical metal-induced slop-lyricism, but it’s really the way the band’s musical ideas are presented that is the real surprise. On “All Hope Is Gone” there is a genuine attempt at presenting real song structure and melody while keeping their audience happy with the standard metal “sturm und drang” of down-tuned, bruising guitar work, speedball drumming, and phlegm-laden vocals.
Of course Slipknot could, and should, be viewed as slide-ruled metal product, all dark imagery and teen-angst/satanic lyrics, but beneath the ridiculous image there lurks a suffocating heart of darkness that makes ‘All Hope Is Gone,’ a claustrophobic and liberating experience. Akin to being locked up with nine serial killers who haven’t fed for awhile, but would probably let you call your mom before devouring you, the album is a blood-letting of almost ritual proportions, and just for that reason alone it should be recognized as one of the best metal albums of this year. Surprisingly good.
Recommended: ‘Vendetta’ and ‘Butcher’s Hook’
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August 29, 2008
Review: Alejandro Escovedo, Ian McLagan, (the Reivers?) at Antone's
Thursday’s benefit for the Austin Child Guidance Center was an all-star event with bite-sized sets. With most of the Antone’s floor devoted to silent auctions, VIP sponsor tables, and — what? — folding chairs, the music was the main event but had stiff competition. (Happily for the bands, the first round of auctioneering saw a stack of signed Ian McLagan records outperform, on a bid-versus-retail-price basis, a 50” plasma TV and a bike presented by a beauty queen.)
After quick sets from the Reivers — hinting at a new album and, if John Croslin was to be believed, another new name — and Ian McLagan — whose drummer Don Harvey organized the event — came one whose briefness made sense, coming as it did between somewhat more demanding gigs: playing the Democratic National Convention and opening for Bruce Springsteen.
Alejandro Escovedo may have needed some rest recently, but he was anything but exhausted here, ripping through a set heavy on rockers from his latest record. Slowing down only for “Sister Lost Soul” and to repeatedly thank the Child Guidance Center for the work they do, he began with “Always a Friend” and was soon worked up enough to have to ditch his black-and-blue iridescent suit jacket. Leading a four-piece, strings-free band, he worked the crowd up with “Chelsea Hotel ‘78” and “Real as an Animal” before zipping off the stage and disappearing — heading home, one guesses, to carefully pack his red leather shoes for a Saturday show in Milwaukee with the Boss.
Click here to view photos from the show.
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August 28, 2008
Review: Jon Dee Graham first night back at Continental
A phoenix rose from its ashes Wednesday night at the Continental Club. It was Jon Dee Graham’s first gig since a near-fatal car crash a month prior laid him up at Brackenridge with three broken ribs, a concussion, and internal bleeding. In a pre-show interview, Graham was feeling no pain. That’s because, he said, he was on OxyContin. He relayed how smoking saved his life, telling of the cigarette he snuck while in the hospital and how the severe vomiting it triggered alerted doctors that he needed his spleen removed … stat. He also talked about the antibiotics required to subside perilous fevers, the 45 stitches running along his torso, and how the realignment of his body makes it susceptible to high altitudes. “Another lifelong dream crushed,” he said. “I can’t climb Mt. Everest.”
Ascending the stage was feat enough. And when he did, applause erupted from the mid-week regulars who’ve been coming to see him at the Continental for nearly 10 years now. (Absent was Graham’s fellow True Believer Alejandro Escovedo, who returns to the fold tonight at Antone’s after a similarly uncontrollable hiatus.) Knowing full well his first song back would carry added meaning, Graham chose “Something Wonderful,” an allusion to his second lease on life. He walked stage left to his longtime guitarist Mike Hardwick, smiled, and then did the same to bassist Andrew Duplantis, stage right, all the while slinging his guitar with added muster, as if to convince himself he really was where he thought he was.
The seven songs he played — spelled at one point by fellow Skunk Jesse Sublett, among others — included an unrehearsed, crash-inspired rocker seemingly titled “Busted up Inside,” wherein he sang, “It’s not as bad as it looks/Ok, it’s pretty bad.” But for a performer like Graham, songs are only part of the reason people pack places. His monologues alone are worth the price of admission. On this night, folks were treated to gems about $19 Advil at Brack and the rumor that he was found wandering down South Congress in his pajamas at 3 a.m. But the evening achieved the full-on earnestness of someone who has peeked at the other side when Graham said, “Man, you have no idea how good it feels to be back up here.”
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Iron and Wine at 'Austin City Limits'
Iron and Wine’s music rewards sitting down, which makes it perfect for an “Austin City Limits” taping. Even when band leader, sole constant and Dripping Springs resident Sam Beam’s earliest acoustic reveries are given full-band rearrangements, the songs remain chilled out even as they gain steam.
Looking in a sweater and jacket like a hippieish political science professor, with his sister Sara on backing vocals and a crack band that could move from loping chug reminiscent of ’70s German “Krautrock” to jam band choogle reminiscent of, well, Phish, Beam moved around his career with ease Wednesday night.
He and Sara opened with a crisp, acoustic “Each Coming Night,” an early song that moved like spun gold in the crowded studio. Augmented at various points with pedal steel, electric guitars, precussion, bass, keys and all of the above, the set built in intensity.
Fan-favorite “Woman King” was a juggernaut, heaps of small sounds rubbing against a dramatic groove like gravel flying off a truck on a dirt road. “King” rolled into “Wolves” for the set’s jammiest phase; all that was missing was a hacky sack and some guy juggling Devil’s sticks.
“Upward Over the Mountain,” lo-fi and heart-rendingly spare in its original form was given an almost jaunty makeover that shouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did. Beam returned to his acoustic duo for “Trapeze Swinger” his most Dylanish ramble. A three song encore was an unexpected bonus, but everyone was already charmed into submission.
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August 26, 2008
CD review: The Game 'L.A.X.'
Game
“L.A.X.”
(Geffen)
The Game’s debut “The Documentary” could have been a 50 Cent album. He was its biggest star - the co-executive producer featured on the first three singles. Game name-dropped G Unit incessantly, while bragging about a past (Compton gang-banger, five bullet holes) suspiciously 50-like.
His second album “Doctor’s Advocate” revolved around Dr. Dre, who had chosen 50 over him after a feud between the two Dre proteges. It was a conflicted album, both defiant (full of Dre-sounding beats that screamed “I don’t need you”) and plaintive (with lyrics that begged for forgiveness).
So who exactly is he without 50 and Dre? That’s the question he faces on his third album “L.A.X.”
Even without his mentors, the record doesn’t lack in star-power. The endless guest-list (Nas, Lil’ Wayne, Ne-Yo, Ludacris, Ice Cube and Common, just to name a few) leaves room for only three solo tracks. An equally impressive group of producers keep the G-Unit meets West Coast sound of his first two albums.
Game isn’t overshadowed, thanks to his commanding and self-assured baritone straight out of gangsta rap central casting. But for someone from Compton, the birthplace of gangsta rap, his ghetto tales are so unimaginative they could be a parody: “Come to my hood / Look at my block / That’s my project building / Yea, that’s where I got shot.”
He’s interested not in gangsta rap but gangsta rappers; he’s more fan than rapper. He incorporates other musicians into every subject imaginable - from civil rights to sex. They’re signposts in both time (“Everybody’s first bootleg was Boyz ‘n the Hood”) and place (“I’m from a block close to where Biggie was crucified”).
On “Never Can Say Goodbye”, the album’s most ambitious track, he raps as Biggie, Tupac and Eazy-E on the eve of their deaths. It’s expert mimicry, but if he wants to join the ranks of his idols, he’ll have to find a voice of his own.
Recommended: “My Life,” “Game’s Pain”
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Review: MMJ at ACL
Like a cross between… nothing. J. James and co. warm up for ACL
Although often considered interchangeable terms, there’s a big difference between inspiration and influence. My Morning Jacket is a band that sounds influenced by no one and yet the songs of Jim James are inspired by the smell of rain, a good meal, Prince, “Nebraska” and how it feels better to sleep on bed sheets that have come off the clothesline instead of out of the dryer. They’re pure, organic, truly original and a little boring, but that’s OK because they’re also inspired by the fact that it takes more muscles to yawn than it does to hoot.
I had never seen My Morning Jacket live until last night at their “Austin City Limits” taping and had only listened to one of their albums, the new “Evil Urges,” a couple of times. The band of mountain men from Kentucky had slinked onto the national scene after my run as music critic evolved into a more general feature writing role. Having ditched my old faves Wilco after they started sounding more influenced by Radiohead than inspired by a warm day in winter, I wasn’t really looking to be challenged by another Midwestern band with a new way to (not) rock.
But my dear friend V is a major MMJ fan (so much that the initials could stand for My Michael Jordan), so I tagged along to that windowless world at Guadalupe and 26th. While ACL tapings generally lack the energy of a concert- any way to darken the faces of audience members?- they are a good way to study a band, as if under glass. My analysis turned up a couple of major points in the band’s appeal. First, James is an exceptionally intuitive singer who can turn it off and on like a faucet. His songs sound like he was raised in a bunker miles from anywhere, out of radio’s range, but with the instinctive knowledge that Motown and the Grand Ole Opry existed. Second, the band stays out of his way and he rewards them with the occasional instrumental freakout (actually the weakest part of their m.o.). Also, there’s no way to overstate just how vital the drummer is to the band’s genre-jumping abilities. No other caveman could lay down such a perfect disco beat.
You’ll note the lack of song titles in this “review.” Just look at the track listing on “Evil Urges.” That’s the set list, scrambled up. According to V, the band also played a couple of never-recorded songs and ended with a couple of fan faves from the LP’s “Z” and “It Still Moves.”
My Morning Jacket is a band that people follow, though not as blindly (or deaf-ly) as Deadheads. They remind me, more philosophically than musically, of another band from Louisville, NRBQ. My favorite adage about NRBQ, those musicians’ musicians from the ‘70s and ‘80s, is that when they’d travel by car they’d never play the radio. Instead, someone would name a song- “Chestnut Mare” by the Byrds, for instance - and the four members would think about that record in silence for about as long as it lasted. Then someone would name another song.
So much happens in the head before it ever makes it to the hands. What I got out of last night’s taping is that My Morning Jacket makes music of the mind, that playground of inspiration.
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August 13, 2008
Review: Lyle Lovett at the Long Center
The last time Lyle Lovett played the Long Center, in March, it was as one element in a grand-opening gala that included Willie Nelson and Asleep At the Wheel. The last time he played Austin, in May, it was as part of a songwriters’ circle that included John Hiatt, Joe Ely and Guy Clark.
Tuesday night, however, Lovett was back in town in the incarnation that fans know best: the wry, deadpan ringleader of the aptly named Large Band.
It’s possible to argue that the 15-piece aggregation (augmented on this night by a nine-piece gospel choir from San Antonio) offers the only forum large enough to encompass Lovett’s eclectic takes on folk, bluegrass, gospel, big band ensemble work, R&B, jazz and country. But it’s equally possible to make the observation that Lovett set out to create the musical sandbox of his dreams, and invited all the neighborhood kids to come play.
Over and over on Tuesday, Lovett stepped out of the spotlight, figuratively speaking, and became just another fan as one or another of his musicians strutted his stuff. The Large Band cast was augmented on this night by mandolin maestro Sam Bush (sitting in on the second of eight dates) and longtime sideman vocalist Arnold McCuller, fresh off James Taylor’s summer tour.
This year’s edition of the Large Band was typically top-heavy with talented veterans, boasting as it did A-list session drummer Russ Kunkel, the float-and-sting guitars of Ray Herndon and Austin’s Mitch Watkins, fiddler Gene Elders (usually on the road with George Strait) and guitarist/vocalist Keith Sewell. Cellist John Hagen, a perennial crowd favorite, stole the show with his Charlie Watts-style poker-face asides, which managed to out-laconic even his boss.
After an instrumental fanfare, “Opening Credits,” Lovett meandered on stage and set out on a roundabout, two-and-a-half hour tour of his 20-year catalog. Members of the band ebbed and flowed on and off the stage, depending on whether Lovett wanted the full gospel fanfare for “Church” and “I Will Rise Up/Ain’t No More Cane,” the small bluegrass ensemble that delivered “Keep It In Your Pantry,” the jazz combo that rendered “(I Could Have Been Your) Best Friend” in muted colors, or the grinding R&B outfit that romped through “My Baby Don’t Tolerate.”
It’s a funny thing; Lovett’s songs are finely wrought, small-scale cameos of human caprice, but he presents them on the biggest, Frederic Remington-size canvas he can get his hands on. It’s an ongoing contradiction, and one that neither he nor his audience seemingly have any interest in reconciling. In the meantime everyone, band and audience alike, went home happy.
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August 12, 2008
Review: The Faint at La Zona Rosa
Omaha, Neb.’s best punk rock/synthesizer-based dance band the Faint blasted through La Zona Rosa on Monday for a rock ‘n’ dance party that was all voluminous, captivating tone and sweaty, unbridled sexual id, complete with electric guitars and synthesizers cranked up to 11.
Paralleling music’s ever-changing business model, the Faint are boldly releasing “Fasciinatiion” - their first album in four years - on their own label, blank.wav, leaving indie titan and former flavor-of-the-month Saddle Creek Records behind with no love lost according to the band.
The Faint have always been a group that transformed good albums into a phenomenal live performances and Monday’s show was no different. The Faint - Todd Fink (vocals), Joel Petersen (bass, guitar), Clark Baechle (drums), Jacob Thiele (synthesizers) and Dapose (guitar, bass) - bludgeoned ears over the course of an hour and 15 minutes (12 hours later, my tinnitus-weary ears are still ringing and I was standing in the far back).
Austin audiences have long had a love affair with the Faint and their penchant for combining sugary pop choruses with heart-accelerating anthems, dating back to the band’s first tours nearly a decade ago. Their musical blueprint was crafted with some of the same new wave/no wave influences (Gary Newman, Daft Punk) as hometown heroes Ghostland Observatory; both bands uplift the collective consciousness of the audience by using a great light show and bombastic beats to create a soundtrack that mimics the acceleration of your racing heart as you approach that blindingly gorgeous hottie in the disco (or indie rock club).
“That’s the first time it felt like (an audience) knew that song,” Thiele candidly remarked as the audience roared with screams and applause after the ridiculously poppy would be/should be hit “Machine in the Ghost.” The song’s tempo is slow compared to the majority of the Faint’s music, but the space in the groove is a welcome respite as frontman Fink jests during the catchy chorus: “What was there before the bang / How did nothing come to end at once / Let’s ask the atheists, the astronauts, the mystics of the Amazon, the police, the cults, the Wiccans, the Pope, the crystal ball, the fear of god, the tarot cards, the dowsing rod, theologians, alchemists, black magicians, physicists.”
And then there is their tone: The Faint are gearheads and their astute knowledge of vintage equipment and instruments lends their music a sonic gravitas that is unlike the majority of dance music coming out of the indie rock dance they helped rebirth.
“Fasciinatiion” album opener “Get Seduced” was on point. A couple of highlights from their 2004 album “Wet From Birth” included “Desperate Guys” and “I Disappear”; both received deafening squeals from the band’s old school fans as they sang along to Fink’s every modal shift.
By the time the band ended their set with fan-favorite “Worked Up So Sexual,” La Zona Rosa had transformed into some sort of 21st century discotheque for a hedonistic futurist generation.
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August 11, 2008
Review: Nellie McKay at Stubb's
Most every time Nellie McKay took a deep breath behind her keyboard inside Stubb’s the other night nonstop verbiage of the satirical kind erupted from her mouth.
Skewer this and skewer that, McKay knows that sometimes girls just wanna have fun with our oh-so-heavy times.
F the feminists who “have a tumor on their funny bone.” Get a pound dog ‘cause “I was a pageant gone bad, then there was you on time and waggin’ your tail.” Or go get married to “be simple and honest and dimpled.”
Not that McKay (pronounced McEYE) has all the answers. She told the less-than-full crowd Thursday night she can’t even make up her mind between Obama (too smooth) and McCain (too old) and maybe Nader is the guy “of thee I swing.”
This young New Yorker who insisted on a double album for her debut on Columbia was pretty sure of herself on the release that brought her to South by Southwest in 2004. And when the label rejected a followup double, McKay got her many songs out the independent way. Now she’s relaxing, realistic enough to tour solo behind a nine-song CD, “Obligatory Villagers.”
She was all smiles at Stubbs in a fringed red dress, with long blonde curls bouncing as she pulled out a ukulele and bantered with upfront fans about bats (why no Bat Woman and Cat Man?) and barbecue (thanks for not eating it in front of this vegetarian). While the mix of old and new songs mostly showed off her lyrical bite, McKay’s voice is a solid instrument — part sweetness and part spitfire. She even made pretty with the ’60s classic “A World Without Love,” then bowed out with “Zombie,” a Down South swamp funk tune.
McKay, whose rapport with the audience revealed her standup comedian start, deserved a bigger house. Here’s hoping she returns with the jazz orchestra she records with because her clever, caustic stylings are a nice break from Austin’s guitar and sincerity fixation.
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August 7, 2008
Live review: The Hold Steady
- Photos: Our Live from Austin gallery now includes The Hold Steady
- The A-List: The Hold Steady at the Parish
Sometimes conventional wisdom gets to be that way because it’s true, so here we go: The Hold Steady really is the best band in America right now. Not bar band. Band, period, the end.
If you were at the Parish Wednesday, you know this, too, because you saw the right band at the right time at the right place. Pushing its unsurprisingly excellent new record, “Stay Positive” while digging deep into past efforts, the band roared through its well-practiced set like pros, but it felt inspired rather than workmanlike. It’s cheap and reductive to say it’s a Midwestern thing, but it’s true: Singer-songwriter-guitarist-bard of the Twin Cities Craig Finn understands that magic comes from discipline and labor, which is why the sweatiest preachers have the fullest collection plates.
It also helps not a little that they totally, totally rock. Much is made of Finn’s novelistically precise and fetishistically self-referential songwriting; his characters tend to have an uneasy relationship with Catholicism and take great comfort around pills, booze and other ways to make bad decisions. But the sonic wallop of lead guitarist Tad Kubler (he’s graduated to Gibsons lately) and drummer Bobby Drake gird Finn’s narratives, every bit as critical as Finn’s tortured teens and shout-along choruses. Throw in Franz Nicolay’s keyboards and you have a band that sounds exactly like Bruce and the E Streeters if they’d grown up one time zone to the west. (Boy, is it getting hard to say something original about these guys.)
Of course, the Parish has some of the best sound in town, and from the Cheap Trick-T-bones-Husker Du opener, “Constructive Summer,” the floor was bouncing from the houseful of fans jumping around. “Sequestered in Memphis” — a swaggering rock version of Robert Earl Keen’s “The Road Goes on Forever” and one of the best dude’s-in-a-lot-of-trouble songs ever — simply killed. Kubler got to whip out his doubleneck SG, made famous by Jimmy Page, for “One for the Cutters” — which sounds a little too “Satantic Majesty’s Request” for my taste on the record — and even that one went over as well as fried chicken after church.
Yes, the religion thing. Finn uses it to tap the power of mythology, ritual and repetition, which is why he refers to the Mississippi River more than any writer since Mark Twain. He knows his music lore, too, and that youth is made expressly to be misspent and that rock ‘n’ roll can make you levitate. Wednesday’s show was a look at a great band at the height of its powers. It doesn’t get any better than that, it really doesn’t. Here’s a toast to St. Joe Strummer.
(Photo by Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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August 6, 2008
Review: Freedy Johnston at the Saxon Pub
In the first of two Austin gigs this week (the next will be a full-band electric show Thursday at Momo’s), New Yorker Freedy Johnston addressed the Saxon Pub on Tuesday with an acoustic guitar in his hands and (so he said) a little too much Dramamine in his bloodstream. Looking sort of nervous, the singer opened with a couple of tempo-hopping numbers — including a likeably dicey “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” from a new all-covers disc he sold at the show — and some jokes that didn’t quite connect.
Things picked up soon, with “Evie’s Tears” and songs both new and old (“Sparky, the Heroic Dog,” which Johnston claimed was the first song he ever wrote), but the short set’s highlight was “Pretend It’s Summer,” whose melancholic atmosphere quashed both jokes from the stage and chatter from the crowd.
Claiming he couldn’t perform a number of the crowd’s requests because he hadn’t brought a tenor guitar, the songwriter did squeeze in a few favorites from his breakthrough records “Can You Fly” and “This Perfect World”: Particularly lovely was “The Mortician’s Daughter,” which was followed by the well chosen Matthew Sweet cover “I’ve Been Waiting.” Austin fans may have wondered why such a worthy artist was squeezed between acts in an 8 p.m. slot that afforded just an hour of stage time, but at least they wouldn’t have to wait long before catching him again on a local stage.
(Photo by Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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August 5, 2008
Review: Bill Frisell at the Continental Club
Sure, it was odd to see the Continental Club’s storied dance floor populated with chairs instead of hoofers. But the “granddaddy of all music venues” prides itself on roots, country, rock, blues, and jazz.
American icon Bill Frisell, therefore, was an ideal Saturday evening showcase, half of his two-night stint. A famed fretboarder, Frisell often presents jazzed versions of classics, pop songs, and standards.
Who else does Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, Carter Family, and Madonna?
Supporting his fresh, double platter “History, Mystery” (Nonesuch), the bespectacled Grammy-winner was joined by drummer Kenny Wolleson, violist Eyvind Kang and trombonist/keyboardist Steve Moore. After a warm introduction by Continental impresario Steve Wertheimer, the quartet launched into composed group improvisation.
Frisell’s vocal mic was lonely: there was no banter, including song titles, between the dozen or so, mostly mid-tempoed, instrumentals. Instead, the 57-year-old strummer and his gifted company let the music do the talking. Tunes ranged from abstract to pastoral, playful to cerebral, atmospheric to angular. Halfway through the 100 minutes, what sounded like the new “Probability Cloud” became a study in the joie de vivre of syncopated melody, with the capacity crowd showing in-kind appreciation.
Frisell is adept at reworking songs, sometimes more than once. Malian Boubacar Traore’s “Baba Drame” first appeared on Frisell’s lovely 2003 “The Intercontinentals,” is reprised on “History, Mystery,” yet manifested most powerfully on stage. Waves of overlapping and dovetailed rhythmic harmony generated goose flesh, without pyrotechnics or histrionics.
Overall, Frisell and friends’ multi-hued jazz trip incorporated bebop, a ballad drizzled with tupelo honey, splashy funk, and shuffle blues. The foursome hopped between stylistic decades like a musical time machine on the fritz. The penultimate encore only reinforced that notion, a lively “Lovesick Blues,” a 1922 show tune made famous by Hank Williams in 1948. Bill Frisell: tearing sheets from, and adding to, the Great American Songbook.
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August 4, 2008
Review: Despise You at Emo's
Cult-level punk bands seem to have an increasingly vague definition of breaking up; who can blame them? If you reach a certain age where touring in a van and sleeping on floors is no longer the lifestyle choice you wish to make but you still want to keep making a statement, there’s nothing to stop you from taking off years at a time. More cult-level bands should try it.
But Despise You, who blew the doors off Emo’s inside room Saturday night, are a strange case from the beginning. The Los Angeles area act embodied the second wave of grinding, rapid-fire, utterly nihilistic hardcore punk called “fastcore” or “power violence.” (Usually incomprehensible) lyrics tended to focus on (what else?) man’s inhumanity to man, rhythms were either at light-speed or sludgy. Despise You did all of this really well.
But it was also a side project band for folks in other cult-level hardcore bands. Its members also self-consciously rejected potential popularity. Despise You never played live in its first incarnation, pseudonyms were used on records, a whole fictional mythology was built from scratch (fictional jail time! fictional gang affiliations!).
Of course they became legendary.
So now they’re back, just for the heck of it — older, recording new music and playing shows. This four-date Texas tour was organized buy Austin punk promoter Timmy Hefner. Brilliantly named locals Naw Dude opened, followed by Kill the Client, a Dallas grind band who thrashed and ground (grinded?) with appropriate gusto. Their recent appearance on Relapse Record’s “This Comp Kills Fascists” anthology could point to bigger things in the near future. Houston’s Pretty Little Flower followed, their orthodox grindcore pounding crowds to dust for nine years (fantastically detailed T-shirts, too).
But it was Despise You everyone came to see - it really was one of those “I can’t believe I’m actually seeing these guys” moments. His white T-shirt offsetting the almost universally black-on-black of pretty much everyone else in the room, bellower Chris Elder looked every inch the hardcore elder (sorry) statesman. He was joined on a few songs by a fellow screamer named Cynthia, which lent a sharp dynamic to the juggernaut thunder. The only way the show could have gotten better is if they had covered “I Got You, Babe.” Really, really fast.
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July 28, 2008
Review: Yaz in Dallas
In one of the least expected reunions of recent years, the short-lived duo Yaz emerged from the hair-spray haze of ’80s nostalgia for a tour that stopped last week at Dallas’s Lakewood Theater. Staking claim to their rightful spot in electropop’s evolution, they played practically every song from their two-album discography — reminding the Erasure fans in the packed house (synth player Vince Clarke formed that duo after Yaz broke up) that sometimes a brief career is best.
Those miffed at the $70 ticket price could at least see where the money went: A matrix of LEDs behind each bandmate presented an engrossing mash-up of vintage computer graphics and more splashy modern images while color tubes stood ready to disco-charge any song that called for it.
Clarke stood expressionless as expected, recreating the bloop and buzz of 1981 with the help of an Apple laptop and multiple keyboards, while singer Alison Moyet more than compensated for his lack of affect. Looking girlishly awkward in pigtails and dazed smile, she screamed enough between-song “Thank You!”s to kill her voice by the encore, when “Situation” veered horribly off key and “Only You” had to be stopped midsong and retried.
Before that, though, her vocals were as tough and soulful as listeners could want — slightly less supple than remembered, but still capable of high drama (“Anyone”) and dance floor swagger (“Goodbye Seventies,” which came off so well she actually crossed the stage to hug Clarke). There was no hint that this reunion might lead to new music from the band, but nobody seemed to mind.
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Review: Wolf Parade at La Zona Rosa
- The A-List: Photos from the show
“All this work-ing/Just to tear it down,” guitarist Dan Boeckner sang on “Language City,” a song about “contemporary Russian politics” from his band Wolf Parade’s jittery sophomore album, “At Mount Zoomer.” The Montreal five-piece was only halfway through its set Friday at La Zona Rosa and already the sold-out crowd was cheering as if it were the band’s last song … ever. Alas, keyboardist and co-singer Spencer Krug took his turn in the back-and-forth rotation with “An Animal in Your Care.” That’s when all the working was torn down.
Only a few lines in, Krug abruptly stopped the song. It was a killer of epic momentum built in the songs prior. He cited technical difficulties. He blamed the sweat oozing into the circuitry of his keyboard. “Sorry,” he said while tinkering with his instrument, “keep smoking your cigarettes and marijuana.” His bandmates looked at him, amused. Quit being a prima donna, their faces seemed to say. Hustle it up. We’re on a roll. Problem quickly and miraculously solved, Krug resumed the song’s painfully deliberate opening. The whole ordeal was enough to distract from the joy of what was inevitable: the song’s transformation, halfway through, from disjointed and grating to propulsive and electrifying. Finally, they could get back to supplanting the fractured rock of Modest Mouse, the band from which Wolf Parade spawned.
The dueling keyboards hummed under the clash of guitars and drums throughout a set that borrowed fairly equally from their new album and their debut, “Apologies to the Queen Mary.” Indeed, the night’s opener, “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son,” was from the latter, and it foreshadowed the stone-cold intensity to come. If it didn’t, Krug’s post-song prophecy — remember, this was one song into the show — sealed the deal. “I think this is the first real show we’ve played,” he said. “Honestly.” And then they got to working.
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July 24, 2008
CD review: Micky and the Motorcars
Micky and the Motorcars
‘Naïve’
(Smith Entertainment)
Is it fair to call a singer-songwriter derivative if the person he sounds like is his older brother?
Micky and the Motorcars, led by Micky Braun, come off even more like Reckless Kelly understudies when you consider the head Kelly — Willy Braun — co-wrote title track “Naïve” and the album, which comes out Tuesday, was produced by R.K.’s David Abeyta and Cody Braun.
But what sets Micky and the Motorcars apart, albeit slightly, is that Micky is a more tenderhearted kind of country rock singer, as evidenced by the originals “Grow Old” and “Seeds.” On the Jon Dee Graham cover “Twilight,” Micky’s voice provides the vulnerable counterpart to Kris Farrow’s guitar of wiry confidence.
On “Naïve,” the Brauns are joined by another musical family, this one called Welch, which gives the album another dimension. New Wimberley resident Kevin Welch, the former Nashville major label act, has a couple of musical kids in Dustin and Savannah, who both contribute co-writes (Savannah’s “Amber” is a sweet standout), as does Randy Rogers (“Long Enough To Leave”).
Image courtesy of myspace.com/mickyandthemotorcars.
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Live Review: Harvey Milk at Red 7, Canadian Rifle and more at Emo's
You know how you can tell European punk bands on sight?
Shorts on stage. Especially when the whole band wears them.
Solid Decline hail from Germany, and boy howdy, could you tell when they took the stage Wednesday night at Emo’s. The sparsely attended show featured a decent set from Austin’s own Sacred Shock before the Germans took the stage.
Now there were a few folks in Sacred Shock wearing shorts, but they looked self-conscious about it and with good reason. Not since Fugazi rocked D.C. church halls in the late 80s has it seemed socially acceptable for punks to wear shorts on stage. And rarely does the entire band participate in such leg-bearing behavior.
Solid Decline sure did; cargo shorts no less. Their set was fine, nothing all that shocking, just solid meat-and-potatoes European hardcore. Somewhat aggressive, but not so much that one felt much heat, tension or even that much overflowing power. Maybe it was the tiny crowd; Wednesdays are tough.
Canadian Rifle was a stronger proposition. A power trio that traded on well-defined riff-construction, their tunes owed much to the hefty, catchy punk of British legends Leatherface as anything else.
I found them to be in a proud tradition of Chicago shout-along punk, not as memorable as, say, Pegboy (a personal favorite) but solid nonetheless; I look forward to a potentially killer album from them in the future.
Things moved a little slower over at Red 7. Harvey Milk was supposed to take the stage at 12:15, but didn’t make it until 1 a.m. The Athens, Ga., band has enjoyed a somewhat shocking resurgence in (relative) popularity, thanks in part to such taste-making retailers as Aquarius Records. Their current lineup, augmented by former Melvin Joe Preston on second guitar, slogged (I mean that in a good way) through loud, slow dirges that didn’t quite fit with metal, punk or obtuse noise. These were songs, but slowed down and pulled apart. Occasionally, the pace would pick up, but slow and low was the tempo most of the time.
Guitarist/singer Creston Spiers sounded like suffering was his lot in life, while bassist Steven Tanner’s look surfed that line between underground rock life and guy who might ask you for spare change. The whole thing was a balm for the soul, really.
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