Dancing About Architecture, Vol. VI

October 25, 2005

Tonight’s Episode: Metric

October 25, 2005 at The Casbah, San Diego, CA

I love New Wave! I LOVE New Wave! I’ve always loved New Wave. And you all mocked me and poked me with forks and called me “dorkus” and “moleface” and “new wave lover”. But who’s mocking now, hmn? If it hadn’t been for New Wave, we would still be rockin’ out to Styx and Genesis. And we wouldn’t have Metric.

Now here’s a band that is taking us where we need to go. Did I not say that Metric would fucking ROCK?! I believe I said that. And damn, I was spot on this time, yesSIR! They came to San Diego just as I was getting up on them, so it’s fair to admit that I was inclined to like the show. It would also be fair to say that I tend to go see bands I know something about and expect to like, so it’s likely that I should write a favorable review. Nonetheless, there’s good, and then there’s something even better. This show was, like, better.

Jackie and I met Art and Vera at the Casbah just after the second opening act, which A & V said were actually pretty good. The Lovely Simpletons or some such. Chris and Suzanne miraculously made it coming straight from the airport, so we had our own little IloveMetric micro-posse. The band walked on stage and made an instant impression just by their look: guitarist Jimmy Shaw and bassist Joshua Winstead in sharp shirt and tie (the latter sporting a tote cap), drummer Joules Scott Key in t-shirt and jeans, and singer/keyboardist/lyricist Emily Haines in a fitted black dress. This is a look which says, ‘we are punk but we are also more than that.’ What is so fetching about this band is that everything about them says they’re trying to tell us something about us, which sounds bad but really isn’t so bad because we all kind of knew that stuff already but couldn’t quite codify it. ‘Cept they don’t overdo it and get all pretentious on us. The lyrics seem so despondent at first, but the more you wrap yourself up in them, the more comforting they get. The band began with “Empty”, the first song off their new sophomore album. I guess starting the show with the first song off the album you’re promoting isn’t so unusual after all. So she started singing, “There’s no way out/the only way out is to give in”. And I felt sad. And happy. Because there was this woman who looks exactly like Uma Thurman except of normal height and only slightly less-than-normal weight, replete with “Kill Bill” haircut and serious eyes, holding the microphone stand out to us at arms length and shaking her head fiercely back and forth in time with the beat, telling us how life is rough. And when we heard “Poster Of A Girl”, we understood perfectly well that even if you’re a young, thin, attractive, smart, talented blonde middle class woman from a wealthy country, it can still be hard to find your place in the world. And I thought, this must have been what it was like to see Blondie at CBGB’s.

Yeah. ‘cause here was this smart woman fronting a band of regular guys, using her striking looks not to promote any sexual politics but to affect a performing style that grabs our attention and keeps it suspended until she’s said what she wants to say. She was all over the stage, throwing out her free arm with splayed fingers, or leaning as far out over the sold-out crowd as possible, or casually resting against a pole in the back corner. At times she climbed down to the floor and sang in the middle of the front row, and Winstead followed suit. Shaw is a confident guitarist, who on one particular song was strumming chords so fast and for so long that his entire body shook like it was being electrocuted. They weren’t just playing their songs and taking our cover charge. This is a band in the sweet spot of their ascendancy, when word-of-mouth has made them underground stars, and they clearly are relishing the moment. Haines spent song breaks in chat mode with the audience (it’s an intimate club anyway), and whether or not it was affected, they obviously appreciate the attention they’re getting, particularly in lame towns like this one.

Shaw and Haines also played synthesizer keyboards…which brings us back to new wave. Metric’s first album was solid, formalized new wave, and it’s a lovely and thoughtful album. This new one, though, is a delicious mix of the ol’ N.W. with some punk and alterno-rockin’. Of course, that’s when new wave is at its best. There’s the story of the Seymour Stein, the legendary head of Sire Records, marketing The Ramones as new wave because the term “punk” had a bad rap. Anyhooch, this stuff is captivating on the record and was even more so on the stage. The keyboards, voice and synth weave in and out of the melody so craftily you’re never exactly sure what’s coming next. Haines has said she was thinking a lot of Pink Floyd while they were making this record. Makes sense: there are some moments of quiet, pulsating sound that suddenly explode with power chords, in a spacey sorta way. I even heard that four note bit that comes out of nowhere in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” in there somewhere. But unlike the Floyd, there’s no lassitude here. There was a sweet moment toward the end of the show when they were expanding on the coda and slowly brought the sound down to a tense murmur, with synth bleeps and guitar whimpering, and held it there, just long enough. Then it started rising again, with each band member slowly swirling sound upward until it finally blew the roof off. There’s the adage for musicians which says if your audience is losing interest, play softly. These kids knew what they were doing, because by the end, they had us in the palms of their hands. In the end, the live show took us from the low-grade depression we thought the songs were about, to the real message as expressed in the album title itself: Live It Out.

So buy the record. See the show. Take out a ruler or graduated cylinder and measure something in any country but the U.S., because “British base-12 system” is a stupid, stupid name for a band. Crikey, the bloody Brits don’t even use it any more.

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. V

September 30, 2005

Tonight’s Episode: The New Pornographers with guests Destroyer and some band we missed

September 30, 2005 at The Belly Up, Solana Beach, CA

The last and first time I saw The New Pornographers play, it was at the Casbah here in San Diego, when they were on tour for their sophomore album, “Electric Version”. That was before I was wasting my time and yours writing these reviews, alas. But I’m excited to write this one, because this second viewing was a great show, although different in some interesting ways from the first one. First, though, we must cover the opening bands.

The first opening band, Immaculate Spongeheads or something like that, sucked. Actually, I have no idea whether or not they sucked, because I didn’t pick up Art and Vera until too late by Swiss non-rock-‘n’-roll standards, and by the time we got there we missed the first band. Judging from the lack of promotional material at the goodies table as well as a lack of overheard conversations dealing with them, I’d guess they weren’t that special. No love lost.

We did get there just in time for Destroyer. This is the side project of New Pornographers co-songwriter and backup singer, Dan Bejar. Or Destroyer is his main project, and the NPs are an aside. Arthur, a veritable expert on all things Destroyer by virtue of having heard of them and actually owning an album or two, wasn’t sure where Bejar’s priorities lay. In any case, this is the guy who sings the lead on “Jackie”, which I believe he wrote, and a few other NP songs – you know the voice. Now imagine that voice singing roughly eight songs in a row, over a droning indie power pop standard four-piece, songs which sound like pastiches of NP clips strung together at roughly the same tempo. That’s more or less the Destroyer experience. My friend Dave (who, incidentally, introduced me to the NPs by randomly sending me their first CD some years ago, and hence opened my eyes to the burgeoning new world of serious power pop) has claimed that the NPs’ songs are so good because of Bejar’s songwriting contributions, such that front man A.C. Newman gets more credit than he perhaps deserves. If that were true, than Destroyer’s songs ought to be so sublimely crafted that they would seem as if they had always existed as natural and true as mathematics and were just waiting for the first capable medium to coalescence them out of the ether. That’s probably too much to ask. What Destroyer’s songs really sound like are the little bits of pop hooks you sometimes come up with on your way to work, but lack the will or, let’s face it, the talent to expand into full-fledged songs. That said, there’s nothing to dislike about Destroyer’s songs; they just aren’t as cohesive as POP songs, which is what they seem to be trying for. “Mayor of Simpleton” by XTC: that’s a perfect pop song in large part because it’s got an A section, a bridge, and a chorus, and they are pieced together not only seamlessly, but also in the exact order you expect and therefore want them to be. The audience seemed to like Destroyer, though. I would argue that Bejar’s talent is in taking those pop elements he seems so good at crafting, and putting them together in a way that feels novel and disjointed only because the song structures aren’t as formulaic as you expect them. So this is a different kind of power pop approach: the disengaging kind. The actual performance was mostly boring. When I say “standard four-piece”, I mean that none of the musicians, including Bejar on rhythm guitar, played anything that stood out in any way, just banged out the chords. The last song had some time changes which, in tried and true fashion, added some interest to an otherwise mediocre melody. As an opening band, Destroyer was good at getting us in the mood for the main event, but I wouldn’t go specifically to see them.

When after a short break the New Pornographers came on stage, they came in waves – they’re a fairly large band now. In the first wave was a young woman who is not Neko Case (who is, in fact, Newman’s niece), and it may be taken as a curious note on the crowd that many exclamations of “We want Neko” and the like were heard; this could also be interpreted as evidence for Neko’s current status as indie rock diva (sic, Art). The band, on this tour, consists of Newman up front on voice and his indispensable Sears-issue guitar, Neko to his right on voice and her equally indispensable tambourine (much cheering, “We love you Neko”, etc.), a lead guitarist who was new around the time of “Electric Version”, whose name I don’t know and who stood towards the back, Blane Thurier on keys, Kurt Dahle on drums, big John Collins on bass (he also doubled as the bassist for Destroyer), and the niece Kathryn something on keys and voice. Why two keyboard players? Anyway, the band opened with the title track, side 1/track 1 of their new album, “Twin Cinema”. I’ve never known a band to open a show with the first song off the album they are promoting on the tour, but what the hell? It’s a catchy song that works well in both contexts and got everyone immediately bouncing.

They then played probably all the good songs from the new album, which I know now is all of side one and half of side two, interspersed with the best songs from “E.V.” and some of our old favorites from their debut, “Mass Romantic”. I provide this obvious and nondescript summary to introduce what I found interesting about a good band touring for their third album. The first album, well, it was so stunning that “E.V.” could hardly surpass it. There are great songs on that second record, and we heard them played live last Saturday, but there are some middlin ones, too (and we did hear one of those, the only dull moment of the whole show). So this band should, by album three, return in high stride with either a return to form or, a la Radiohead, a totally different tack which usually means a depressing album. This band accomplished the former, mostly by continuing to make really good choices about how to distribute their assets. One of the NPs’ greatest strengths is that everyone can be playing or singing as loudly as possible, and it sounds great. Both Newman and Bejar can write songs like that. But they have some other aces: they can start with a beautiful stripped down melody (generally sung by Neko), and build on it until it’s blaring but still beautiful. There’s one new song that starts, sweartogod, like a troubadour ballad by Donovan, but builds by turns until reaching the never-ending chorus of “Hey la” that is so joyous it makes you want to dance unashamed with your best friends in the middle of a remote field at two in the morning. Another song had Neko on lead vocal, but it was so obviously penned by Newman that I heard his voice instead. But if she weren’t there wailing like a Siren, the vocals would be all Newman and Bejar, whose voices could never divert sailors to the rocky shore. So what makes the New Pornographers better than Destroyer is in part the players, but also the fact that they have two great songwriters who contribute distinct styles. Newman is straight, formulaic and economical, whereas Bejar is rhapsodic and expansive. Individually they may be repetitive, but together they give us a balanced approach with a broad range.

The band’s live shows have been criticized for being a little off, with harmonies and audience interaction and so on, but at this show those criticisms could only be lobbed at Bejar, and it wasn’t his fault, exactly. He only came on stage for a few of the songs, and from the start, he was completely drunk. It can be tiresome watching drunk musicians, or anybody for that matter, try to overcompensate by fiercely focusing their concentration on the task at hand, to the point of distraction for everyone else. Every time Bejar was on stage, he had a different bottle of beer. He sang OK drunk, but, ya know. A sweet moment in the show came when he bumped into Newman’s guitar, and Newman gave him a friendly, tolerant smile that put it all together for me: NP live shows are, now, like watching an uninterrupted re-recording session of their greatest hits and new stuff. They don’t expand, contract, revamp, or alter their songs in any way, just play them straight up. So it will be mostly solid, but one of the band members will of course show up to the session drunk and they’ll have to fix it all in post-production. I felt like we were all in the studio with them while they layed down some tracks, and that’s fun. The minimal interaction certainly was a contrast with the last time I saw them, in a smaller club where all the band members, including the daft drummer Dahle, chatted with the audience like we were all sharing beers. This time, it was a bigger venue with a high stage and lots more people – a more diverse crowd, too, a sign of spreading popularity. So we got the occasional comments defending Canada and making fun of the sound guy – it was like WE were the sound guy catching all the bloopers between takes. We left the show feeling great about ourselves and about Canada and about the future of accessible rock music. And, let’s be frank, we like the idea of Neko Case being associated with the word “pornography”. It’s not even that she’s all that good-looking, but then, it didn’t matter with the Sirens either.

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. IV

June 24, 2005

Tonight’s Episode: Enon with guests Sparrow and Thunderbirds Are Now!

June 21, 2005 at The Casbah, San Diego

Before seeing this show, I already had two Enon albums and had been enjoying them, because it took me a while to ‘get’ them, if I have ‘got’ them even, and I dig that. So when they came to town, it seemed I had to go. Besides, I was under the impression that the Japanese female singer was one and the same as the singer from Blonde Redhead. Worth ten bucks just for that alone, nu?

The two opening bands were on tour with Enon. First, Sparrow, who I wasn’t really listening to at first; actually, I wasn’t even in the room. We finally wandered in, and I was surprised by the size of the band, given what had been coming into my ears through the walls. The singer sat center stage at his Yamaha keyboard. To his right was a backup singer with a tambourine, and to the right were two women seated with violins. The drummer was seated. The guitarist was seated, behind the violinists. It was a subdued look, and it seemed to fit them because it made me expect a subdued sound, which gave them room for upward mobility. The sound was more like – what did Chris call it? – Belle & Sebastian meets Quasi. I would add a New Pornographers pounding-quarter-note approach. But unlike the NPs, Sparrow lacked range. Every song was the same tempo, similar chord changes, and started and ended at exactly the same volume and intensity. It was obvious that the keyboardist/singer wrote all the songs, and was a talented guy with a limited set of songwriting ideas. This was obvious because I can relate. I could feel those songs being written, like sitting in front of the keyboard banging out chord changes, and thinking, I’m so hung up on the damn chords! Always looking for that elusive set of changes that packs one helluva hook. Look at Funkadelic; look at Talking Heads or the Beta Band or any walking blues: great songs with one goddamn chord. This guy, he had the catchy chords; problem was, they could have done more with them. And that’s just the songwriting. Look, if I had TWO violinists at my disposal, I’d do more than have them play UNISON WHOLE NOTES all the time! I’ve always had a liking towards complexity in arrangements. But this wasn’t just about being sparse, which I can get behind in a lot of cases, because the sound here was loud and full. It was just bland. I liked listening to this band; I even went home and picked out one of the catchier bits on my keyboard. A whole album, though, I imagine would be monotonous.

Between sets we went to the anterooms and were hanging out, expecting a long delay. But these bands – all three of them – were on top of things and didn’t keep us waiting more than a few minutes. So there we are, hanging out, and the next band starts out. We slowly wander in, and it’s loud as fuck. This must be the other band, Thunderbirds Are Now! [sic] There’s this short, slightly chubby blonde kid with big glasses playing guitar and singing, a tall Asian bass player, a drummer, and what the hell…? There’s this other guy with a keyboard and large setup of sequencers and samplers, throwing around a tambourine and his own body like he’d glued his feet to the blades of a giant blender on “whip”, or possibly “grind”. This dude had more energy than I had seen on the stage in a long time. He jumped down onto the floor, and jumped back onto the stage. He pulled the bottom of his shirt front over his face and sang through the shirt. He grabbed the mic stand and hopped up on the cabinets at the back of the stage and sang to the upper back corner of the stage. He tossed his head around like a salad. After taking that in I turned my attention back to the little frontman, and realized he, too, was flailing around like crazy. He put down his guitar, grabbed a pair of maracas and jumped up on some monitors and shook them at the ceiling. Check out the drummer – he’s covered in sweat. And the bassist, he was no slacker either. Damn, it was loud. It was around this time that I started to actually listen to what they were playing, and it was moments later when I realized we were in the presence of a band KICKING ASS! They were friggin’ great. I listened to the guitarist – he was damn good. Any sucker can strum; this dude was playing that thing like mad. I doubt he played in first position at all. It was all up on the upper frets, and tight and staccato with counter-melodies interwoven all the time. The bassist’s fingers were flying, too. Running, rhythmically counterpuntal bass lines. And crazy boy, in between the flailing he was hitting those sequencer knobs and his synth countermelodies, and his vocal harmonies were dead-on. The band is on French Kiss Records, which also boast Brooklyn luminaries Ex Models. On the website, they describe this band’s resurrection of ‘70s and ‘80s punk, and compare Thunderbirds’ sound to Pixies, which is an accessible comparison and in some ways accurate, particularly in the way the guitarist had that high, tight sound like Joey Santiago. But me, I thought I was watching a combo of The Ex and my favorite old DC band, Nation of Ulysses. A particular brand of ‘70s and ‘80s punk, that would be. The really odd thing was, when I went to buy the album and talked to crazy boy and the frontman, they were both these really low-key, even slightly effeminate guys with high speaking voices. I knew the album could never capture the intensity of a live set, but the fact that you can play it below 200 dB, if you want, allows the subtlies of their songs to come through. Not to mention the lyrics, which are actually pretty decent. These guys are for real.

By the time Enon came on, I felt like I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me. Enon played to their albums, at least the stuff I recognized. The trio are all veterans and played like it. First the singer (yes, from Blonde Redhead – I forget her name), controlled the samples while the other dude, John Schmersal or something, covered guitar and they both sang. She later switched to bass, while he switched between guitar and sampler and sequencer. This band has always been a disciple of Sonic Youth, and their new stuff stays in that vein. It makes sense, this three band tour. Enon has two personalities: the Sonic Youth avant-rock persona, obviously the brainchild of Schmersal, and the Japanese New Wave pop persona, which comes from the other band leader. Their songs generally fall neatly into one of those two categories, and the opening bands kinda fit that (Sonic Youth, faithful disciples of The Ex…and so the Great Wheel turns). What keeps this band interesting is that each of their songs seems to come from something you’re very familiar with, but has gone in a weirder, more twisted direction. Again with the Sonic Youth. They did a twisted New Order song, a twisted Nirvana song, and a twisted BeeGees song. They just know how to take those foundations and bring them to places you never thought they would go. Her Tokyopop voice sometimes cracked on stage whereas it’s straight in recordings, and Schmersal’s voice was a little less polished, too. But I wanted a shot of Enon, and I got it. They played a fairly short set, even with the encore (why do we have obligatory encores now? Just play a longer set!). I haven’t picked up their new album yet, although the new songs sounded interesting enough to make me want to.

It was one hell of a Tuesday night at the Casbah. If this tour comes your way, check it totally out!

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. III

June 18, 2005

Tonight’s Episode: Anya Marina and guests. Saturday, June 12, 2005, Lestat’s, San Diego.

Been a while since I’ve been to see live music, ‘sides classical. Anyway, Vera, Chris and I went to Lestat’s coffee house last Saturday to see the widely, at least locally, adored Anya Marina do her singer-songwriter-cheeky goofball shtick. It was, to put it mildly, a night of contrasts.

Lestat’s was the perfect locale for this stuff, being a local-run coffee house on one side and a quiet, dark, quasi-cabaret atmosphere with a stage on the other. We got there early enough to get a tiny table with our very own colorful candle holder. We waited a long time (Vera: “Um, why isn’t someone performing…?”) for the first act, a young, boyish lesbian Bostonian named Sara Wolfe, who sang to her acoustic guitar sometimes funny, mostly cloying songs about being a young, boyish lesbian. Her first number was a blues called, I guess, “Eat Shit and Die”. Hard not to like, if only for its straightforward approach to angst. Her songs were either about being dumped, ala “Merit” named for her last girlfriend who said their relationship lacked that particular quality, or about being mistaken for a boy or just plain shat on for being a lesbian. I kinda liked her amateur style, like shoving way too many syllables into a refrain (“and realize we’re doin’ fine” don’t make it into four quarter notes, not easily), but mostly I liked the story, put into a song, about two old ladies who freaked at a department store when Wolfe headed for the ladies room, told her, “the little boys’ room is over there, sonny”, and got summarily flashed a boyish lesbian boob.

After this short set of straight-up coffee house fodder, we were treated… no…. more like… subjected….to Il Bambino. From the moment this perspicacious duo took the stage, we knew we were in for something surreal, but oh! how little we knew. One in a black suit, the other a white one, both wearing fedoras and enormous fake moustaches, they came bouncing onto the stage like bats out of an Italian tourist cruiseship hell, with Whitesuit shouting, “’Allo! ‘allo, ever-y-bo-dy! Ha-ha-ha-ha! We are Il-a Bambino” in a ridiculously affected Italian accent, whilst taking un-aimed Polariod pictures of the audience and tossing them over his shoulder. Blacksuit remained stolid throughout the performance, and led the musical numbers (I guess you could call them) as he was clearly the only one who knew how to sing and play instruments. They started with what remains my favorite piece of theirs, with Blacksuit standing in the back, looking solemnly down over his autoharp hugged to his chest, singing in alternating I-IV chords, “Doo-doo-doo do you have-a the moustache?” in a quiet durge; meanwhile Whitesuit worked the audience yelling the refrain, asking people in the front row that question and giving them the microphone. It was damn funny, actually. Kinda like watching your old Bar Mitzvah video is funny. Squirmy, surreally funny. Whitesuit was a sort of Chico/Groucho hybrid who “interpreted” Blacksuit’s Italian crooning over his accordion (did Blacksuit actually study Italian folk songs in college?) – every so often White hit a joke with that. They also did “Autobahn, Autobahn” chanted over bongos, and some other crap with Black playing the banjo. White must have felt he was losing steam with us, so he traipsed out into the audience, wrapped himself around randoms and took their Polaroid together. The real highlight, of course, was when he came by OUR table (NO! Yes! Please don’t come here! Oh, I HOPE he comes over HERE!) and took a Polaroid with his arm around Chris (and me in the background). Chris, I hope you kept it. It’s probably the only thing you’ll remember in the long run about that night. All in all, it was an act so overtly offensive in so many ways, we had to laugh, but it was hard to tell if we were laughing for the reasons they wanted us to or not. The whole thing clearly was conceived at 3:00am after lots of illicit substances had been consumed. So kids, next time someone offers you drugs, remember Il Bambino. Think about this little story. THIS could happen to you!

Change gears. No, change planets. Up come Jane Lui to the stage, settling the question of who the hell that is on the meticulously designed postcards left meaningfully on our little table at the start of the evening. Ms. Lui is a tall, self-consciously cute Asian woman whose onstage persona is at once appealing but also a little tiresome if you try to imagine being her friend. She had a Yamaha keyboard which was set to sound like a piano on reverb, and after the first chords instantly we were out of whatever the hell came before and into a completely new universe. This universe was one where someone, having taken lots of piano lessons and forced to practice a lot, and having a good amount of talent and is also blessed with a natural pop diva voice to boot, writes Celine Dion songs. But somehow, they were better than that. She had a great command of the keyboard and had written lots of songs with unusual structures and resolutions, and weren’t so self-absorbed as they could be. One song was about a fantasy book she liked. Lui has a beautiful voice and a refined understanding of how to use both it and the piano to evoke emotion. She even worked in a strutting blues for part of a tune, and made it work with her pop voice without sounding corny, because she wasn’t even trying to be Bessie Smith. After a while, though, I got bored, maybe because the songs mostly lacked heavy hooks, or because that style of singing is just too much for me, or maybe I was just tired. It was like, I’d buy your CD because you’re very talented, but I can’t imagine listening to it more than once. Chris summed it up just right, when she was done, with “Kate Bush just left the stage”. So I didn’t buy the CD.

Finally, Anya Marina. For those of you not in San Diego, she’s a tiny blonde DJ on the alternative rock station here, who has become a sort of folk hero among the smart, cheeky and haughty Gen-Xers because she’s smart and cheeky without seeming haughty, commodities which that group (yeah, me included, yeah) considers undervalued in this corner of the world. I’d heard her album, and seen her play a few songs once before. This time she was accompanied, besides herself on guitar, by the drummer from Reeve Oliver, a so-so local band she’s plugged relentlessly on her radio show, or at least she did until my car radio died. His set was appropriately minimal, just a box which he sat on and played, a hi-hat, and a snare. Anya probably played a total of eight songs in her forty-five or so minutes on stage, due to the constant banter going on between her and drummer boy. Not just him, but another keyboard player came on and off stage a few times, over which a great deal of witty banter was also traded. Jane Lui came on for one or two songs as well – clearly, she and Anya knew each other well, or at least wanted us to know that each thought the other was either “so hot” or “so cute”, meaning they are good friends and respect each other’s work as well as hotness/cuteness. Lui showed off in her own cute Asian way (is it an affectation? Hard to say) her homemade marimba mallets with faces on them: one is Zorro and one is Jewish. Zorro made sense, because he was wrapped mostly in black, but from my vantage point I couldn’t tell what made the other one Jewish. Don’t misunderstand, the witty banter was hugely fun, partly because it really was fun, and partly because of aforementioned consideration of the dearth (or at least, elusiveness) of such wittiness outside my own circle of friends. As for the songs themselves, they’re better than they seemed (not my joke). Her wispy voice is well-matched for her sometimes clever, ironic lyrics (“I love you baby/I hope you choke” in a song about desperate love) and the songs have lots of those hooks I’d been waitin’ on. The drums worked great, especially on her CD’s title track “Miss Halfway”, which is hooky indeed. She tried out a new song, “Reno”, which met those criteria but was also genuinely a bit sadder than the other tongue-in-cheek fare, even if she had a little trouble hitting the high notes. She did a pleasant version of the “Three’s Company” theme song – more Gen-X pandering, but who cares – although the slow take on “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was a foray into maudlin I could have done without. But all the players in Anya’s bag of smartees were decent musicians and each funny in their own way, which made all that came before it worth the wait, and the $6 cover worth the cost. It was exactly, maybe a little bit more than, what I would want out of a Saturday night at a coffee house. A special thanks goes out to Il Bambino for being so fuckin’ weird.

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. II

February 7, 2005

Tonight’s episode: Luna with Midnight Movies

A few months ago, Dave went to see Prince and later wrote a long and detailed review of the show and sent it around. I loved it, so when I saw Neko Case with The Sadies I decided I’d do the same thing. I sent my review to some of you and got mostly positive feedback, so now I’m feeling inspired to write a review for yet another show. If you weren’t there, it may not have that much value since you can’t hear the music, and if you were, you already know what happened, so read at your own risk. In any case, here is the second installment:

Luna played their “farewell” show last Thursday night at the Casbah here in San Diego, with Midnight Movies opening. Many of you were there, and it wasn’t planned that way, so that was way cool. I expected a third act as an opener, but it was just the two bands. I had heard Midnight Movies on iTunes and liked them, so I was looking forward particularly to their set. In fact, they turned out to be more interesting than I anticipated. The recordings I had heard sounded like a kinder, gentler version of Throwing Muses with a little synth and eerier, spacier melodies. Turns out they’re a trio, and I’ve got a special place in my heart for good rock trios. Everyone has to work extra hard to make it work. In this case, the girl drummer was also the lead singer, and for my money she gets the MVP award for the evening. Unlike lesser drummer/singers (Don Henley, the dude from the Romantics), Gena Olivier didn’t settle for a standard trap set, but had several additional floor toms, riding tams and other accessories I couldn’t see, and played more complex rhythms than I could ever do while singing, despite lots of practice on the steering wheel. She also closed her eyes while playing, which is something I also do as a concentration thing. But what impressed me was that on top of this she had a good ear: the songs often hit unexpected and sudden chord changes and her voice was right there. The keyboard player spent about half the time on rhythm guitar, and I was glad to see the lead guitar player only switch to bass for some of that time. This meant several songs with two guitars and no bass, and the lead guitarist deftly filled in both top and bottom. I still felt something was missing without the bass, but the swift drumming and spacey vocals kept my mind more focused in the midrange, where all the sound was concentrated. It helped that the singer’s voice is a low alto. Some of their songs led well into expanded jam endings, sometimes on one chord, which ain’t easy – they played these for exactly as long as was necessary, possibly due more to time constraints than musical considerations, but OK either way. The lead guitar/bassist often applied the old Joy Division trick of intensifying the jam by bringing the drone bass line up an octave. Unfortunately, they played a short set – maybe 30 minutes at most – and I would have liked to hear them more. The tunes were creepy but not slow, and the odd melodies and chord and tempo changes helped to make them an interesting live act. But they played the part of the good opener, and were off the stage as quickly as they had come on to make room for the big kids.

The word for Luna’s set, at least the first half, is “restraint”. They’ve been around for like twelve years and I don’t think I had ever heard them before. One of those bands that just slipped through the cracks while I was paying attention to other things. The show was sold out, which is not too surprising if they really are the indie rock darlings they seem to be. They came on with a solid, well-balanced 4-piece indie rock sound that rivals anyone’s. What they lacked was verve. There are probably scores of hardcore Luna fans out there in grad student pubs and New York coffee shops who would defend them tooth and nail, and I can understand why. Take smarty poetic lyrics and sing them in a low deadpan voice that sounds like Jeff Tweedy from Wilco (minus emotion) and play some major chords like you mean it - but with a heavy dose of angst – and you’ve got a formula for popularity among the over-educated. I would bet their albums are…nice. Steady, predictable, and understated, so you can put it on later in the evening when you want something to read a book to, or play it for your friends and they nod approvingly but never say “Damn, that’s cool”. But this does not a live show make. The compositions and the delivery just were not interesting enough. It was like Guided By Voices, but with less compelling songwriting and not enough, hmm, vitamins in their diet maybe? It seemed the band was either bored or tired (drove up that day from Tuscon, which may have been the only thing the lead singer said). They didn’t bother to establish a rapport with the audience, which might be the prerogative of a band on a farewell tour but is still something I like to have. Occasionally the lead guitarist uttered non-sensical inanities into his mic and chuckled quietly, and the biggest fans let themselves in on the joke. It was lost on me. They did have some catchy moments: I enjoyed their rendering of Edward Lear’s 19^th century poem-story “The Owl and the Pussycat” (I have it in a children’s book – that’s how I know), and a song about the Bonnies and Clydes of the world was fun. Like their predecessors, in the second half of their set they ended most songs with a jam, although in every case I can remember it was a I-IV-I-IV chord thing (think “Bad” by U2) – no other variations. Fine, fine. Just not that exciting. And when the sexy bassist (who was the only one I could see, when I could see anything, thanks to the two tallest motherfuckers in California) and lead guitar sang backup, the vocals did sound sweeter. I bet there’s more of that on their albums. Nothing too risky, though. None of the bass-playing, drumming, strumming or singing really stood out, not that they were trying. They have their mid-nineties indie sound and they stick with it. I never once thought “Whoah!”, but more often was thinking “yup”. It was a little like living in San Diego. There was nothing offensive, really, but by the end I was terribly bored. So here’s my formula:

((Wilco + Guided By Voices)/Poster Children) – Enthusiasm = Luna

If it hadn’t been at my favorite club, with some of my favorite people in the audience, it would have been a tough show. Next time, more Midnight Movies, more moxie, less tall motherfuckers. I’m serious: that one dude must have been 6’9”. Asshole.

-Larry

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. I

December 7, 2004

Jackie and I went to see Neko Case Saturday night at the El Rey Theater, about three blocks from Jackie’s place in LA. Here’s my report on that show:

First of all, the fact that we could actually walk to an event in LA was in itself quite surreal. There was a long line, and even though the theater is pretty big, it was really crowded even early. It was a pretty nice venue: a converted old theater with a lowered center area, round booths and couches along either side and a three-sided bar at the back, big chandeliers and a raised stage. When we got there, the first opener was playing, a guy named Dexter Romweber. He sang and played guitar, and had an upright bass and drums. He was horrible. I mean, really awful. It always amazes me when a good headliner has a lousy opening act. He was exactly what you would expect to see in a dingy bar outside of Akron, Ohio. He was a beer-bellied, slovenly looking guy with a messy pompadour. He tried very hard to sound like Elvis, but his voice was painfully flat (really, it was like bad karaoke) and gross, his guitar playing was crass and the songs were stupid. They were also all rip-offs. One song was the exact copy of the old blues song “Sittin’ On Top of the World”, but with different, dumber lyrics. Another was a copy of a Howlin’ Wolf song, and although he tried to sing like Mr. Wolf, it was embarrassingly bad. We hung out in the back waiting for him to finish before moving onto the floor. The thing that was really so bad about this guy was that he went on forever. The show was supposed to start at 8, and although I don’t know when he actually started, he didn’t quit until at least 9:30.

Alright, enough about that. We moved up towards the front of the floor for the second act, The Sadies. I had heard of them, knew they’d been around a few years, but didn’t know much else. They’re a quartet from Toronto, although I think some members are from different parts of Ontario. The band is fronted by Dallas Good on guitar and vocals, and his brother Travis (twin?) on same, plus violin. They also used an upright bass and the drummer had a standard kit. This band was terrific. The Goods switched between lead and backup vocals, and lead and rhythm guitar, often in the same song so smoothly you didn’t even notice. Both had a tendency to pull away from the front of the stage and even turn around while they were playing some of their more interesting guitar lines, which had the effect of forcing you to just take in all of the sound. They started out sounding like a rockabilly band. Their second song sounded like a spaghetti western theme song. Dallas is a laid-back indie rock-looking type whose lips seem to ripple in a circle when he sings, while his brother looked more like a cross between Slash and Neil Young. During the spaghetti western tune, Dallas sang in a high falsetto with his eyes closed, and Travis made all these ridiculous heavy metal wailing grimaces up against the microphone, even though he wasn’t singing at all. It was pretty funny to watch, a cute gag, and got the audience really into their style. Their set just got more and more interesting, as they played a mix of bluegrass, rockabilly, garage rock, country and Chicago blues, often within the same song. It was a rare case of sounding very familiar while really being a unique sound, kind of like Camper van Beethoven although less cheeky. One song started as speed rock, then shifted into bluegrass, and ended up as a doo-wop blues where the lyrics “Baby, baby, shoop shoop” didn’t sound ridiculous at all. And they had great chops, too. Some of their songs were instrumentals, and they did one sort of Turkey in the Straw breakdown that featured Travis on lead. After the first 32-bar iteration, Jackie said to me, “That’s some good guitar playing”. But then they picked it up and played it again faster. Very nice. Then they did it again, faster. Impressive. Then again, very very fast. Damn. The song ended, and then just when the audience was about to applaud, they picked it up and did it one last time at breakneck speed. It may not have been the fastest guitar playing I’ve ever heard, but it was pretty damn close. The cool thing was Dallas was also playing a combo of lead and rhythm, and so for many of their songs there was some really beautiful counter-melodic layering. They also did an old spiritual called “Higher Power” as a rockabilly song, and pulled it off well. Travis played fiddle for about a third of the tunes, and was not quite as impressive as on guitar, but still very good. He had the bigger, stronger voice, although Dallas’ bass baritone worked in a Johnny Cash sort of way. I imagine they get better audience responses elsewhere; the LA crowd seemed too cool to really get into anything.

OK, so finally Neko came on. Last time I saw her (aside from with the New Pornographers), she had a slide guitarist and an upright bass player with her, sans percussion except for an anklet tambourine. This time, she came out, and her back up band was The Sadies! For this set, Travis played the same guitar but played it primarily in slide guitar style (but held over his shoulder), which somehow involved twisting his right wrist as he strummed (Dave? Does that make sense?). She started playing solo with a creepy country waltz off one of her older albums, which I like and was a good intro. She played a few upbeat tunes, including a hot Loretta Lynn song that I didn’t know, but Jackie insisted she sounded just like Lynn, so OK. I thought it was pretty good, but mostly because the back up band was dead on. However, Neko played almost no other old stuff of hers; in fact, I can’t think of any others I recognized. It was all off the new album, I guess. Next to us was a young woman with Arista (I think) records, who apparently just signed Neko and so a lot of record label people were there. She was talking to a middle-aged man who apparently had directed the movie “Rock and Roll High School”. Weird. Anyway, perhaps Neko had to play mostly new album songs as part of the record deal or something. They were nice songs. But they were almost all sad country waltzes. In fact, she kept introducing songs as, “this is a sad song about X”. There were a few songs that she wrote with The Sadies, which didn’t fall into that category and were less depressing. But overall, it was too much of the same thing. Her voice sounded as good as always, but the lack of variety made her set pale in comparison to the previous one. Towards the end of the set (which wasn’t very long, probably because the first opener went on for so damn long), Dexter Roundblubber came out and “sang” with the band, with Neko as an additional rhythm guitar. He literally just growled unintelligibly into the microphone. I just didn’t get why anyone put up with this guy. For a few songs Neko played a small acoustic that was only slightly bigger than a ukulele. They did do a 5 or 6 song encore, which partially made up for the shorter set. Maybe the venue was just too big for her songs, which are small and intimate. But in the end, the night was all about The Sadies. I bought Neko’s new album – haven’t listened to it yet – but I think I’m more excited to hear the Sadies’ CD that Jackie picked up.

So there you have it. I couldn’t tell you what make of guitar or whatever everybody played (sorry, Dave – not as thorough as your Prince review). If Neko comes to town where you are, I’d go see her, but make sure you get there in time for the touring band.

-Larry