A Commonwealth double-bill tonight (Friday) in Seattle, as Australia’s An Horse (pictured) share the Vera Project stage with Halifax, NS’s Wintersleep. An Horse are touring to support the US release of their first full-length, Rearrange Beds, which came out last week, and this concert is some US exposure for Wintersleep and their fantastic album, Welcome to the Night Sky. Should be a great show.
MP3: Wintersleep – Oblivion [buy]
MP3: An Horse – Postcards [buy]
Even if you can’t make it to Austin this year, you get an excellent side benefit – the SXSeattle Sendoff show at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard. The lineup includes z=z faves New Faces and Hey Marseilles, together with Battle Hymns (pictured), the new band of Cameron Elliott, formerly of the Western States. I’m really looking forward to hearing their Silver Jews-esque Americana live. Headlining are Champagne Champagne, who I didn’t really think were my speed, but I’ve only heard great things about their live show (like this Seattle Subsonic review). Top to bottom, it’s a great lineup and well worth checking out on a Friday night. Doors at nine, and a very modest $8 cover, which will help keep the bands in gas and tacos.
In keeping with my current trend of not being in the same city as the shows that I want to see, what I would be doing if I was in Seattle on Saturday night is going to this show. Chop Suey is hosting “Dancing on the Valentine,” a benefit for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, and it’s a tribute to Factory Records. So go watch 24 Hour Party People, dig out your t-shirt with the radiofrequency pulses or the yellow happy faces (as appropriate), and channel the spirit of Tony Wilson. And then go to Chop Suey on Saturday night.
Lineup: Peter Parker, Hotels, Police Teeth, Haunted Horse, Leaders of Men, Motorik, This is Friendly Fires, Funkscribe, Atticus & the Arteries
(to be perfectly fair, part of the reason I won’t be in Seattle is because I’ll be going to this show)
MP3: Hot Chip – Transmission (Joy Division cover) [buy]
Image: Holy Mother of F*ck I Love Joy Division! by Flickr user dullhunk, reposted here under its Creative Commons license.
Whoa, I’m so stoked about this. Tomorrow (February 11), the Buzzcocks are doing a show in Amsterdam. UK site Fab Channel will be streaming it live on the web, starting at 11:30 am PST and 2:30 pm EST – nothing like a punk show while you’re at your desk working. If you’re not sure if you should bother to put on your headphones and watch (hint: you should), you can check out their website, Myspace page, Wikipedia entry, or this previous z=z post.
Here’s the webcast site: link.
zed equals zee faves Mission of Burma, together with Faces on Film and The Neighborhoods, are doing a show at Somerville Theatre on January 24th. The show is a benefit for Arts at the Armory, a nonprofit arts and culture group in Somerville that offers after-school classes, adult classes, and performances in the visual arts, theatre, dance and music. Tickets go on sale on Saturday, December 20th at 10 am at the Somerville Theatre or the Middle East box office (or, well, TicketBastard, if you must).
[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]
[Showbox at the Market, Seattle, WA; October 20, 2008]
I’ve seen the Mountain Goats umpteen times, and every show that I’ve been to has been amazing – I’ve never been to a show where I felt like John Darnielle has given less than his best. Last night was no exception, and the superlative Mountain Goats performance was only highlighted by opener Kaki King.
There’s a fable for artists, whose source is now lost to me. The story is that two budding potters were taking a class. One neophyte potter was told that his efforts should go towards making the perfect pot, and that he would be graded on the perfection on a single piece. The second was told that she would be graded on the volume of pots that she turned out; that she shouldn’t worry much about any given pot, as her grade would just be based on the total number. At the end of the class, the student who was just interested in getting pots made was making better pots than the student who agonized over making each one perfect. I thought of this story last night as the Mountain Goats played ‘Going to Georgia.’ It’s an astonishing piece of songwriting, a perfect merger of music, lyrics, and emotion. I once listened to it a dozen times in a row, and each time I heard “she smiled as she eased the gun from my hand,” I felt like someone had reached into my chest and torqued my heart. Darnielle is famously prolific and, like the potter in the story, it’s clear that he’s honed his craft. It comes through in both the quality of individual songs and in the sheer depth of stellar songs from his catalog that he can draw from for his live shows.
As well as being an exceptional songwriter, Darnielle is a phenomenal performer. He always comes across as happy to be performing and fully engaged in his interactions with his band and with the audience. One of the manifestations of this is his between-song banter. A highlight last night was his response to shouted-out song requests. Like most musicians, Darnielle doesn’t do requests from the audience. (listen up, concertgoers!) He described his response in terms of Kafka’s The Castle, in which the protagonist tries to convince the guards to let him in. “The guards say, “You can give us money. We wouldn’t want you to feel like you hadn’t tried everything you could.” So he gives them his money, and they take it, and they still don’t play Ace of Bass.”
Darnielle’s onstage gifts were thrown into stark relief by his tourmate and collaborator, Kaki King. It’s abundantly clear that King is technically proficient, and I’m happy to see a guitar goddess get added to the mostly male pantheon. But her performance was insular. She barely engaged with her band, much less the audience, and her few remarks were surprisingly mean-spirited. She introduced what I presume was her best-known song with, “I’m contractually obligated to play this song. So you can all touch yourselves now.” Not a very effective way to endear yourself to your existing fans, much less win over new ones. And I’m sorry, Ms. King – you’re just not famous enough to be bored with playing your ‘hits.’ The only time she seemed seriously engaged with anything besides her guitar was when she was sharing a stage with Darnielle – she was smiling, facing him, and her body language said, loud and clear, “I’m playing with you!” (they performed several songs from the Black Pear Tree EP and the Smiths’ ‘I’m so Sorry’). King has a lot to learn from her tourmate, who is admittedly a master – I would follow John Darnielle into Hell if he sang and played his guitar as we went, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]
[Showbox at the Market, Seattle, WA; September 17, 2008]
Note to Okkervil River: Let your bassist sing on more songs.
Previously: Upcoming: Okkervil River and Sea Wolf
I’m not going to comprehensively blog the 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival; instead I’ll point you here and here and here (and I’m sure you’ll find others, if you’re interested). Rather, I’m just going to focus on one artist from each day.
Unsurprisingly, Mission of Burma was my personal highlight from Friday, playing their album Vs as part of the All Tomorrow’s Parties ‘Don’t Look Back’ series. The played a few non-Vs tracks to start (so that fans would have the ‘definitive edition’) and, as always, they were ferocious and compelling live. As that comment suggests, they also had a signal sense of humour about the artificiality of playing an entire album, in order, including starting each ‘side’ with the sounds of crackly vinyl.
The YouTube link above is of a live performance of the last track on the album, “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate.” I don’t know yet if Pitchfork is archiving the live video; stay tuned.
[Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge, MA; April 16, 2008]
Ezra Furman and his band, the Harpoons, tie together down-home style tunes with angst-y, sarcastic Midwesterner lyrics. They performed an energetic 45-minute set at the Middle East on Wednesday night, opening for Cloud Cult. Give them a few more months and the concerts will be singalongs, I think – I’m sure I’m not the only person who bought the CD and has started learning the witty lyrics. I also suspect that twenty-year-old Furman – possessed as he is of a shy charisma – will be the target of many smitten fourteen-year-old girls (and boys) in the near future. (It’s not captured very well in my photo, I admit, but try this promo photo). And besides, how could you not like a band that passes out York peppermint patties to all their loyal fans?
MP3: Ezra Furman and the Harpoons – My Soul Has Escaped My Body
[embedded YouTube video; if you can’t see it, click here]
[Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, MA; March 21, 2008]
I wrote about Holy Fuck the last time I saw them – they are utterly phenomenal live. You can look at the clips on YouTube, but they don’t really capture the experience (that’s why that’s a video above, not a live clip). Unfortunately, they are wrapping up their North American tour – but if you happen to live in the UK or Ireland, you should definitely try to catch one of their shows.
And I’ve decided that Rachael Ray can’t be all bad if she’s a fan.
[Roxy, Boston, MA; December 1, 2007]
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists are amazingly fun live, and I’ve seen them several times in the last year or so. Ted Leo writes and sings tightly constructed songs, with literate and interesting lyrics, and the Pharmacists are an excellent set of musicians. But the real joy of a Ted Leo concert is in the way he talks to and interacts with the crowd. On Saturday night at the Roxy, he announced, “That was the most inarticulate forty-five seconds of heckling I’ve ever heard,” and proceeded to do his impression of what it sounded like from the stage, acting out the competing hecklers in Charlie-Brown-grownups-style voices. It was pointed and hilarious. I’ll keep an eye out for audio or video from the Saturday show, but in the meantime, here’s a video clip from Ted Leo’s previous Boston concert, in which he tells a story about visiting his hometown.
MP3: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?
[Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, MA; November 29, 2007]
Holy Fuck lived up to their name at their show last night. Their music is like the bastard lovechild of Battles and Dan Deacon – while less virtuosic than the former and less straight-out batshit than the latter, they possess a tremendous anarcho-punk energy. And they were clearly really, really having fun onstage. Plus they were handing out free 7″ singles – a split disc, with a Celebration remix of their song “Frenchy’s” on one side, and their remix of a Celebration song on the other. If you’re not lucky enough to catch their act and pick up your own copy of the vinyl at one of their shows, you can download both MP3s here.
Image: Holy Fuck in Philadelphia PA, May 2007. Photo by Oliver J. Lopena, reposted here under its Creative Commons license.
My inner Emily Post is struggling to get out and rant about polite behaviour at concerts, so here’s a few tips. Note that this is strictly geared towards small, crowded concerts at bars – we’re not worrying about showing up late and waiting for the intermission before the usher shows you to your seats.
Smell nice. At a typical show, you can expect to have a dozen people within a one-metre radius of you. Unless you ride the Tokyo subway regularly, this is probably the most people you ever have within smelling distance. Shower. If you normally use deodorant, now is a good time. If you use perfume or cologne, lovely, although you probably don’t want to reapply right before the concert.
Don’t push your way to the front. If you want to stand in front of the stage and flirt with the bassist, arrive early. That’s what everyone who’s already there did. Just because we’re too polite to do more than glare at your back as you shove us out of the way, it doesn’t mean you’re not being rude.
And on a related note, don’t hold hands as you move around. Attending the concert with a group of friends? Fine. Negotiating a crowded space is bad enough solo; you don’t need to hold hands as you move from one part of the room to the other. You are not crossing the Khumbu Icefall.
More tips, a link to more conventional concert etiquette advice, and an MP3 after the jump.
[Great Scott, Allston, MA; November 15, 2007]
The Pipettes are my guilty pleasure. They sing these sweet, catchy songs that almost exclusively about, as they freely admit, love and dancing. And they are this total retro throwback to the girl groups of the 60s, which I’m not particularly into. But somehow, they manage to produce wonderfully infectious indie-pop songs that I love. And, not surprisingly, the Pipettes (with a short ‘i’ if you are from the UK, it seems, but us North American scientists definitely go with the long vowel) put on a great live show, complete with matching outfits and synchronized dance moves. Their band, Cassette, did an excellent job of backing them up, but they aren’t really the point – they were as nondescript, in their grey, British-public-school-boy vests, as the Pipettes were flamboyant – and they are barely visible on stage. With their charming lyrics and memorable tunes, the Pipettes are a nice antidote to the mopey, dark music that I normally listen to.
This MP3 is for Kate, who was curious that I knew all the lyrics to the song they described as ‘a bit naughty.’
[Great Scott, Allston, MA; November 15, 2007]
Back in the realm of the dark and mopey, the big surprise of the night was Nicole Atkins and the Sea, who opened for the Pipettes. Aside from also singing songs about love and also being a retro throwback (we decided on ‘Blondie crossed with Edith Piaf if they were performing in the 50s’), Atkins’s moody music couldn’t be much more different from the Pipettes cheery vocals. But she has a phenomenal voice and is a stunning live performer. They are scheduled to be on Conan O’Brien next week, if the writer’s strike ends – it’s worth crossing your fingers for.
[Paradise, Boston; November 12, 2007]
They absolutely rock live. You should go see them. That is all.
[Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge; November 6, 2007]
Sea Wolf played an modest little show at the Middle East Upstairs last night (no pics, sorry – there wasn’t enough stage light for my poor little camera, and I didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere by using a flash). Despite the intimate setting, they didn’t sound quite as warm live as they do on their full-length CD, Leaves in the River. Alex Church, the principal (singer, songwriter and lead guitar) rocked out quite a bit more than I expected – not quite devil-horns level, I’ll admit, but there was some rockin’, especially on “Black Dirt.” And I particularly liked the old-skool Moog-y keys of Lisa Fendelander.
[Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge; October 26, 2007]
Pansy Division totally rocked out at the Middle East Downstairs. I think they are the perfect pop-punk songwriters, and their hilarious and/or touching lyrics are just an added bonus. I was delighted to hear that they are working on a new album, and they played some new songs, including one that Jon Ginoli introduced by saying, “You have to be a certain age to write a song like this.” Someone in the audience yelled out, “Twenty-eight!” Ginoli gently disagreed with the audience member before revealing the title, “Twenty Years of Cock.” I’m really looking forward to the new album, not least because it means they will tour again soon.
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