Wow. Hollow Stars are playing their second show ever tomorrow night. Colin Mee who played with Deerhunter (until very recently) has his own thing going and it’s getting a ton of attention. This is going to be one of those shows you can talk about and say “I was there when…”.
Like some of the other reviews I’ve been posting up here lately, I wasn’t that familiar with the band in question until I went knee deep into the album, or in this case, the live show.
Sure, I’m familiar with bandleader Jack White from his White Stripes albums. And while I’ve been hearing about the Raconteurs for the past few years, I hadn’t actually heard the music until a few weeks ago. After listening to the first half their latest offering, Counselors of the Lonely, I e-mailed my friend who burned the disc for me: “I’m enjoying the Raconteurs CD. Just a solid rock and roll album.” I didn’t feel like anything more needed to be said. The Raconteurs have that same guitar god in a basement element as the White Stripes, but this time Jack’s got a full band. So when the same friend called Wednesday afternoon asking if I wanted to go see them at the Tabernacle, I didn’t hesitate.
The show was big. The Tabernacle was at full capacity (according to their website this means 2600). The Raconteurs were halfway through what I was hoping was their first song when we arrived at 9:30. After an unsuccessful attempt at finding a comfortable spot on the floor, we ended up a standing in the balcony level behind seats stage right. And instead of these circumstances making the show feel distant, it made it feel like an event. This was big rock show, and the kids came out in droves.
The Raconteurs have a classic sound. But it seems dismissive to call them a well-oiled classic rock machine. I’m gong to get my Chuck Klosterman/Bill Simmons on here and use a football analogy to describe their sound: As a Saints fan, I love that Deuce McAllister is finally healthy and back on the team. Now we’re back to my brother telling me 15 times per game, “he’s just a professional running back.” What he means is that Deuce consistently finds the right spots to run to and is always moving forward. Not flashy, but he’ll get you to 3rd and 3 and then demonstrate his deadly combo of strength and passion to get the first down. In the same vain, The Raconteurs are a professional rock band. The songs aren’t flashy, but they consistently put together a catchy tune. But that’ll only get you so far. You still a need a first down to keep the momentum going. Where The Raconteurs delight the listener with first down after first down is in the solos. Every song gives the band members an opportunity to loosen up and have a ‘lose yourself in the moment’ guitar, or maybe even keyboard or drum solo.
You might be thinking here, “Michael, how can the concert be full of solos but not be flashy?” Good question Michael. Thank you Michael. Think of Eric Clapton here. Rather than musical masturbation, his solos come off as an extremely talented musician chasing the muse. The Raconteurs give off a similar vibe, of musicians showing off their chops and finding a good groove without pretension.
But who am I kidding bringing up Clapton? Like with The White Stripes, the real classic rock comparison here is Led Zeppelin. At one point White was wailing away while the beat was slow and bluesy. He could have been noodeling around in a cover of Zeppelin’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” But he wasn’t. This was an original. When a band can combine the familiar with originality like this, the audience is rewarded with a comfortable yet enthralling moment in time.
Two albums in, The Raconteurs are more familiar than original. In this way, they’re like the Black Crowes. While the Crowes are ragged and let ‘er rip with the Southern jam version of classic rock, The Raconteurs wear something more formal and blow their way through the jams with a Midwestern workmanlike approach. You could complain that it’s all derivative, but you could also live in the moment and enjoy it.
On Wednesday night, The Raconteurs did what professional rock bands do: With amplified electric outbursts they left me exhausted while at the same time wanting more. My biggest gripes were that I couldn’t get closer and the show seemed short. I hope the band stick around for a while longer, because two albums aren’t going to be enough. I want a longer set list. That is, I’m not necessarily going to make sure I get their albums as soon as they’re released. But I will be making sure I know when they’re coming back in town. Not a surprising conclusion for a band whose strength is in rocking out but not offering something new.
School of Seven Bells - Connjur
I’ll start by comparing them to AIR and Zero 7. That is, I’m fighting the temptation to label School of Seven Bells as “chill out” music. I don’t use that term disparagingly, but I do recognize that it’s a lame description. Instead, I’ve put together a hyphen crazy description of the genre that I’m thinking of: Post-rock-downtempo-lounge-electronica. It’s a genre I was introduced to when a friend burned me two CDs, Thievery Corporation and Tortoise in 2003. I’ve also heard some Sigor Ros that’s blown me away. Yet, besides the occasional starry night or rainy day, it never became a genre that I actively seek out. This could change. The question I’m going into Alpinisms with is: Are School of Seven Bells going to convince me that I’m a fan of the genre?
After listening to the first three tracks, the answer is a resounding “yes!” I found myself turning up the volume during each song. “Iamundernodisguise”, “Face to Face on High Places”, and “Half Asleep” put the listener in a grooving club as angelic females soothe the crowd by chanting phrases of encouragement. It’s easy to get lost in this scene as the loops and rhythmic syllables cast a dream like spell.
And then the fourth song comes on. On “Wired for Life” the singing turns an interesting piece of music into something spooky- or worse, annoying. All of a sudden, this magical journey becomes a bad trip. After this experiment the band finds its groove again. But it’s not the same. There’s no ignoring the mediation soundtrack/self-help guide vibe anymore.
“There’s no need to get depressed”, twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza (of the band On!Air!Library!) state on “For Kalaja Mari.” The majority of the songs on Alpinisms straddle this line between being a stuck at a seminar where you’re the only one tripping balls or having a a pleasant hike through jungle of clouds. The songs on Alpinisms consist of repetitive buildups to repetitive climaxes. If you’re into it, it’s catharsis. If not, it’s paranoia.
While the lava lamp like gentleness portion of the band is provided by the Deheza twins, the rougher edges (as rough as clouds can get) are provided by Ben Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines. When they hit the sweet spot, this mix creates cinematic hypnotism. The closing track hits this sweet spot. “My Cabal” is the moment when the club becomes a cathedral again. Turn up the volume and enjoy the ride. But before we reach this highlight, we’ve also been through ‘turn down the volume so your not embarrassed’ moments.
Only time will tell if Alpinisms remains in my listening rotation. Maybe I’ll even reach the point where I’m counting down the days until they come to town, or at least know their next release date is. But probably not. Although Alpinisms provided me with pleasant music to jog to (my version of meditation) I doubt that I’ll be seeking out the magic of School of Seven Bells with urgency. File under: solid with moments that make life more enjoyable, but overall, not for me.
Seriously, until last Saturday, I hadn’t been to Lenny’s for months. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, but I couldn’t find a single show on their calendar that ranked higher than “I’ll do this if all my favorite venues, bars, and strip clubs all catch fire on the same night.”
But Bean’s got a great show booked for this Saturday: Today the Moon Tomorrow the Sun, The Interiors, and A Fight to the Death.
(coincidentally, all of those bands have played/will play sessions with Have You Heard.)
These United States - Get Yourself Home (In Search of the Mistress…)
“Can’t you smell your brain cells buzzing?” Jesse Elliot asks on ”Get Yourself Home (In Search of the Mistress Whose Kisses are Famous),” the fourth song on These United States’ new album, Crimes. With this question, the listener is invited to a carnival of fun loving criminals passing time in a frontier land saloon. This description could easily sound contrived and gimmicky, like a gun fight show at a theme park (I’m thinking of North Carolina’s “Ghost Town”). But TUS keep it stripped down and mischievous, so whether it’s authentic or not doesn’t matter because the listener will want to stay either way.
With songs titles like “Susie at the Seashore”, “Honor Amongst Thieves”, and “Old John Chapman Takes a Good Long Walk,” the track list of Crimes reads like the table of contents for a Western fiction anthology. For each chapter/song, the down-and-out outlaw narrator (Elliot) regales you with stories while taking drags from a never-ending jug of whiskey. For example, a song titled “Six Fast Bullets (Five Complaints)” makes the lawless land an amusing morality play.
The throw-back garage-folk outlaw anthems are a mix of M. Ward and Kings of Leon, two other artists who seem to come from a simpler time, when men where men and all those other clichés that make for great story telling. Like those two, TUS are at their best when making the familiar sound unique. This happens more often than not on Crimes. But while M. Ward and Kings of Leon take the old sound and put it in present day, I’m not sure if TUS have experienced the comforts of the second half of the 20th century. Apparntly they’ve fooled me into feeling their gun-slinging heavy drinking authenticity. It’s pretty cool when a band can do that.
James Jackson Toth - Beulah The Good
Waiting In Vain , the new album by James Jackson Toth, turns out to be aptly, unfortunately titled. Intriguing on many levels but ultimately disappointing, the disc is brimming with metaphorical lyrics, subtle and wonderful instrumental performances, and Toth’s mostly pleasant and occasionally twang-tinged vocals. On the strong opener “Nothing Hides,” Toth sings hauntingly over an adaptation of a bluesy shuffle groove, with gorgeous female vocal accompaniment giving subtle support.
The album proceeds with a similarly mellow tone but rarely duplicates the something-bubbling-just-beneath-the-surface anticipation of its opener. There is lots of wonderful music that succeeds without the “catchy hooks” that people—reviewers and publicists anyway—love to attach to songs, but songs like “Poison Oak” and “Doreen” barely have something that qualifies as a chorus, and there is only so much that background vocals and well-timed guitar and keyboard punctuations can do—a case of lipstick on a pig, one might say, but the old aphorism is a bit too harsh here and particularly dangerous in our current political climate. Even the beautiful, swaying “Midnight Watchmen” lacks much dynamic contour and ends up feeling like listening to a thirty-second clip of a beautiful song on repeat.
Waiting in Vain is at its best when Toth loosens up and has some fun on tunes like “Becoming Faust” and “The Park,” the latter a clattering tune where Toth’s voice has flecks of David Berman from Toth’s current touring partners the Silver Jews. But while Berman’s quirky lyrics stick out like cutely deformed thumbs in his songs, Toth tends to get weighed down in a clutter of metaphors (“I’m the blood on your sawdust floor,” “the holster in my head”) that makes his mentions of love and booze seem like afterthoughts to retain some connection to Toth’s musical southern roots. Put it like this: when Johnny Cash and the Grateful Dead sing about poker, they didn’t couch those topics, as Toth does, in phrases like “creation holds all the aces.”
Near the end of the album, Toth suddenly and inexplicably takes a page from the Mick Jagger School of Pronunciation on “My Paint,” which if spelled phonetically would be called something like “Ma Pient.” It’s not a huge detail, but it’s emblematic of an album that pulls from a lot of sources but doesn’t hold on to any tight enough to draw out their best qualities.
Adam and Bradley spar over the highly anticipated release of TV on the Radio’s newest offering, taunt Florida’s Summerbirds in the Cellar, and dismiss Jenny Lewis’ solo recording.
Tracks played on the show:
Brass Bed - BBC Midnight Broadcast
There’s nothing worse than being written off as “fun.” You date a fun girl, but not for very long. Funnel cakes are fun, but they don’t provide much nutrition or lasting sustenance. Let’s hope that Brass Bed doesn’t get stuck with the “fun” moniker, even though their new disc Midnight Matinee is one of the more fun discs in recent memory. But it’s not shallow fun that turns flavorless after a few spins and makes you feel guilty, possibly even stupid, for liking it in the first place. Midnight Matinee is full of exuberant indie-pop tunes that take some of the spacey and rocking moments of earlier Wilco records and ditch the country influences in favor of soaring pop hooks a la James Mercer of the Shins.
On the rollicking “Killer Bees,” the verses teem with backing la-la-la’s to pad singer’s Christian Mader’s rough-edged voice, followed by an ebullient chorus and eventually a spacey fadeout worthy of the Flaming Lips. Brass Bed makes a noteworthy contribution to the song-named-after-a-girl mini-genre on “Olivia,” a pop anthem that definitely hits the mark. And on “James Fellows, Jr,” the band juxtaposes a sludgy quarter note guitar-driven groove with church bell keyboards for a unique texture.
There are a lot of whistles and bells on this album in terms of instrumentation, but they serve to complement stellar songwriting rather than disguise poor songwriting, as is often the case. In the end, Midnight Matinee ends up something like a well-attended benefit show: fun you can feel good about.
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