1966-1997
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Boxer, and Other Bits & Bobs
Required reading: Joss Whedon's short and impassioned essay about the Dua Khalil murder.
Great interview at the Onion A.V. Club with one of my fave contemporary comedians, Louis C.K.
My opinion of Boxer hasn't really crystallized yet, which is as it should be, considering the way Matt and the brothers like to hide little time bombs of feeling throughout their songs that are designed not to explode on you for months. But, man. I just hear those opening piano chords of "Fake Empire" and instantly feel like I want to burst into tears. That's got to be a good thing. So far the album seems to breathe best over actual stereo speakers, rather than through headphones. All the empty space around Matt's vocals comes through a little more clearly, and poignantly, that way. And, though I take exception with the way Pitchfork asserts that this is "a drummer's album" with the phrase "Bryan Devendorf becomes a main player here" (emphasis mine), as if he's suddenly gotten good out of nowhere, as if the previous albums aren't chockful of brilliant drumming, the point is well taken. Those snare snaps and other fills in "Mistaken for Strangers" are every bit as likely to get stuck in your head as the chorus.
Happy Towel Day, everybody!
And, of course, happy 30th to my girl HLo-M. (That looks like the symbol for some sort of chemical compound.)
Enjoy your holiday weekend, my kittens!
Great interview at the Onion A.V. Club with one of my fave contemporary comedians, Louis C.K.
My opinion of Boxer hasn't really crystallized yet, which is as it should be, considering the way Matt and the brothers like to hide little time bombs of feeling throughout their songs that are designed not to explode on you for months. But, man. I just hear those opening piano chords of "Fake Empire" and instantly feel like I want to burst into tears. That's got to be a good thing. So far the album seems to breathe best over actual stereo speakers, rather than through headphones. All the empty space around Matt's vocals comes through a little more clearly, and poignantly, that way. And, though I take exception with the way Pitchfork asserts that this is "a drummer's album" with the phrase "Bryan Devendorf becomes a main player here" (emphasis mine), as if he's suddenly gotten good out of nowhere, as if the previous albums aren't chockful of brilliant drumming, the point is well taken. Those snare snaps and other fills in "Mistaken for Strangers" are every bit as likely to get stuck in your head as the chorus.
Happy Towel Day, everybody!
And, of course, happy 30th to my girl HLo-M. (That looks like the symbol for some sort of chemical compound.)
Enjoy your holiday weekend, my kittens!
Monday, May 21, 2007
Save S/FJ's Photos
I've linked so often, and with so much joy, to Sasha Frere-Jones's blog in the past, I would be completely remiss if I didn't post a link today to his online collection plate. Apparently he had a major hard drive crash this weekend and has lost a great quantity of his beautiful photos. A hard drive recovery service will be charging him an exorbitant fee to recover said photos, and he's looking for some help to defray this cost. Throw a little love brutha's way, wouldja?
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Bjork, Live at the Auditorium Theatre
Nice Village Voice write-up on the National's recent stint opening for Arcade Fire in New York (via). I'm just bouncing off the walls with anticipation for Boxer next week and the show at the Metro next month. (Also, LOL: "grandma-throttling enthusiasm". This reminds me of J. Rod's classic line in his report from last year's Bonnaroo about his previous perception of Cat Power's music: "[this girl I was dating] would play Cat Power on her car stereo at a really low volume whenever I was in the car, so that it sounded to me like a field recording of the rape of a thousand grandmas. Bleah.")
OMG, even as a non-Pumpkins fan, I am totally in love with the blinding brilliance of these LOLCorgs (via) and I CAN HAS CORGAN?. "Mah cred, i mournz it!"
I was planning on reading the 33 1/3 book on Steely Dan's Aja anyway, but if we're getting (according to this excerpt, at least) witty wordsmith Donald Fagen dropping Don Ellis references 'n shit, I may have to bump it a little further up the queue.
Um, yeeeah, and I also saw Bjork live for the first time at the Auditorium Theatre on Saturday. Best concert ever? Pretty close to it. I have never heard a group of people cheer that loud, outside of a sporting event perhaps. Everyone in the place was freaking out left and right, and she was just shockingly good. (Or perhaps unshockingly, depending on how you want to look at it.) If I were going to make a mix-CD sampler of her stuff for the uninitiated, I could do worse than copping from that night's set list. It was a nearly perfect representation from all her previous full-lengths. The stuff from Vespertine (one of my top-five all-time-fave albums) brought the tears to the eyes. The only technical difficulty of the entire night was, unfortunately, some feedback at the beginning of "Unison," which did ruin the mood a bit, though. The most impressive technical achievement of the night, on the other hand, would have to be the GREEN LASERS OF DOOM that shot across the hall like lightning bolts during those awesome horn stabs in "Army of Me" ("and if you complain"--wham!--"once more..."). Obvy, I'm sure rigging all that electro-stuff up takes great skills, but the effect was staggeringly perfect in its simplicity. I'm not sure how else I can gush creatively or interestingly about the show other than to say that, aside from every minute of music that filled the theater, perhaps the best thing I heard on Saturday night was a little girl, probably about nine or ten, walking into the lobby behind me with her parents, saying "Mommy, I've got butterflies!" because she was so excited to be there. Me too, kid. Me too.
OMG, even as a non-Pumpkins fan, I am totally in love with the blinding brilliance of these LOLCorgs (via) and I CAN HAS CORGAN?. "Mah cred, i mournz it!"
I was planning on reading the 33 1/3 book on Steely Dan's Aja anyway, but if we're getting (according to this excerpt, at least) witty wordsmith Donald Fagen dropping Don Ellis references 'n shit, I may have to bump it a little further up the queue.
Um, yeeeah, and I also saw Bjork live for the first time at the Auditorium Theatre on Saturday. Best concert ever? Pretty close to it. I have never heard a group of people cheer that loud, outside of a sporting event perhaps. Everyone in the place was freaking out left and right, and she was just shockingly good. (Or perhaps unshockingly, depending on how you want to look at it.) If I were going to make a mix-CD sampler of her stuff for the uninitiated, I could do worse than copping from that night's set list. It was a nearly perfect representation from all her previous full-lengths. The stuff from Vespertine (one of my top-five all-time-fave albums) brought the tears to the eyes. The only technical difficulty of the entire night was, unfortunately, some feedback at the beginning of "Unison," which did ruin the mood a bit, though. The most impressive technical achievement of the night, on the other hand, would have to be the GREEN LASERS OF DOOM that shot across the hall like lightning bolts during those awesome horn stabs in "Army of Me" ("and if you complain"--wham!--"once more..."). Obvy, I'm sure rigging all that electro-stuff up takes great skills, but the effect was staggeringly perfect in its simplicity. I'm not sure how else I can gush creatively or interestingly about the show other than to say that, aside from every minute of music that filled the theater, perhaps the best thing I heard on Saturday night was a little girl, probably about nine or ten, walking into the lobby behind me with her parents, saying "Mommy, I've got butterflies!" because she was so excited to be there. Me too, kid. Me too.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Amy Winehouse, Live at the Vic
I don't know what show all these cranky reviewers were at, man, because it def wasn't the one I was at last night. I mean, really. I went in to this show with insanely high expectations, and it pretty much met every one.
I have no pictures for you, my kittens, because they made me relinquish my camera to the coat check girl after the kind and gentle and patient and sensitive [not so much--Ed.] doorpeople saw my humble point 'n' shoot in my messenger bag, but, honestly, I'm kind of glad I didn't have it in my hands as a distraction. I could focus all my attention on the stage, and the show I found there was white hot.
Amy was backed by eight-piece band The Dap Kings (two saxes and a trumpet, two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards) and accompanied by two gorgeous (male) back-up singers. The dudes all wore three-piece suits, the horn section had some subtle but perfectly effective choreography, and the drummer was doing rim-shots when Amy started throwing candy out into the audience. The whole thing would have seemed straight out of central casting if it wasn't, well, right on the money. I felt like it totally transcended its own Motown revivalism by going straight for the heart of the sound, without mucking it up with too much with self-consciousness or self-satisfaction. Not to mention that these guys were all consummate professionals, just jamming away like they were born with their instruments in their hands.
The folks who are whinging about Amy's stage presence clearly wanted some sort of polished professional, and, the way I understand it, that's just not her steez. Even though she didn't throw a tantrum or snort some coke off the mic stand like I was kind of secretly hoping she would, she was a little bit snotty and a little bit spacy--in short, everything I wanted her to be. I read her body language less as insecurity and more as a casual don'tgiveafuck that didn't have to actively demand our attention. It seemed like she just instinctively knew that she deserved it. Not to give her a free pass on the anorexia front or anything, but, she looked fantastic in her jeans and midriff-bearing shirt, white hoop earrings, and huge mound of jet-black hair extensions. (The top of her head seriously looked like some sort of evil cupcake gone to seed.) They played most of Back to Black and, I'm assuming, a few more off Frank (I only knew "Fuck Me Pumps"), and even snuck in a little bit of Lauren Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)."
Of course, there were big, big cheers for "Rehab" and "You Know I'm No Good," but the audience was basically losing their crackers before a note was even played. It was amazing. Most rock shows I go to, there's a sense that the audience is cheering for the frontman/woman because they view him/her basically as a more fully realized version of themselves; it's like, I think a lot of kids idolize Colin Meloy or John Darnielle because they fancy "yeah, those are the kinds of songs I would write if I could write songs; they're speaking directly to my experience as a certain kind of consumer of a certain kind of music." But Amy's appeal is so much more nebulous and intangible. (Which is maybe why the cookie-cutter reviews aren't quite able parse it in the familiar vocabulary of the average rock show?) I mean, she's got the sexiness, the voice, the attitude, the Britishness, the notorious reputation, the songwriting skills, but, really, none of those things, even working as a unit, are big enough to contain her. You can't really pin down the thing that inspired such an explosion of love in the room. I dunno. I'm bummed that the haters are hating today, 'cause I had a blast.
The jury's still out for me on opener Patrick Wolf. I'm not overly in love with his songs, but the specific kind of glammy, hammy lllllllllllllllookatme! musk he was giving off on stage reminded me of this time, I think it was last summer, when I saw three friends, two girls and a boy, get on the brown line at Armitage. They were clearly coming home from summer school or summer camp or somesuch, and they each had a plastic spoon and were sharing a white styrofoam cup of strawberry ice cream. The boy, all loose, rangy Jacob's ladder limbs and joints, at one point, a propos of nothing as far as I could tell, leaned all the way over so that he was about an inch away from sticking his nose in one of the girl's ears, the girl he clearly fancied best of the two. There was this obscene, hormonal, yet completely innocent intimacy in the whole exchange. That kind of sexy, sweet, gummy bear gesture of affection (both Merriam-Webster's definitions 2 "fondness" and 7 "the state of being affected" intended/appropriate here) more than made up for what I just wasn't getting out of the music itself.
I have no pictures for you, my kittens, because they made me relinquish my camera to the coat check girl after the kind and gentle and patient and sensitive [not so much--Ed.] doorpeople saw my humble point 'n' shoot in my messenger bag, but, honestly, I'm kind of glad I didn't have it in my hands as a distraction. I could focus all my attention on the stage, and the show I found there was white hot.
Amy was backed by eight-piece band The Dap Kings (two saxes and a trumpet, two guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards) and accompanied by two gorgeous (male) back-up singers. The dudes all wore three-piece suits, the horn section had some subtle but perfectly effective choreography, and the drummer was doing rim-shots when Amy started throwing candy out into the audience. The whole thing would have seemed straight out of central casting if it wasn't, well, right on the money. I felt like it totally transcended its own Motown revivalism by going straight for the heart of the sound, without mucking it up with too much with self-consciousness or self-satisfaction. Not to mention that these guys were all consummate professionals, just jamming away like they were born with their instruments in their hands.
The folks who are whinging about Amy's stage presence clearly wanted some sort of polished professional, and, the way I understand it, that's just not her steez. Even though she didn't throw a tantrum or snort some coke off the mic stand like I was kind of secretly hoping she would, she was a little bit snotty and a little bit spacy--in short, everything I wanted her to be. I read her body language less as insecurity and more as a casual don'tgiveafuck that didn't have to actively demand our attention. It seemed like she just instinctively knew that she deserved it. Not to give her a free pass on the anorexia front or anything, but, she looked fantastic in her jeans and midriff-bearing shirt, white hoop earrings, and huge mound of jet-black hair extensions. (The top of her head seriously looked like some sort of evil cupcake gone to seed.) They played most of Back to Black and, I'm assuming, a few more off Frank (I only knew "Fuck Me Pumps"), and even snuck in a little bit of Lauren Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)."
Of course, there were big, big cheers for "Rehab" and "You Know I'm No Good," but the audience was basically losing their crackers before a note was even played. It was amazing. Most rock shows I go to, there's a sense that the audience is cheering for the frontman/woman because they view him/her basically as a more fully realized version of themselves; it's like, I think a lot of kids idolize Colin Meloy or John Darnielle because they fancy "yeah, those are the kinds of songs I would write if I could write songs; they're speaking directly to my experience as a certain kind of consumer of a certain kind of music." But Amy's appeal is so much more nebulous and intangible. (Which is maybe why the cookie-cutter reviews aren't quite able parse it in the familiar vocabulary of the average rock show?) I mean, she's got the sexiness, the voice, the attitude, the Britishness, the notorious reputation, the songwriting skills, but, really, none of those things, even working as a unit, are big enough to contain her. You can't really pin down the thing that inspired such an explosion of love in the room. I dunno. I'm bummed that the haters are hating today, 'cause I had a blast.
The jury's still out for me on opener Patrick Wolf. I'm not overly in love with his songs, but the specific kind of glammy, hammy lllllllllllllllookatme! musk he was giving off on stage reminded me of this time, I think it was last summer, when I saw three friends, two girls and a boy, get on the brown line at Armitage. They were clearly coming home from summer school or summer camp or somesuch, and they each had a plastic spoon and were sharing a white styrofoam cup of strawberry ice cream. The boy, all loose, rangy Jacob's ladder limbs and joints, at one point, a propos of nothing as far as I could tell, leaned all the way over so that he was about an inch away from sticking his nose in one of the girl's ears, the girl he clearly fancied best of the two. There was this obscene, hormonal, yet completely innocent intimacy in the whole exchange. That kind of sexy, sweet, gummy bear gesture of affection (both Merriam-Webster's definitions 2 "fondness" and 7 "the state of being affected" intended/appropriate here) more than made up for what I just wasn't getting out of the music itself.
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