4.1.15
I missed commenting on the new track that Jens Lekman shared the week before last, so I'll combine that with the one he shared most recently. Here are "Postcard #12" and "Postcard #13":
You might almost think Jens was taking a vacation in the tropics with these two island-themed songs: "Postcard #12" doesn't sound musically derived from tropical sounds, but it references "snorkeling in the South China Sea" numerous times (it's the closest thing to a chorus, but probably more properly referred to as a refrain), while "Postcard #13" is definitely tapping into a Carribean vibe and focuses lyrically on "sad eyes in paradise".
These are two more solid efforts, and they are renewing my faith that Jens might actually be capable of seeing this project through with more hits than misses.
4.2.15
I thought the Go! Team had run out of ideas by the time their third album, 2011's Rolling Blackouts, was released, and my expectation was that we'd never hear from them again. And when I heard that they'd be releasing a new album this year titled The Scene Between, I didn't think it would hold any interest for me——I had decided that they were a gimmick band, and once you got past the newness of the sound on their debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, the rest of their material was just a rehashing of those same ideas.
But then I heard a couple of songs from The Scene Between and they had the same energy I remembered from the first time I heard them, so I bought the record. And even though their sound is still very much in evidence, and a critic could easily repeat what I have said about them rehashing the same ideas, there is a freshness to these songs that tells me that they still have new things to say within the style they've developed, and that the lack of strong tracks on their previous album might have just been burnout or something else, and not an indication that they were finished as a band.
4.3.15
I finally got Kendrick Lamar'sTo Pimp a Butterfly, and I have to tell you, I'm not a fan. I can appreciate that it's valuable as a statement about race relations in America, and that, as a middle class white male, it's not really meant for me, but musically, it's bland even at its best, and self-indulgent to the point of parody at its worst (see: the 12 minute closing track, half of which is a mock interview with 2Pac cut and pasted together, the main purpose of which is for Kendrick to annoint himself as the latest and greatest in a long line of both civil rights leaders in the African American community and socially conscious rap artists).
Again, I get the potential cultural importance of this document for the audience for whom it was written, but I look at other, more successful efforts in the hip hop world to make political albums with strong social messages that were actually successful as collections of songs as well, including Kanye West'sYeezus and Lamar's own good kid, m.A.A.d city, and I wonder why the strident sermonizing suddenly took precedence over a more coherent artistic statement that incoporated his political ideas. The lyrics didn't even necessarily have to have the subtlety of good kid——it's hard to get more overt and angry than West was on Yeezus, but his lyrical focus on his rage as a black man was matched by the fierceness of the music, something that just doesn't happen on Butterfly.
Some of the tracks could have become more listenable, and potentially even great songs, with a little editing, but again, the empahsis here seems to be on creating a platform for pontificating rather than making a strong album, and on referencing musical influences (or showing off his deep knowledge of African American musical history) rather than transforming those influences into songs that truly belong to him. The disparity is so obvious that you can't help but look at Pitchfork's glowing review, 9.3 rating, and Best New Music designation and immediatley think, "That's your white Chicago guilt talking."
I'll reiterate: I know this record was not written for me, and if Lamar wants to use his new cultural prominence to solidify his bona fides in the African American artistic and political community, that's his prerogative.
But as someone who appreciated his message on good kid while also enjoying the songs he paired his lyrics with, I can't help but wish for a better effort on the musical front.
4.6.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #14":
The coming of spring seems to have put a little vigor back into Jens' songwriting: after some serious doldrums in February, we've seen him bounce back with cheerier tracks, leading to this week's, which is positively peppy. This is one of those tracks that, with a little more work and polish, could easily transform from a demo/b-side to a legitmate album track.
4.7.15
New Waxahatchee out today! There's almost no way that this will live up to Cerulean Salt, which is probably my favorite album released in the past two years, but I'm hoping it will be a decent follow up that I can get at least mildly obsessed with.
4.8.15 Hot Chip have shared a second song from their upcoming album Why Make Sense?, this one called "Need You Now":
I find this track immediately one of the least interesting things I've heard from this band. It's built around a sample from a relatively obscure dance track from 1983, "I Need You Now", but despite the lower production values and the too-disco-y feel, I like the source material better than the Hot Chip song.
I'm not a big dance music guy, but band's like Hot Chip and Cut Copy keep me interested in the genre because they make subtle tweaks to it that bring their songs more into my wheelhouse, and those tweaks seem to be almost entirely absent from this track——it sounds like a very generic moody club track, almost to the point of parody.
4.9.15 Conor Oberst's punk band Desaparecidos, who released their one and only album to date back in 2002, have announced a new record, Payola, and shared a song, "City On the Hill":
I really loved their debut album, Read Music Speak Spanish, which was also one of the last times I felt genuine anger from Oberst in his songs, and anger was really a strength for him. Lyrically this continues in the vein of Desaparecidos earlier work, but I'm not sure this truly signals a return to the outrage and frustration that fueled much of his stellar early work (including a lot of his Bright Eyes material).
But there's also nothing in this track that makes me less interested in hearing the rest of the album, so I'm likely to preorder this one. Given that it's not out until June, it seems likely that we'll get at least one more preview before it's released, and if a second track is as strong as this first one, it will give me hope that this might be the first Oberst record that I could truly love in the last decade.
4.10.15
My wife and I are going to see the Decemberists tonight, the first time we've seen them since 2009 when they played Merriweather Post Pavillion on our wedding anniversary (they had another tour that passed through Maryland a couple of years later, but we missed that one, probably the first time we've missed a Decemberists concert coming near us since we started listening to them).
I'm still not a big fan of the new album, but I have high expectations for the show——Colin Meloy is a showman and a true performer when he's on stage, and I don't think a mediocre album is going to have any effect on his stage presence.
4.13.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #15":
This is the closest thing to a song fragment, as opposed to a song or a demo, that he's released so far as part of this series, but it's a pretty pleasant listen. The main vocal component is someone (it doesn't sond like Jens) repeating the phrase "I want you, I want you, I want you" over and over under the mix, which really functions more as a rhythmic element. I could see some element of this being incoroporated into another track, or, with a lot of work, the ideas here being shaped into a full song, but right now it's just a nice little set of ideas that Jens has put to tape.
4.14.15
Before I talk about the Decemberists shows, I need to recap the Deerhoof show that I saw back in March at my favorite Atlanta venue, the Earl.
Perfect Pussy opened for them, and while I'm not sure this show changed my mind about buying their album, it was a powerful, compelling experience. Here's I described it in a text to a friend who had also seen them recently: "PP was like a performance art piece of a pixie screaming into a thunderstorm." His response: "AGREED!" (and it should be noted that this is someone who very rarely uses either all-caps or exclamation points).
Deerhoof were just about as cool, interesting, and amazing as I expected them to be. Anyone who's listened to their off-kilter take on pop/punk/postpunk knows that their musicianship is impeccable, but their stage presence was also unbeatable. The lead singer is a tiny Japanese woman who also plays bass, and it seemed like her instrument was almost as big as she was.
It's hard to pin down which of the two guitarists was the rhythm and the lead, since they seemed to do those tasks interchangeably (plus those two roles don't seem
to take their traditional form on many Deerhoof songs), but the one who stood at the front of the stage was the most ordinary-seeming band member——he could have melted into a crowd of yacht-club-casual preppies in the 80s. The other guitarist was much more into the stage show: he wore a black jumpsuit with hot pink trim and matching socks, and his guitar was also in that same shade of pink. He played in a classic rocker stance with his feet spread wide apart, and you could easily imagine him as the frontman for a Native American version of Dethklok in an alternate universe.
The drum was super tall and gangly, and although he sported something of a preppie vibe as well, he also had a wildness to him that would send up a huge red flag if you were to encounter him on the street, mumbling to himself about the government controlling his mind. He was a far bigger part of the stage presentation than any drummer has a right to be; his kit was set up in the front at the right edge of the stage, and although it was tiny, he made more noise than some guys who play with elaborate 30+ piece kits. The only drummer I've seen do more with less was Violent Femmes' Victor DeLorenzo, who played standing up without a kick drum. But Deerhoof'sGreg Saunier comes pretty close.
This show was everything I could have hoped for: the band was just as impressive live as you would expect them to be from their recordings, they were playing my favorite venue, and they additionally insisted on a no-smoking policy for their show, which is generally my only complaint about seeing shows at the Earl.
I didn't get to hear "Flower", my all time favorite track, but the setlist had a good selection from across their catalog.
4.15.15
I generally like the XM station First Wave, but I swear to god, if I have to hear an extended mix of a UB40 song——ANY UB40 song——one more time on my five minute drive to work, I'm going to lose it.
4.16.15
You have no idea how badly I want to like a band called Trampled By Turtles. But I do not. I really do not.
4.21.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #16":
There's nothing wrong with this quiet, melancholy little song, but there's nothing especially noteworthy about it either. Outside of this song-a-week project, it would be fine as bonus material on a single or EP, but I don't think there's much here that could be significantly improved with more investment——it's a fairly average Jens track, nothing more.
4.22.15
My wife and I went to see both of the Decemberists shows at the Tabernacle in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, the first time we have seen them since 2009 (in part because they stopped recording and touring for a while and in part because we missed them on their last tour before frontman Colin Meloy turned his creative energy to writing YA books for a few years). I still wasn't sold on the new album as a great piece of work, but their live show is always amazing, so I expected great things.
And that's exactly what we got. The first night we went with some friends from Austria who hadn't heard the band before but who are going back to their country soon and wanted to experience more of the Atlanta they hadn't seen yet before they go, and they were duly impressed with Meloy as a showman. The set opened with him on stage alone singing the opening track from their latest album, What A Terrbile World, What A Beautiful World, "The Singer Addresses His Audience", which was a perfect way to reconnect with the band's who have been wondering where they've been for the past few years.
From there it was a pretty good mix of old and new material, and the most surprising thing was how much the newer songs, which I don't like in their recorded form, fit in perfectly with their back catalog when played live, leading me to reassess the record's faults as lying with the lackluster production rather than the low quality of the songs themselves.
Colin also sang "Dracula's Daughter", which he calls "the worst song I ever wrote", and introduced a new story/song that's likely to become another staple of the live show: a song called "Hank, Eat Your Oatmeal" that he wrote as a way of cajoling his then-toddler into eating his food that he then borrowed from for the chorus of "Calamity Song", which the band played immediately afterward.
I've probably seen this band more than any other act in the past decade, and seeing them again after such a long break was like reuniting with a group of old friends; these shows can really be magical experiences
when the band and Colin are in top form and the audience is into it, and that was the case on Friday night; I could not have asked for a better reminder of why we would always make it a priority to see this band when they came to town. It was also nice to know that I'd made the right decision to buy tickets for both shows.
It was also fascinating how the decor of the Tabernacle matched perfectly with the art direction of the latest album; if you hadn't been to the venue before, you would have to wonder if they had repainted the entire interior of the performance space just for this Decemberists tour.
They closed with what has become a tradition
for the live shows: "The Mariner's Revenge Song". When we've seen them do this in the past (and I really do think it has been EVERY show since the song was recorded), they have always had the crowd participation part where everyone screams during the part when the narrator is swallowed by a whale, but they've only occasionally had a stage prop to accompany this part of the story (and it was typically made of posterboard or something like that). This time they had a custom-made whale that made its way across the stage and devoured the band (who all come to the front of the stage for this song; the keyboardist plays an accordian, the bassist plays an upright, and the drummer just has a floor tom), which added another layer to what has become the most theatrical part of their show.
4.23.15
My wife and I were not joined by any guests for the second Decemberists show, but despite getting perfect seats (front row balcony seats in the section closest to the premium section where we've never sat because we're not willing to pay the extra dollars), we both felt it didn't quite live up to the previous night's show.
Alvvays opened up both shows, and although they were entertaining——the lead singer was like an elf hopped up on a case of Pixie Sticks——I came away with the same general impression I had after listening to their record: good songwriting, and many songs that would help liven up a mixtape, but a bit monotonous and lacking distinction when played all in a row. I'm not completely sure, but I think the sets both nights were exactly the same.
The beginning and end of the main set for the Decemberists was the same both nights ("The Singer Addresses His Audience" and "The Beginnng Song", which are the same songs that bookend the lastest album), and the encore was the same ("12/17/12" and, of course, "The Mariner's Revenge Song"), but there were a few alternates in the main set in terms of their back catalog (although there were substantial similarities between the sets), one of which was "Los Angeles, I'm Yours", which might have been the first Decemberists' song that I loved the second I heard it.
Once again they did not play "The Tain"——despite our many shows, we've only seen that played once when they did a show at Merriweather Post Pavillion with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra——but that's almost to be expected despite the minor bit of disappointment I feel every time I see a show and they don't play it (although it was especially frustrating this time because they had a couple of backing singers with them on this tour, and that's typically the missing piece from their lineup in terms of having all the vocal parts covered for that song cycle).
That's not to say it was a bad show by any stretch of the imagination, but since we saw them two nights in a row, it's natural to compare the two experiences, and this one just wasn't quite as good. But I desperately hope that they don't take such a long break from touring again; they really are one of my favorite live acts, and new album to support or not, they will always be worth catching on stage.
4.24.15
My odyssey of shows the last month or so continued two days after the second Decemberists show when I went to see Waxahatchee play the Drunken Unicorn, a venue that I'd never been to before.
Now I've been to
some small clubs in Atlanta——the Earl and the Masquerade come to mind——but the Drunken Unicorn, located in the basement of a restaurant/bar was the smallest one yet. It was also a place where, as a white male in his 40s, I stood out like a sore thumb (I'm pretty sure I was the oldest person in the entire building). But I've gotten very used to going to shows by myself, and even more used to being on the upper end of the age distribution curve, so I made my way up to a spot 3 or so heads back from the edge of the stage in between the first and second bands and settled in for the night.
I have seen Waxahatchee once before, but this was a bigger, more fleshed out version of the band that fits well with the larger sound of the new reocrd, Ivy Tripp. I think frontwoman Katie Crutchfield kept the same bassist from the last time I saw her, but her sister was on guitar and backing vocals, she had a new drummer, and a new third guitarist this time around.
My only complaint about the show is essentially the same one from the first time I saw her: the set was too short. Just about the time I was feeling like we were at the midpoint or slightly past the midpoint of the show, she abruptly announced that this was the last song. Unlike last time, she did come back to play a two song encore (at the first show I attended, the house lights came up almost before she was off the stage, and the bassist didn't even bother with a cursory visit backstage before heading to the bar for a drink), but it was still a very short set——I'm pretty sure the second opening act, The Goodbye Party, played for longer than the headliner.
Still, I'm liking Ivy Tripp more and more the more I hear it, and the live show has gotten tighter and better-sounding, so I would definitely go and see Waxahatchee again if given the chance. I just hope at some point she realizes she has the material, the backing band, and the stature to do a show long enough to be worthy of being labled a headliner's set.
4.27.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #17":
Meh. Don't like this one so much. The piano has a weird sound that I know is intentional but which I really don't care for, and the vocal melody is also a bit unsettling. That might be exactly what he's going for, but it doesn't mean I have to like listening to it.
4.28.15
So: the final show in my concert-going odyssey was Sleater-Kinney playing the Tabernacle about a week after I the Waxahatchee show (for those of you not keeping track, this was the fifth concert I attended in four weeks). It was pretty amazing in its way, but I think I was just suffering from concert fatigue and didn't enjoy it as much as I might have otherwise.
Since I was going by myself and I got there a little late, I decided to watch the show from the standing area on the floor instead of sitting in one of the balconies, and I enjoyed that pretty well. It's a strange thing: I always seem to be one of the taller people in the crowd at shows in Atlanta, and I almost never have anyone blocking my view no matter how far back I am, which is completely different than my years of experiences going to shows up in Baltimore and DC. I was probably about 20 heads back from the stage, but I had a perfect view.
They played most of the songs from their reunion record that came out earlier this year, but they also played plenty fan favorites from their extensive back catalog. The new songs held up pretty well against the older material, but still: how can you top things like "Words and Guitar", "Modern Girl", and "One More Hour"? You really can't. I would have loved to hear some of my other personal favorites like "God Is a Number", "Hot Rock", and "Burn, Don't Freeze" (all from my favorite record of theirs, The Hot Rock, which has surprisingly few tracks that made it onto the setlist), but they have such a deep selection of older songs that there's no way I could have heard everything on my wishlist.
Corin Tucker was pretty reserved in her playing, but Carrie Brownstein really hammed it up, striking rock star poses and generally emoting as if she was in a late-80s hair metal band that was completely unaware that in a couple of years Kurt Cobain was going to make them as extinct as the dinosaurs. She was having a ton of fun, and that really got the crowd into it. Drummer Janet Weiss also made quite an impression on me——I realized while watching this show in a way that I hadn't in all those years listening to the records just how vital she is to the sound of the band, and her contributions became even more important in the live setting, since she gave a low-end anchor to the twin engine roar of Carrie and Corin's guitars.
This was a good show to end more gorging on live shows with, although I'd love to see them again when I'm not quite so burnt out from constantly going to concerts. But they are a ridiculously amazing band, and they executed some pretty complex material
that made me appreciate them even more.
I thought the show was going to end with an epic performance of "Let's Call It Love", the third song in their encore, but they stayed on stage and gave us "Modern Girl" to close things out, which was just perfect. I don't think there was a single fan who went out into the night unhappy after that; it left me feeling very content and gave me a temporary sense of peace with the world.
4.29.15
The new Blur album is half a slow, melancholy Damon Albarn effort that reminds me a lot of his solo album Everyday Robots or Gorillaz' semi-unofficial release The Fall, and half a pretty decent Blur album. Despite my love for Albarn's varied and challenging post-Blur work, I like the Blur half much, much better.
4.30.15 Titus Andronicus have announced a new 29 song, 93 minute double CD concept album, The Most Lamentable Tragedy, and shared
a song called "Dimed Out":
This song doesn't do much for me until the last minute, but I am really excited about this record. Their last one, Local Business, was their first release that I wasn't head over heels in love with, but based on their track record with other massively complex themed albums, I'm expecting great things from Tragedy as a whole.
Patrick Stickles can be a little bit of an immature asshole at times (although his epic Twitter feuds seem to have mostly died off), but he's also a national treasure who's keeping the spirit of American punk alive in a way that would be recognizable to the founders of the genre in a way that most bands who call themselves punk would not be.
