A more forceful Volcano Choir

My review of Volcano Choir, the weird mutant offspring of mega-indie star Justin Vernon and the Table of Elements vetted experimentaists in Collections and Colonies of Bees runs today at Blurt. Can you tell I used to be a drummer?

More explosive than 2009’s Unmap, this second album from the combined Collections and Colonies of Bees and Justin Vernon takes the machine-like intricacy of instrumental post rock, the airy spirituality of Bon Iver into a more forceful direction.

Like the National, Volcano Choir drapes its indie rock anthemry over unusually sharp and interesting drumming. Here’s its Jon Mueller, an intense and brilliant percussionist, one of the few drummers able, really, to carry a solo album. In Repave, Mueller seems to have moved slightly forward in the mix, not dominating, certainly, but putting his mark on nearly every track. Most of these tracks start in restraint, a drone and vibration building, a few beautifully realized sounds sketching mood and melody, a thread of vocals…and then explosion. Mueller is the force behind these volume shifts, an exhilarating push into overdrive.

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I decided to review Repave after seeing Volcano Choir on Fallon (a video which is, sadly, not available anymore). Here instead is a concert that the band did for NPR about a week ago.



One more thing, when I saw Sam Amidon in September, he had just come off a show with Volcano Choir and he went off on a long riff about Jon Mueller the drummer. The essence was that Mueller looks just like Christopher Walken and also plays the drums exactly like Christopher Walken would, if he played drums. I think we can all think Amidon for the abiding image of Christopher Walken playing drums (with intensity, I imagine, slightly demented humor and weird, pause-filled cadences).

Hey, i'm blogging from the Millburn hotel in New York City

Yeah, couldn't stay away...pathetic really.

Anyway, I have a review up at Dusted today of Wolf People's Tidings:

Wolf People’s Tidings sounds an awful lot like a reissue the first time through, a letter-perfect rendition of the freaky interstices between Cream and Hawkwind, with the Incredible String Band’s campfire folk songs floating through Jeff Beck’s borrowed electric blues and Jethro Tull’s panpipes tootling over Syd Barrett’s damaged faerie gardens. You might easily mistake it for a missive from the late 1960s, maybe early 1970s. Except it’s not; it’s completely contemporary, and only subsequent listens let you glimpse the post-modernist scaffolding on which this trompe d’oiel façade has been constructed.

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“October Fires”

Also, while I was over at Jagjaguwar linking the mp3 above, I noticed this live video of Oneida at Sonic Boom in Toronto…well worth checking out if you love Oneida as much as I do (but you don’t, no one does).

Anyway here’s the show


We're having a really good time in NYC. We saw Christopher Walken chew up the stage and spit it out in big chunks on Wednesday at a preview of "A Behanding in Spokane". I love Christopher Walken and he was totally, totally on, so that was good. The play was kind of implausible, though, and also relentless with the language (it would be interesting to count how many times the phrase "motherfucker" recurs -- i'm guessing high 70s, maybe 100 times). We also drank wine in the afternoon at Otto, which was fun, have seen some old friends and did a little shopping (I bought a knit dress which I am wearing right now at a Filene's BAsement which is going out of business for $12, down from $60 I think, good times.)

Tinariwen played last night and has another show tonight, but it is sold out and anyway in Brooklyn, so no go on that, though I would like to see them. Back home tomorrow, that'll be a drag.