Go see Clinic and tell me what it’s like

I once travelled to Boston for a Clinic show only to arrive and find that they had cancelled because of some sort of stomach issues. As I was getting ready to write the preview below, their website said that they had cancelled a UK tour, again because of illness. So, while I love the band, I’m only recommending the show to people who have a relatively short distance to travel and a good idea of what else to do if one of the Clinic guys feels unwell. Here’s my blurb for the Philly show over the weekend.

Clinic
9:30pm, $13-$14. Johnny Brenda’s.
On their landmark debut, Internal Wrangler, surgically masked Ade Blackburn and Jonathan Hartley did something that very few bands ever accomplish: create a wholly original and distinctive sound. How’d they do it? They polished junk-store keyboards to a finely reverbed gloss. They cranked spasmodically funky jitter-punk to “Voodoo Wop” proportions. They caught the pathos in a world paced by rickety drum machines and rife with mournful organs, but sadly, delicately “free of distortions.” Their sixth and latest album, Bubblegum, veers slightly into a vein of 1960s psychedelia, which should make the pairing with San Francisco’s trippy garage rockers the Fresh & Onlys all the more interesting. (Jennifer Kelly)

“I’m Aware” from Bubblegum

They’re touring with Fresh & Onlys, one of my very favorite new-ish bands. I haven’t really spent much time with their newest album Play It Strange yet, because now other people want to review it. (I had them on my Pazz and Jop ballot last year, along with maybe one or two other people, but that doesn’t count for anything this year.)

“Waterfall”

They’re done with the East Coast now, but you can still catch them in Canada and out west.
11.09.10 - Montreal, QC - La Sala Rossa
11.10.10 - Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace
11.11.10 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
11.12.10 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th St Entry
11.15.10 - Seattle, WA - Neumos
11.16.10 - Vancouver, BC - Biltmore Cabaret
11.17.10 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
11.19.10 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
11.20.10 - Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour

I might be going to see Chris Brokaw and Bob Mould tonight, then also the Morning Benders on Wednesday, all while continuing to get up at 5:30 a.m. to get Sean ready for school. Don’t expect much clarity round about Thursday, okay?

Old 97s

I'm breaking a fairly long dry spell today with a review of the Old 97's The Grand Theatre, Volume One in Venus, an album which I said, "seeks, with some success, to bring both sides of the Old 97’s together, the jittery, twangy rampages and the Elvis Costello-ish suavity."

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We were out of power for a couple of hours this morning, after a pretty scary rain and wind storm, but everything's back to normal now.

Great live band, btw, the Old 97's

Everett True’s guide for covering live music…and how it backfired

Definitely experienced a wince or two while reading Everett True’s snarky tips for reviewing live music, having, on occasion, mentioned the weather, politics, clothing, stage banter and otherwise-not-the-music occurrences in live reviews. It’s pretty funny, though, and you should read the piece, which went up a day or so ago on the Philadelphia Weekly music blog. My favorite line -- which is really not how I do things, (except for the part about scrawling things that you can’t read later, which I do all the time) but I wish it was -- is this: “You may get inappropriately drunk, scrawl meaningless notes which you can’t decipher the next day, forget most of what happened during the show and rely on friends’ accounts and sheer bullshit to scrape together your pitiful pile of words to meet the limit.”

Okay, now you want to read the rest, don’t you?


The article actually shamed me into, ahem, researching the support bands (and the headliner, who would be a support band anywhere else) at a show we were all thinking about going to tonight at the Flywheel…with the unhappy result that I decided they all sucked and maybe we should see a movie instead.

Submitted for your (dis)approval
The Diet Cokeheads (wouldn’t you think that a band with that kind of name would at least have a sense of humor?)


Foreign Objects (not the mid 1990s death metal band, apparently)


An mp3 of “1” from Shoppers


Deceivers’ MySpace

Everything you ever wanted to know about Dustdevils

The WFMU Beware of the Blog has done a really nice interview with Michael from Dustdevils, which you should really read, if you're at all interested in the NY no wave scene of the 1990s. I think Michael maybe left out some of the messy parts about the Wedding Present (and perhaps others, who knows?), but it's a good interview.

There's also a video, which is well worth checking out. I can't seem to embed it, but you can find it here.

Rain, rain, rain...what a dreary day.

Joy Formidable

I'm not sure, but I think the Joy Formidable might be kind of a guilty pleasure. It's that wall-of-guitars sound that I always like in more serious bands, cut with a chaser of exuberant, quite melodic pop. I just wrote a preview for Philly Weekly, why not check out this single, "Whirring"?

Erland and the Carnival...but where's the carnival?

I'm really liking this new four-song single from Erland and the Carnival. It's kind of like Tunng used to be, soft and weird and melancholy, but with this bubbly pop undertone and scratchy little electro elements. (Tunng has recently tipped pretty far over into the pure pop area, away from the weirdness and melancholy.)

The "Erland" in Erland in the Carnival, is Gawain Erland Cooper, a folksinger. But he's got some pretty interesting bandmates for a folkie -- namely, Simon Tong, whom you may recognize from the Verve, and Orb drummer David Nock.

Here's a video of my favorite song from the disc, which is called "Trouble in Mind," and includes the lyric "Didn't mean to disappoint you/I'm just sorry that I did" which I can relate to my life in about 600 ways, how about you?


The single's on Full Time Hobby in the UK and Yep Roc here in the States.

By the way, if you live in the states and are not certifiably mad...please vote. The liars and idiots are on the verge of taking over again and every little bit helps. We've got wall-to-wall ads for Kelly Ayotte on here, all funded by big outside, corporate-funded organizations that are not remotely interested in NH itself, and I'm pretty sure that's a nationwide trend. They sucker you in by promising tax cuts, but remember, if you're not fairly well off, you don't pay a lot of income taxes and they are never going to cut FICA, which is mostly where your paycheck goes.

If you're rich, go ahead, vote for the robber barons. it's probably in your interest, and screw everybody else, right? But if you don't make $200,000 a year, you're shooting yourself in the foot and they'll do their best to make sure that there's no health care for you after you do it.

Okay, I'm done.

Roots Manuva remixed

Yeah, that’s right. There I go, reviewing stuff that’s way out of my corner of the universe, in this case Roots Manuva, the London-born DJ whose concoction of rap and reggae was an early entry in the grime category. He’s got a new-ish album out called Duppy Writer, in which another producer Wrongtom, remixes material from all of his previous albums. I reviewed it in Blurt last week.


“Roots Manuva joins with the mysterious producer Wrongtom for an album of roots-infused remixes of mostly older material. Roots Manuva, whose combustible cocktail of hip hop, reggae, dancehall and dub helped originate grime and dubstep, has long spliced street poetry and protest to slinky backbeats. His collaboration with Wrongtom accentuates the island rhythms of some of his best-known songs. ‘Tropical, shit, you know? Like the juice that you drink in the morning,’ guest DJ Riddla observes, as the upbeated slouch of ‘Butterfly Crab Walk,’ creaks into organ bleating motion, and indeed, the whole album has the heat of equatorial sun on urban sidewalks.”

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You can hear that “Butterfly Crab Walk” here


I did my last long run before the Philadelphia Marathon on Sunday, a 20, and it didn’t go very well. I mean, I finished, but it was slow and I was pretty destroyed afterwards (and, you know, six more miles to go in the actual race, so you want feel decent at 20 in the real thing). I woke up with a pretty bad sore throat today, so it’s probably not lack of fitness, just some kind of bug, but what a drag. The marathon’s on November 21st, though, so I have lots of time to rest beforehand. I’m driving down, staying with my Philly Weekly editor and maybe stopping on the way back in NYC to see my friend Bill (who would probably prefer that I were running the NY Marathon).

We also went to see Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter on Sunday, which is quite a good movie, actually, and about a subject (near-death experiences) that has always fascinated me. Things I liked about the movie:
1. The “magic” parts (the actual footage of the tunnel etc.) were mercifully brief and not too literal.
2. The actors were decent-looking, but human…no one was perfect
3. Both Paris and London looked wonderful.
4. The tsunami scene was terrifying
5. The cooking class…I want to take that.