Did I mention I went to see Thank You last week?
My write-up, which is kinda short and maybe not that inspired, is up now at Blurt.
Fun show.
"1-2-3 Bad" was the first song in the set.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Thank You live
Did I mention I went to see Thank You last week?
My write-up, which is kinda short and maybe not that inspired, is up now at Blurt.
Fun show.
"1-2-3 Bad" was the first song in the set.
It’s PJ Harvey day!
I’m expecting to be the low score at Metacritic…None of the reviews from today (me, Pitchfork, who knows who else) are up yet there, and we’ll see what they assign me, but I’d be surprised if it’s over 60. (Not that Dusted scores count as much as some of the other publications, in any case.) I pretty much hated the album the first time through and warmed to it only very slightly over repeated listens. Everyone else seems to love it. Pitchfork gave it an 8.8.
Sasha Frere-Jones had seemingly some of the same problems with Let England Shake as I did, though I break from him in liking White Chalk. He wrote a good piece, though it’s more of a career overview than an album review. I love his opening about squinting to see the artist you used to love. You can read his take here.
And finally my review, which concludes:
The juxtaposition of harsh imagery and bouncy tunes feels part of some larger statement, perhaps the complacency with which we tolerate war and cruelty. Still, as music, it just doesn’t work. It leads the listener into blind alleys, manipulates the emotions in odd and unsettling ways, and makes it impossible to get a grip on how you feel about any of these songs. If Harvey was aiming for a slightly nauseated ambivalence, then she should be congratulated. If she wanted to move or enlighten, Let England Shake falls short.
The rest
God, I really hate this song.
Sasha Frere-Jones had seemingly some of the same problems with Let England Shake as I did, though I break from him in liking White Chalk. He wrote a good piece, though it’s more of a career overview than an album review. I love his opening about squinting to see the artist you used to love. You can read his take here.
And finally my review, which concludes:
The juxtaposition of harsh imagery and bouncy tunes feels part of some larger statement, perhaps the complacency with which we tolerate war and cruelty. Still, as music, it just doesn’t work. It leads the listener into blind alleys, manipulates the emotions in odd and unsettling ways, and makes it impossible to get a grip on how you feel about any of these songs. If Harvey was aiming for a slightly nauseated ambivalence, then she should be congratulated. If she wanted to move or enlighten, Let England Shake falls short.
The rest
God, I really hate this song.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sandwitches
There’s a lot of girl-fronted garage pop out there right now, and most of it is kinda weak. (Literally, thin and weak and sweet, like tea with too much milk in it.) In this age of endless Vivian Girls spin-offs, you have to wonder what happened to all the tough girls – like Wendy Case from the Paybacks and Rachel Nagy from the Detroit Cobras – or gutsy, soulful women like Margaret Garrett from Mr. Airplane Man. Did Mia Zapata of the Gits really pave the way for ingratiating, kitten-cute bands like Best Coast?
Well, maybe she did.
But, as usual, it’s the fashionable stuff that’s watered down. Look below the radar and there are still some pretty good girl bands. Case in point: Sandwitches, made up of two former Fresh & Onlys, Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper, plus drummer Lance Kramer. Their first album, How to Make Ambient Sadcake (out last year on Turn Up records), is damned fine, full of florid, girl-on-girl harmonies, bluesy licks and loosely strung swagger…you can hear little shades of Karen Dalton and Peg Simone in the vocals (though Simone is a better guitar player) and a fine tendency to avoid clichés in the lyrics and musical settings. Plus Cooper and Alexander sound like grown up women, rather than little girls (or women trying to sound like girls), which is refreshing. I like this a lot.
Thanks to Michael for ripping it for me.
Well, maybe she did.
But, as usual, it’s the fashionable stuff that’s watered down. Look below the radar and there are still some pretty good girl bands. Case in point: Sandwitches, made up of two former Fresh & Onlys, Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper, plus drummer Lance Kramer. Their first album, How to Make Ambient Sadcake (out last year on Turn Up records), is damned fine, full of florid, girl-on-girl harmonies, bluesy licks and loosely strung swagger…you can hear little shades of Karen Dalton and Peg Simone in the vocals (though Simone is a better guitar player) and a fine tendency to avoid clichés in the lyrics and musical settings. Plus Cooper and Alexander sound like grown up women, rather than little girls (or women trying to sound like girls), which is refreshing. I like this a lot.
Thanks to Michael for ripping it for me.
Friday, February 11, 2011
The prolific D. Charles Speer
Sometime NNCK-er, Helix bandleader, collaborator with the late Jack Rose and musical omnivore David Charles Shuford, a.k.a. D. Charles Speer, has a couple of excellent new albums coming out this spring on Thrill Jockey.
Arghiledes, the solo disc, incorporates some really fascinating Greek elements into Shuford’s psych/drone aesthetic. It’s a tribute, at least in part, to the bouzouki master Markos Vamvakaris, and uses Greek traditional instruments including bouzouki, as well as guitar, percussion, electronics, voice and some wonderful stand-up bass on the “Lost Dervish” cut. (“Lost Dervish” is on my new mix, which I intend to get to at some point, but I’ve been busy.)
Shuford worked solo on ARghiledes (though it doesn’t sound like it…he must have spent a long time tracking). He’s with the Helix again for Leaving the Commonwealth, which is more what you’d expect if you spent any time with last year’s Ragged and Right (where he and Jack Rose and some other players channeled Link Wray’s Three Track Shack sessions). “Cumberland,” the most bluegrassy, pedal-steel-y, countrified of these tracks, is an overt tribute to Rose…but what I’m liking the best here is the really wonderful guitar playing on “Days in the Kitchen”, the Cajun fiddle-and-washboard swing of “Le Grand Cochon” and the title track, which is an all-out country rocker, in the style of Neil Young or the Band.
I can’t find any audio or video from the two new albums yet, but here’s D. Charles and the Helix tipping the hat to Jack Rose last December.
I went to see Thank You, the Baltimore noise-jam-tribal-drums outfit last night, first time to a show in ages, and it was quite short, but pretty good. They’ve been adding some vocals to their thing, which is very much in line with Baltimore’s ecstatic freaked aesthetic, and now they kinda sound like the Boredoms. It was also terribly, terribly cold last night, single digits again, so it was good to get out and do anything besides huddle around the woodstove. More on Thank You later.
Arghiledes, the solo disc, incorporates some really fascinating Greek elements into Shuford’s psych/drone aesthetic. It’s a tribute, at least in part, to the bouzouki master Markos Vamvakaris, and uses Greek traditional instruments including bouzouki, as well as guitar, percussion, electronics, voice and some wonderful stand-up bass on the “Lost Dervish” cut. (“Lost Dervish” is on my new mix, which I intend to get to at some point, but I’ve been busy.)
Shuford worked solo on ARghiledes (though it doesn’t sound like it…he must have spent a long time tracking). He’s with the Helix again for Leaving the Commonwealth, which is more what you’d expect if you spent any time with last year’s Ragged and Right (where he and Jack Rose and some other players channeled Link Wray’s Three Track Shack sessions). “Cumberland,” the most bluegrassy, pedal-steel-y, countrified of these tracks, is an overt tribute to Rose…but what I’m liking the best here is the really wonderful guitar playing on “Days in the Kitchen”, the Cajun fiddle-and-washboard swing of “Le Grand Cochon” and the title track, which is an all-out country rocker, in the style of Neil Young or the Band.
I can’t find any audio or video from the two new albums yet, but here’s D. Charles and the Helix tipping the hat to Jack Rose last December.
I went to see Thank You, the Baltimore noise-jam-tribal-drums outfit last night, first time to a show in ages, and it was quite short, but pretty good. They’ve been adding some vocals to their thing, which is very much in line with Baltimore’s ecstatic freaked aesthetic, and now they kinda sound like the Boredoms. It was also terribly, terribly cold last night, single digits again, so it was good to get out and do anything besides huddle around the woodstove. More on Thank You later.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Soldiers of Fortune
So, I’m not the only one around here who likes Oneida, am I?
If not, there’s a sort of side project you should probably know about. Soldiers of Fortune has got Kid Millions and Pat Sullivan (Oneida, but also Oakley Hall), as well as some fellow travelers from Home and other bands…and it’s really good. I’m extracting a bit from my hard-to-condense review from yesterday’s Dusted.
“Sleeping Sentinel” balances the jittery propulsion, the stark, open-chord vocal harmonies of Anthem of the Moon-era Oneida. It is the shortest, most structured, least jammy song on the disc, and also the best. “Worm,” the 17-minute track which takes up the entire second side of the LP, is the other extreme. The song is built around a four-note riff, pushing upward in a short, piston-like motion over a series of half notes, ramming the top one twice, then circling back for another approach. It’s repeated twice a measure over the whole length of the song, a machine-precise foundation over which pianos hammer and basses rumble and guitars execute free-wheeling screeches and nose-dives and someone (possibly Millions in his heavy rock “Did I Die” voice) shouts indecipherable imprecations. It’s also pretty freaking great.
It might make more sense (not promising anything, mind you) if you read the whole thing.
I can't find any audio or video for this, but the record's out on Mexican Summer.
By the way, I was out yesterday watching my son compete in the NH Div. III state championship for XC skiing. They won. Whoo-hoo. Sean threw up all over the place about half an hour before his race and was really sick the Monday before, but still placed third for his team.
If not, there’s a sort of side project you should probably know about. Soldiers of Fortune has got Kid Millions and Pat Sullivan (Oneida, but also Oakley Hall), as well as some fellow travelers from Home and other bands…and it’s really good. I’m extracting a bit from my hard-to-condense review from yesterday’s Dusted.
“Sleeping Sentinel” balances the jittery propulsion, the stark, open-chord vocal harmonies of Anthem of the Moon-era Oneida. It is the shortest, most structured, least jammy song on the disc, and also the best. “Worm,” the 17-minute track which takes up the entire second side of the LP, is the other extreme. The song is built around a four-note riff, pushing upward in a short, piston-like motion over a series of half notes, ramming the top one twice, then circling back for another approach. It’s repeated twice a measure over the whole length of the song, a machine-precise foundation over which pianos hammer and basses rumble and guitars execute free-wheeling screeches and nose-dives and someone (possibly Millions in his heavy rock “Did I Die” voice) shouts indecipherable imprecations. It’s also pretty freaking great.
It might make more sense (not promising anything, mind you) if you read the whole thing.
I can't find any audio or video for this, but the record's out on Mexican Summer.
By the way, I was out yesterday watching my son compete in the NH Div. III state championship for XC skiing. They won. Whoo-hoo. Sean threw up all over the place about half an hour before his race and was really sick the Monday before, but still placed third for his team.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
My Jon Spencer interview is up at PopMatters
See, I didn’t even say finally…
“I think the best rap is really free. That’s incredibly liberating and powerful, when you use it as a way to make or even think about music,” Jon Spencer said.
The subject has come up because of the vastly expanded reissues of Blues Explosion’s landmark third and fifth albums, Orange from 1994 and Acme from 1999. In one sense, both albums are raw and live and stripped down, rooted in early rock and soul. But on the other hand, they are clearly linked to hip-hop, in obvious ways like the use of scratching and heavy, bass-driven beats, and in less obvious ones, like Orange‘s use of remixes.
That’s because if you got in the van with Jon Spencer and the Blues Explosion any time in the early 1990s, you were likely to hear rap. Public Enemy was on all the time, Spencer remembers. Ice Cube was another favorite. “We have always been influenced by rap music,” Spencer recalled.
Read the rest
“I think the best rap is really free. That’s incredibly liberating and powerful, when you use it as a way to make or even think about music,” Jon Spencer said.
The subject has come up because of the vastly expanded reissues of Blues Explosion’s landmark third and fifth albums, Orange from 1994 and Acme from 1999. In one sense, both albums are raw and live and stripped down, rooted in early rock and soul. But on the other hand, they are clearly linked to hip-hop, in obvious ways like the use of scratching and heavy, bass-driven beats, and in less obvious ones, like Orange‘s use of remixes.
That’s because if you got in the van with Jon Spencer and the Blues Explosion any time in the early 1990s, you were likely to hear rap. Public Enemy was on all the time, Spencer remembers. Ice Cube was another favorite. “We have always been influenced by rap music,” Spencer recalled.
Read the rest
Down and out in Westchester County
I've been really enjoying the new record from Phineas and the Lonely Leaves, a bittersweet bit of Americana concerned, to large extent, about living on the wrong side of the have/have not divide. The kicker is that the band is from Westchester County, so their dead-ends abut on some unusal places. You don't hear a lot of country songs about Peekskill, New York, but it's a pretty good one, nonetheless. I suppose that when you really hit the skids (to the point where you're picking up other people's butts and smoking them and wondering why no one will give you a ride), it doesn't help that there's a stockbroker living next door.
Anyway, it's a good one. Here's the title track:
"The Kids We Used to Be"
Anyway, it's a good one. Here's the title track:
"The Kids We Used to Be"
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