ATOMS FOR PEACE

MACBOOK PROS

The synthesized soundscapes of Thom Yorke's Atoms For Peace

by Matt Ashare |  

Posted April 3, 2013

In the weeks that have passed since the release of AMOK, the debut album by the Thom Yorke-helmed project Atoms For Peace, I've had a chance to reflect on just how far Radohead have deviated from the rockist norm over the past two decades. It's no secret that the band — to the extent you can still call them that — have long since evolved away from the fairly typical, if also exceptional, guitar-driven angst of "Creep," the searingly somber 1992 anti-anthem breakthrough single that they all but disowned only a few years later. Or, that the masterfully dystopic grandeur of The Bends and OK Computer led them deep into the heart of Millennial madness, where more experimental compositions crafted from synths and programmed rhythms have taken the place of easy hooks and straightforward melodies. But, among what might be considered their peers or forebears, Radiohead are unusual in far more unusual ways.

       Sure, they've remained intact as five guys who appear on stage together from time to time to perform songs they've written, ostensibly with some degree of collaboration. And, yet, with the exception of Yorke's plaintively tensile vocals, the band's single signature element, it's become increasingly difficult to discern the roles of the other members, even though, presumably, they all have a part to play. At least as a studio entity, Radiohead have succeeded on a grand scale at undoing the romantic myth of the archetypical Brit band, embodied by the mythical Beatles, with their Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership, the designated lead guitarist, and the chummy drummer. With the Stones, you've got the combustible Jagger/Richards core. U2, even at their most abstract, offer the comfort of the interplay between Bono's yearning vocals and the Edge's sinewy guitar figures. And, so it's gone and continues to go with so many other mega bands.

       But, not Radiohead. And, AMOK, which pairs Yorke with longstanding Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, as well as a backing band that includes Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco, session drummer Joey Waronker (R.E.M. and Beck are two of the more notable gigs he's had), and Red Hot Chili Peppers' ubiquitous bassist Flea, is just the latest refraction of this principle.

       For starters, the Atoms For Peace line-up, which came together in 2009 to perform the tracks from Yorke's Godrich-enabled solo album The Eraser, isn't much of a departure from what Radiohead have morphed into over the last decade — five guys with indeterminate roles in the studio/songwriting process. Similarly, the reductionist, less-is-more aesthetic employed by Yorke, coupled with Godrich's cut-and-paste tonal tweaking, depersonalizes most, if not all, of the instrumental contributions. Waronker, for example, may be a monster drummer. And his sensibility may have contributed to the flow of any number of the nine tracks on AMOK. But, post-production, most of the rhythmic underpinnings on the album sound programmed. And, if that's finger-popping Flea on bass, then it almost certainly amounts to some of his most restrained playing ever. Indeed, Atoms For Peace may rise to the level of a "supergroup," as some have already noted, but AMOK, like much of Radiohead's most recent album King of Limbs (2011), has the impersonal sound and feel of a laptop-pop construction, with Yorke's ethereal voice playing the role of the ghost in this benign permutation of the soulless machine.

       Fittingly enough, while a full-band version of Atoms For Peace will be performing a few select shows to support the new album later this year, the first live video posted on the band's YouTube channel features just Yorke and Godrich twiddling knobs behind two consoles as they "perform" an extended, techno-fried version of the glitchy album track "Default." The song, with its clipped, mechanized syncopations and skeletal synths, doesn't appear to suffer for lack of live instrumentation because, well, nothing on the album cut has the visceral impact of live-to-tape performance. As with much of AMOK, "Default" mostly serves as a cooly minimalist frame for Yorke's yearning vocals, which float hauntingly around the permitters of a melody, occasionally coming into focus for a phrase or two — "The will is strong/But the flesh is weak," and "I made my bed/I'll lie in it."

       Admittedly, that's not particularly profound in print. But Yorke prefers the suggestive to the declamatory, and he does delicately disembodied as convincingly as any singer around. That's the real beauty of where Yorke and Godrich have arrived with their particular art. As MacBook pros, they're free to sample from the far side of electronica, blending dour synth tones with percolating rhythms that, like so-called IDM (a/k/a "intelligent dance music"), create grooves that aren never quite danceable. And, yeah, even on AMOK there are occasional glimpses of guitar, like the squirrelly figure that fleets through "Before Your Very Eyes. . .," the disc's enervated opening track. But the dominant instrument is always Yorke's evocative voice, which conveys potent waves of mixed emotion even when he feigns disengagement, which is one of his preferred modes here. Yorke has carved out a niche for himself as a non-celebrity star in a media world saturated by non-star celebrities, which is commendable. But, it's hard to say where that leaves the rest of the dudes in Radiohead. Or, for that matter, the guys who comprise Atoms For Peace.

KACEY MUSGRAVES

REBEL BELLE

Kacey Musgraves gives mainstream country a bold new voice

by Matt Ashare |  

Posted March 27, 2013

Timing may not be everything. But it does help. And, the stars certainly seem to have aligned quite nicely for Kacey Musgraves, the 24-year-old, Texas-bred singer-songwriter who just released her eagerly anticipated major label debut, Same Trailer Different Park, on Mercury Nashville. Sure, there's always a chance Taylor Swift's perennially rocky romantic life might catapult her back into the headlines after being named Entertainer of the Year by the Academy of County Music in 2012. But, barring anything of that nature, 2013 very likely belongs to the much buzzed about Musgraves. The New York Times Sunday Magazine dedicated a four-page spread to the precocious upstart a week and a half ago. Rolling Stone has jumped on the bandwagon with a four-star review of the new album. And the folks at Slate have already wondered in virtual print if Musgraves could be the "future of country music." Hint: they hope she is. . .

      Of course, like most things Nashville, Musgraves didn't just materialize out of nowhere. Back in 2007, as the rapidly evolving legend has it, she competed in county music's awkward answer to American Idol, the thankfully defunct reality gameshow Nashville Star. She only managed to place seventh. But the experience brought her into the heart of the city that feeds Music Row's ravenous appetite for new talent. And, by 2011, she'd helped pen a minor hit for Miranda Lambert called "Mama's Broken Heart."

       Then, in September of last year, she stepped into the spotlight with her first single "Merry Go ’Round," a striking reflection on small-town life that finds a comfortable banjo-picking groove and delves earnestly into some uncomfortable observations. "If you ain't got two kids by twenty-one/You're probably gonna die alone/Least that's what tradition told you," Musgraves quietly intones, as she works her way toward the smart refrain that provided the title for the new album — "Same hurt in every heart/Same trailer, different park" — and has some incisive fun with nursery rhymes. "Mother's hooked on Mary Kay/Brother's hooked on Mary Jane/Daddy's hooked on Mary two doors down/Mary Mary quite contrary/We get bored so we get married/And just like dust we settle in this town."

       With that, Musgraves distinguished herself as a different kind of Nashville star — a provocateur with a subtle touch, down-home sensibilities, and a Millennial world view. It's probably worth noting that Musgraves was originally signed to Lost Highway, the independently minded, alt-leaning Americana label under the Universal/Mercury umbrella; that she co-wrote all of the songs on Same Trailer Different Park; and that she co-produced the album with her two songwriting partners, Luke Laird and Shane McAnally. If that's the future of country music, then it carries with it promising reminders of past glories, including the iconoclastic triumphs of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton, not to mention the outlaws (Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson) who stormed Nashville four decades ago, and outsider troubadours like John Prine and Rodney Crowell.

       It's a bit soon to grant Musgraves membership in the legends club. But, Same Trailer Different Park truly is a remarkable collection of uncommonly insightful songwriting. Musgraves has a gift for soft-pedaling her way into hard truths, for casually turning a seemingly harmless phrase deadly, and for standing on just the right side of sentimental. She's not afraid to get a little hokey, as she does with Dolly Parton aplomb in the harmonica-accented acoustic strummer "My House," a romantic ode to the pleasures of motor-homing outfitted with a sunny singalong chorus: "So. come on, hitch your wagon/To the living room I'm dragging/If I can't bring you to my house, I'll bring my house to you."

       But it's on heavier songs like "Merry Go ’Round" that Musgraves' light touch leaves its deepest marks. "Jack and Jill went up the hill," she croons almost matter-of-factly, as the song stops around her and coasts to a close, "Jack burned out on booze and pills/And Mary had a little lamb/And Mary just don't give a damn no more. . ." She offers up another vividly dark slice of small-town life on the rockier "Blowin' Smoke," a Lucinda Williams-style bluesy romp that find her half laughing her way through catty verses like, "Brenda's traded smokes for cake/Still hasn't lost that baby weight/And that baby's ’bout to graduate from college." And, she gracefully stands her ground on the deceptively sweet sounding "Step Off," which features more banjo, some cute whistling, and artfully dispassionate kiss-offs like, "You screwed everybody over in this town/So, there ain't nothing between you and the cold hard ground."

       But the tracks that are likely to find the most traction on Same Trailer Different Park are the pair that veer off script for a mainstream country music offering, which may have something to do with why they turn up at the very end of the album. With "It Is What It Is," Musgraves delivers what might best be described as a bittersweet ode to friends-with-benefits in a tender voice that belies the implications of her intent. "I ain't got no one sleeping with me/You ain't got nowhere that you need to be/Maybe I love you/Maybe I'm just kinda bored/It is what it is ’til it ain't anymore." And she transgresses further on the hopeful "Follow Your Arrow," a playfully twangy examination of little hypocrisies ("If you won't have a drink then you're a prude/But they'll call you a drunk as soon as you down the first one") that builds to a rousing chorus that would make both Willie Nelson and Katy Perry proud. "Make lots of noise/Kiss lots of boys/Or kiss lots of girls/If that's something you're into/When the straight and narrow gets a little too straight/Roll up a joint or don't/Just follow your arrow."

       That's progressive, and promising new ground for a woman in the mainstream world of country music to stake out. But, Musgraves is standing there In a year that's seen successful pushes to legalize marijuana, and a new wave of support for same-sex marriage, Sometimes timing really does help.

DAVID BOWIE

HAPPY RETURNS

David Bowie revisits the past on his few new album in ten years

by Matt Ashare |
Posted March 20, 2013

There's a badly dated artifact from the big, bad ’80s that I happened to dig up on YouTube a year or so ago featuring David Bowie prancing around with Mick Jagger as they tear through a supersized cover of the Motown classic "Dancing in the Street." It was all for a good cause: the two stars recorded the single and shot the video to raise additional funds for Live Aid, the 1985 charity Bob Geldof organized to promote simultaneous all-star concerts at London's Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia 's J.F.K. Stadium in response to a devastating famine in Ethiopia. That said, it didn't exactly bring out the best in Bowie and Jagger, who were, by then, certainly something out an odd couple. Jagger, outfitted in bright, baggy primary colors (green button-down shit, blue pants, and, a silly yellow sneakers), bounces and preens like the peacock he'd become, while Bowie, somewhat modestly bedecked in a floppy yellow overcoat, tries his best to keep up with the overblown choreography, which is more calisthenic workout than dance routine.
    What's striking, perhaps even a bit shocking about the performance isn't Jagger, whose exaggerated moves resemble nothing so much as a overstimulated simeon creature on steroids, but the very fact that Bowie's seems more than happy to play along. It's a role that just doesn't seem to suit the art-schooled glamor dude who'd spent the previous decade mutating from psychedelic space oddity, to full-on alien (Ziggy Stardust), to cracked actor (Aladdin Sane), to the elegant Thin White Duke of 1976's masterful Station to Station, before settling in Berlin for a landmark trilogy of more muted experimental albums with Brian Eno. If Jagger couldn't keep from painting himself into a corner as some kind of over-sexed clown, then the more reserved and thoughtful Bowie, even after he embarked on the corporate-rock juggernaut of Let's Dance in 1983, made make-up — and dress-up — seem cool.
    I suppose that even the most fashionable of caricatures can be excused a bad hair day every now and again. But awkward is not something the now 66-year-old Bowie's been prone to. Somehow, he managed to make it out of the wild ’70s, as one of the more distinguished ambassadors from the far side of the rock universe.  Indeed, outside of the rarified realm of stage acting, it's hard to think of a performer who's aged quite so gracefully, perhaps because the space he inhabits is as darkly cerebral as it is androgynously physical. And, yet, time finally caught up with the seemingly impervious Bowie in 2004, when he suffered a heart attack after a festival show in Germany on the "Reality" tour, supporting what would turn out to be his last album for a full decade.
    Since then, he's made sporadic appearances, most notably hooking up with the Arcade Fire for their televised 2005 "Fashion Rocks" show, accepting a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and joining Pink Floyd's David Gilmour on stage at the Royal Albert Hall for a transcendent rendition of "Comfortably Numb" that found its way onto the 2007 live album Remember That Night. But, there was little word on what Bowie was up to — a pretty major feat for a celebrity of his stature in our digitally wired world — until this past January, when out of nowhere he announced on his website that a new studio album, The Next Day, would be out in March, and released the single "Where Are We Now?," accompanied by a video shot by avant director Tony Oursler.
    In a sense, The Next Day simply picks up we things left off a decade ago with Heathen and Reality, the pair of solid if not entirely memorable albums that found Bowie back in his comfort zone with producer Tony Visconti, a guy he'd worked with on and off since the 1969 classic Space Oddity. The album's cover — essentially, a reappropriation of the iconic artwork from 1977's Heroes with the title crossed out and "The Next Day" stenciled plainly into a large white space covering Bowie's face — suggests as much, and much more. After a ten-year hiatus, and a brush with mortality, the typically detached Bowie appears to be in an uncharacteristically reflective mood, self-reflective even. The ruminative, at times elegiac single, "Where Are We Now?," time travels back to Bowie's Berlin of the ’70s, with gentle references to key landmarks like the Potsdamer Plotz rail station, the neoclassical Brandenburg Gate, and, of course, the Berlin Wall.
    At heart, Bowie may be a true romantic. But he's rarely, if ever, sounded this sentimental. Oursler's video, which superimposes Bowie's stoic visage, unadorned and disembodied, over that of a furry toy doll in what looks to be an artist's studio,  includes grainy vintage footage of West Berlin that drives home the plaintive point: Bowie, the man of many faces, has had time to reflect on where he's been. But, as he's stripped away the many masks, he's begun to wonder what, if anything, these remembrances of things past might add up to, even as he sets out to revisit them.
    So, it's not entirely surprising that, sonically, The Next Day strikes some familiarly nostalgic chords from the Bowie songbook. The disc's charged and defiant title track and opener recalls the angular rock of the title track from 1980's Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks), with skewed guitars playing against a fragile melody, as Bowie declaims "Here I am/Not quite dying/My body left to rot in a hollow tree/Its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me." "Valentine's Day," a timely yet not overly topical sketch about a high school shooter, has the sharp hooks and epic quality of a Ziggy Stardust track. And "Dancing Out in Space" takes the uptempo beat of "Modern Love" and lays a more minor-key melody down as Bowie finds his way back out onto the dance floor.
    Not everything on The Next Day is so easily reductive. "I'd Rather Be High," a movingly modulating tale from the frontlines of some unnamed battlefield, may be in keeping with Bowie's penchant for unnerving character studies, but it's more Pink Floydian than Bowie-esque. And the insistently linear "Love Is Lost" is a half-sung/half-spoken nugget of avant-rock that doesn't land solidly in any particular era.
    To the extent that The Next Day reflects the cumulative momentum of an artists who's rarely stood still long enough to pin down, it's a success. And, there's a strong core of solid songs here, which is certainly not the worst that's been said of Bowie. How it ranks among the strongest in his catalog is something cultists are free to argue intently over, at least until The Next Day fades from view. If, like me, you're a Bowie fan, or even just a curious student of pop archetypes, it's an album you'll want and perhaps even need to hear. And that's not a bad accomplishment for a 66-year-old performer who's been on the sidelines for a decade.

DAVE GROHL'S SOUND CITY

STUDIO ART

Dave Grohl gets a whole lotta help from friends like Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Trent Reznor, and Rick Springfield on the soundtrack to his new film Sound City

by Matt Ashare |  

Posted March 13, 2013

In May of 1991, three guys in a beat-up white van pulled up to a studio in LA's San Fernando Valley with a sixty-thousand-dollar recording budget, and got to work on an album that would define a decade.

       The band: Nirvana.

       The album: Nevermind.

       And the studio (the supporting actor in this modest blockbuster): Sound City.     By most accounts a fairly modest facility, Sound City Studios sat nestled among the strip malls and fast-food joints that dominate the Valley's suburban landscape. A relic of the rock boom of the early 1970s, where classic albums were cut by Neil Young (1970's After the Gold Rush), Fleetwood Mac (1975's Fleetwood Mac), and Tom Petty (1979's Damn the Torpedos), it finally closed to business in May of 2011, almost twenty years to the day that Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl arrived from Seattle as the band who would unwittingly change the world.

       The potentially mystical implications of that strange synchronicity wasn't lost on

Grohl. He contacted the studio about acquiring its highly coveted Neve 8028 mixing console, a pre-digital analog beast that, over the decades, had lured artists as diverse as Rick Springfield and Rage Against the Machine, Barry Manilow and the Black Crowes, Elton John and Elvis Costello to Sound City. As he geared up for the nostalgia storm over the 20th anniversary of the sea change that was Nevermind, he became the proud new owner of said console. And, what might have been a minor footnote in the evolving legacy of Nirvana became something of the central character — the lead, if you will — in a surprisingly romantic drama scripted by Grohl: Sound City, a documentary about the studio, debuted at Sundance earlier this year; and Sound City: Real to Reel, a soundtrack orchestrated by Grohl, hits stores this week.

       Grohl clearly has a personal connection to Sound City and the board that helped launch Nirvana into mainstream orbit. But, the Neve also stands for something much larger than a single band and one chart-topping album. It's more than just a cool fetish object. Like a ’65 Mustang or a classic vinyl jukebox, it  represents an entire set of values — values that are at once specific to a certain era, and transcendental. So, if Sound City, the film, is, at heart, Grohl's earnest tribute to a piece of recording equipment that embodies a shared set of aesthetic principles, then the soundtrack is his way of putting theory into practice. After all, it's one thing to see a vintage Mustang in a showroom; it's another thing altogether to rev the engine and take it out on the road.

       The central conceit of Real to Reel is fairly straightforward: Grohl simply convened a series of sessions at his newly Neve-equipped studio with an eclectic array of artists who had a history with him and/or Sound City. And, then hit the record button. But the rules intrinsic to this game made it a bit more complicated than that, and, frankly, rather daring. For starters, there are egos to contend with when one includes the likes Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Trent Reznor, and even Rick Springfield — four of the dozens of artists featured on the soundtrack. At the very least, these are performers who are likely to have cultivated distinct, idiosyncratic creative processes. Even if none of that proved problematic, Grohl was still counting on the Neve 8028 to work its magic and coax something beyond merely passable from some strange bedfellows (Springfield backed by Foo Fighters; McCartney with the surviving members of Nirvana; Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor backed by Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Neilson, out-there desert-rock bassist Scott Reeder, and Grohl).

       It was a gamble, which is kinda the point. And it paid off in more than just novelty tokens. Grohl, for his part, set the right leave-your-ego-at-the-door tone by spending much of the album behind the drum kit. Indeed, he doesn't emerge as a frontman until the disc's last two tracks, the ruminative acoustic beauty "If I Were Me" (with Wallflowers keysman Rami Jaffee, violinist Jessy Greene, and the great Jim Keltner on drums), and the solemnly poetic atmospheric rocker "Mantra," a consummate collaboration between Grohl, Reznor, and Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme.

       Mostly, Grohl takes on the role of nimble facilitator. His muscular drumming elevates "Heaven and Hell," a narcotic trance-rock nugget featuring singer/guitarist Robert Levon Been and bassist Peter Hayes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. With Foo drummer Taylor Hawkins behind the kit, and Jaffee on keys, Grohl helps nail down a convincingly classic Fleetwood Mac groove for the Stevie Nicks number "You Can't Fix This." And he and Hawkins are also on board, along with Nirvana/FF rhythm guitarist Pat Smear, as Fear's growling frontman Lee Ving takes the lead on a full-throttle detour into aggro-core punk.

       Although it's not likely to rank as one of his top songwriting credits, McCartney rises to the occasion on the raucous "Cut Me Some Slack," a nifty grunge/r&b hybrid that features the improbable pairing of a bona-fide Beatle with the guys from Nirvana. And, Rick Springfield (yes, that Rick Springfield) acquits himself rather well fronting what amounts to a Foo Fighters line-up on "The Man That Never Was," a sinewy, melodic churner that's right up the Foo's power-pop alley.

       By nature, and by design, Sound City: Real to Reel isn't exactly a cohesive album. And yet, in sprit, it holds together remarkably well. There are a few tracks — "Time Slows Down," with Rage Against the Machine's rhythm section; "From Can To Can't," featuring Corey Taylor and Rick Neilson; and "A Trick With No Sleeve," a vehicle for full-throated singer-songwriter Alain Johannes of Eleven — that verge on the generic, in a manner that understandably suggests the epic brood of ’90s-era, Seattle-style hard-rock. But they're all surprisingly solid. More importantly, they succeed in capturing something essential, if intangible, about the organic alchemy that embodies the spirit of rock and roll as a collaborative studio art. Grohl's deep in his element on Sound City. Here and there, in fits and flashes, he even succeeds in catching lightening in the proverbial bottle. That may be the best tribute of all to Sound City Studios and the history that came out of the room with the Neve that he stumbled into with Nirvana back in ’91.  

THURSTON MOORE'S CHELSEA LIGHT MOVING

BOYS CLUB FOR MEN

Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore trips back to the future with his new band Chelsea Light Moving

by Matt Ashare |  

Posted March 6, 2013

Hostess Twinkies™, the highly coveted iron gamepiece in Monopoly™, and, apparently, much of the Eastern Seaboard™of the United States. . . That's three somewhat significant cultural referents that seemed fairly stable until relatively recently. And, if your taste in music happens to skew in a particular direction, you might want to add Sonic Youth to that list. Yes, the art-damaged, avant-rock juggernaut who brought a different shade of dissonance to the table when they emerged from NYC's post-punk underground in the mid-’80s, helped usher in the Nirvana-led alternative implosion of the early-’90s, and laid much of the intellectual and aural foundation for what we know think of as "indie," are on a hiatus of indeterminate length that began in 2011. The announcement from guitarist Lee Ranaldo that Sonic Youth were "ending for a while" came shortly after the arrival of even more shocking news: Bassist Kim Gordon and guitarist Thurston Moore, the alt-rock übercouple, the veritable heart and soul of the band, the indie underground's triumphant answer to Hollywood's revered Brangelina power surge, had — audible gasp — separated.

       I don't mean to make light of their personal difficulties because, well, for a particular segment of the music-consuming public, Kim and Thurston's marriage embodied much of what was good about the subculture commonly known as indie-rock. Their blissful union amounted to living, breathing proof that go-go boots and mommyhood weren't mutually exclusive; that the geeked out, vinyl diehard in all of us was capable of carrying on a meaningful relationship; that you could have your cake and beat it too; that the family who plays together, stays together. . . Okay, I'll stop with the hyperbole. But, seriously, Kim and Thurston were a beacon to hipsters across this great land, or, at least, to that microculture of too-cool-for-anything-but-gradschool folks who, understandably, liked the idea that subversive rock-and-roll types might find happiness somewhere over the consumerist rainbow, perhaps in the idyllic, progressive surroundings of Northampton (a/k/a Massachusetts' answer to Portlandia).

       The good news, which is sorta old news, is that Kim and Thurston appear to be on reasonably friendly terms. Last year they collaborated together with Yoko Ono on an album fittingly titled YOKOKIMTHURSTON, which may, in fact, amount to the hipster equivalent of marriage counseling. The ambiguous, but not at all terrible news is that the seemingly indefatigable Moore, whose credits on Wikipedia include eight releases under the special heading of "limited edition noise, experimental, drone projects," as well as three proper solo albums and 16 in 30 years with Sonic Youth, hasn't paused to take much of a breath. No, Moore, who released a solo album in 2011, has already cobbled together a new full-length with a newly minted band of the same name, Chelsea Light Moving.

       It's not that Moore isn't familiar with the dynamics of supply-and-demand economics. It's just that he doesn't sweat the big stuff. Which is pretty much in keeping the insouciant, down-to-earth attitude he's cultivated over the years. He is, however, a big fan of the small stuff, which is also very much in keeping with his cultivated attitude. So, it may not come as a terribly huge surprise that the name of Moore's new foursome is something of a clever, if potentially pretentious nod in the direction of two titans of 20th-century avant-garde composition. Legend has it that back in the late-’60s, Chelsea Light Moving was a hauling company of sorts run by the then aspiring minimalist pioneers Steve Reich and Philip Glass, a bit of trivial ephemera that might pass for received wisdom in some corners of the geekster galaxy.

       It's actually kind of amazing that some fledgling Brooklyn indie band didn't beat Moore to the trademark office with the Chelsea Light Moving moniker. But, it also makes a certain poetic sense: Moore, more than anyone, has stood as a uniquely approachable bridge between the subterranean post-punk underground and the more rarified realm of the classical avant-garde. That's really a big part of the guy's charm.

       In an even more poetic sense, Chelsea Light Moving is an apt name for a project that largely comes across as an attempt on Moore's part to reconnect with some of his earliest inspirations. From that perspective, Chelsea Light Moving — on which Moore is joined by bassist Samara Lubelski, guitarist Keith Wood, and drummer John Moloney — is quite a departure from Moore's three previous song-based solo albums. Each of those found him taking off on tangents that reflected the evolution of Sonic Youth, a band who brought a whole new level of studied yet natural, sophisticated and challenging discord into the rock lexicon and then worked their way back to a friendly relationship with the ghost of melody past. Indeed, his 2011 solo disc, Demolished Thoughts, was a largely acoustic offering produced by Beck that gracefully reflected the quiet storms that Sonic Youth had lately been exploring in their expanding quest for some lost, mystical chord.

       In spite of his penchant for sustained outbursts of blistering noise, Moore always came across as the pop romantic in Sonic Youth, as the guy in the band most naturally attuned to balancing chaos and harmony. There are glimpses of that gentler, nuanced side of Moore on Chelsea Light Moving's debut, which opens on a reflective note with the short and bittersweet "Heavenmetal." Spare, airy guitar figures yearn for resolution, as Moore warmly warbles, "The storm is natural enough/This has everything to do with you/And your tiniest hair/Be a warrior and love life. . ." But, the album quickly darkens, as bristling distortion, pounding drums, and raw noise filter into view on "Sleeping Where I Fall" and the more elliptical "Alighted."

       In a lot of ways, Chelsea Light Moving does bring to mind the untrained rawness of early Sonic Youth, and the band mimics Sonic Youth's line-up (three dudes and a female bassist). What's missing is the mitigating, mercurial allure that Kim Gordon brought to the band as they came into their own. It's as if, determined to strip things back down to the nascent spark that set Sonic Youth off in ’82, Moore found solace in convening a knowingly noisy boys club for men, mostly, and quickly, perhaps reflexively churned out a handful and a half of tunes meant to tear at the artful edifice that Sonic Youth had become. He even revisits a few salient touchstones from Sonic Youth's youth: junky novelist William S. Burroughs (in the churning noise rocker "Burroughs"); poet Frank O'Hara and rock mythology in general (in the grippingly angular and gorgeously broken "Frank O'Hara's Hit"); and, finally, the notorious trainwreck that were the Germs, the first-gen LA hardcore punk band whose tune "Communist Eyes" Chelsea Light Moving cover as the album comes to a close.

       Actually, they don't just cover the song; they more or less recreate it, in all it's lo-fi glory. Much like the original, the Chelsea Light Morning version sounds like it was recorded live on a boombox, with Moore straining to keep up with the accelerated beat as buzzsaw guitars carve away at a primal riff. It's good, nostalgic fun in the form of a referential inside joke that's sorta supposed to be obvious. Yeah, it's a little pointless. But, I'm not really sure Moore is required to have a point at this juncture in his career.

AMANDA PALMER AND THE GRAND THEFT ORCHESTRA

TALKING POINTS

The plugged-in world of Amanda Palmer and her Grand Theft Orchestra

by Matt Ashare |  

Posted February271, 2013

It came as a fairly palpable shock to an already shaken system when, in 2007, the much lauded British band Radiohead bypassed the standard music business model and released their 7th disc, In Rainbows, as a Internet-only, pay-what-you-will download. If an entity as successful as Radiohead could effectively operate outside the purview of a major label and, worse yet, do so by without imposing a definitive value on a product, then, surely, all bets were off. Or, maybe not. In Rainbows might have felt like a game changer at the time. Indeed, all the chatter about the method of the album's release threatened to drown out the actual sound of the music. But, in retrospect, it was a really more of an outlier, an unruly anomaly that merely pointed toward one of any number of possible futures, while also raising a fundamental postmodern dilemma: When the medium becomes the message, what happens to all the other stuff, like, for example, the ten moody, electro-organic songs that comprised the online edition of In Rainbows?

       That question was at the heart of some of the issues Amanda Palmer, a musician/provocateur whose resume includes recording seven Radiohead numbers for the wryly titled 2010 EP Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele, was wrestling with back on January 13. In a rambling yet incisive blog post, under the heading, "how the hell am I going to delivery this TED talk? help.," Palmer wrote, "i know basically what I want to talk about. i mean, it's obvious. something about me, and probably me as a street performer, and about you, and about crowdfunding, and about love, and about how there's a new currency of connection and type of exchange on the net that could revolutionize the way we make and support art on the internet and in the world."

       At the same time, she wondered if her message might be better served by a medium other than the lecture format favored by TED: "maybe i could sing my thesis to the tune of wagner’s 'ring cycle,' crowd-source some local strings and horns, bring them onstage and, wearing a lab-coat and wielding a smoking beaker and a slide-rule, illustrate the emotional mathematical quantitative difference between a beer, a hug, a high-five, and a dollar. . ."

       So, a little background. TED — short for "Technology, Entertainment, and Design" — got its start as a Silicon Valley information-sharing forum in 1984. It grew into an annual event in 1990, and has since become a wide-ranging, international multi-media franchise that operates year round with dozens of events and permanent presence on the web. Joining Palmer on the roster for "TED 2013: The Young, The Wise, The Undiscovered" (Feb. 24-Mar. 1 in Long Beach, CA) are archery bow designer Dong Woo Jang, a yo-yo champion named BLACK, and a musician/activist who goes by Bono. Oh, and on the day after Palmer, who's listed as a musician/blogger, delivers her talk (Wednesday, Feb. 27, at 8:30 a.m., PST), Peter Gabriel, another musician/activist, is also scheduled to speak.

       How'd Palmer end up on the TED radar? Here's a hint: It wasn't entirely due music. No, the big story surrounding the release of third full-length solo album in September of last year was that she'd financed the entire venture via the online fundraising site Kickstarter, which is mostly used to fund relatively modest projects. In fact, having cultivated a remarkably intense relationship with fans through her candid blog and a Twitter feed that boasts over 800,000 followers, Palmer set a new Kickstarter record by raising nearly $1.2 million to record the self-released Theatre Is Evil, an impressive feat with ramifications that go far beyond whatever threat Radiohead's In Rainbows might have posed to the status quo. But, much like In Rainbows, Theatre Is Evil, the album, was overshadowed for a time by Theatre Is Evil, the event.

       Fortunately, Palmer's an artist who understands the performative nature of spectacle. She's also perfectly comfortable living out loud. She came to music with a background in stage acting/directing and, beginning in 2000, put that experience to good use in the Dresden Dolls, a deceptively muscular, highly stylized, Boston-based cabaret-rock duo that featured Palmer, often in little more than a skimpy negligee and gartered stockings, sparring on piano with drummer Brian Viglione. With a taste for taught, angular songs that played on Palmer's flair for the dramatic, the Dresden Dolls were brainy and bawdy, sophisticated and naughty. (I once heard someone refer to Palmer, in her Dresden Dolls guise, as "Tori Amos times ten," which isn't particularly fair to her or Amos, although it's not exactly wrong.)

       An array of costumed street performers — fire-breathers, stilt walkers, and the like — became part of the Dresden Dolls carnival as the band grew in stature.

But, it quickly became clear that Palmer's vision extended well beyond the traditional boundaries of rock and roll. In 2006, she published The Dresden

Dolls Companion, an elaborate and revealing history of the duo laced with striking visual art, intimate autobiographical sketches, and sheet music. The following year, the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard staged The Onion Cellar, a musical conceived by Palmer and based on a chapter from Günter Grass' The Tin Drum. And, by that point, Palmer's "Dresden Dolls Diary" blog postings had become an integral part of the band's appeal.

       With a pocketful of tunes that apparently didn't quite fit the Dresden Dolls mold, Palmer launched her solo career in 2008 with Who Killed Amanda Palmer?, an album produced by Ben Folds that ventured into the realm of orchestral rock and, in case there were any doubts, proved she could hold her own alone. More notably, the album sparked online controversy when Palmer revealed in a blog post that Roadrunner, the label she was signed to at the time, wanted shots of her exposed stomach edited out of a video for the single "Leeds United" because she looked "fat." Fans began an online protest campaign called the "ReBellyon" (Google it), self-published their own "Belly Book," and, after penning and performing a song title "Please Drop Me," Palmer learned something about the power of the Internet when Roadrunner agreed to do just that.

       At some point in that amusing drama, the line between Amanda Palmer, the person, and Amanda Palmer, the artist or brand name, began to blur. I read a few posts about the her fondness for Australia, but sorta missed the follow-up solo album she recorded there, 2011's Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under. I'm pretty sure I heard more about the Tweet announcing Palmer's marriage, two years ago, to the British writer Neil Gaiman, a major graphic-novel dude who's probably still best known for The Sandman series he wrote for DC's Vertigo imprint from 1989 until 1996, than I did about Down Under. And, although I hate to admit it, I might not have gotten around to Theatre Is Evil if news of Palmer's impending TED talk hadn't tempted me. Okay, so I saw that on Facebook.

       My bad, because Theatre of Evil now holds the dubious distinction of being the best album I didn't bother listening to in 2012. Outfitted with a full backing band — drummer Michael McQuilken, guitarist/keyboardist Chad Raines, and bassist Jherek Bischoff —  and a well rounded complement of strings, brass, and reeds, Palmer makes the most of that Kickstarter cash, exploring pop possibilities that are both more ambitious than anything she attempted with the Dresden Dolls, and, in a very real sense, more alluring. She can do prickly, as she does to pointed effect in "Do It With A Rockstar," a sinewy rocker that oscillates between orchestral dreamscapes and staccato piano jabs that frame clenched taunts: "Do you wanna dance?/Do you wanna fight?/Do you wanna get drunk and stay up all night?" But her range extends to the plaintively baroque on "Trout Heart Replica," a winding 7-plus-minute epic that twists the title of the twisted Captain Beefheart classic Trout Mask Replica and brings to mind Fiona Apple at her unhinged best, as Palmer cryptically works her way through a dark emotional storm and concludes, "Killing things is not so hard/It's hurting that's the hardest part."

       Elsewhere, Palmer evokes the chilling ache of vintage Aimee Mann in "Grown Man Cry," a cooly distilled shot of Tears For Fears-style ’80s synth-pop. With ringing guitar and banks of ethereal keyboards coalescing around a moody, minor-key melody, she mercilessly picks at a fatally tangled romance: "For a while it was touching/For a while it was challenging/Before it became typical/And now it really is not interesting/To see a grown man cry." And, with the arresting "The Bed Song," a track that even she singles out as one of the most fully realized song-stories she's yet written, Palmer displays a flair for filmic detail as she follows, in genuinely touching fashion, the downward spiral of a couple who move from a grungy apartment to an uptown condo to their final resting place.

       It's a pretty good bet that none of that will come up in Palmer's TED talk, which will be broadcast online. She's in Long Beach to talk about her skillful use of social networking and the transformative impact of the Internet on the creative process, not her approach to songwriting. And that's probably a good thing, since it's often not particularly interesting when artists speak of their craft. I'll be tuning in, if only because Amanda Palmer, artist and blogger, remains a provocative work-in-progress. In fact, you can track that progress daily @amandapalmer. 

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEES

SUB-ATOMIC ROCK

Nick Cave drops some dark science with his newly configured Bad Seeds

By Matt Ashare | 
Posted February 20, 2013

The Higgs boson, known to some inflammatory pseudo-scientists as "the God particle," is the one sub-atomic piece of the universal puzzle that kinda sorta explains gravity, and unequivocally accounts for the existence of the ginormous Large Hedron Collider, a facility that a whole bunch of European countries spent a whole bunch of money to build on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Phew. . . That's a mouthful. Actually, over the weekend, for the better part of an hour, I listened to a physicist on NPR explain the elusive boson in the wake of recent experiments that may or may not have actually generated a handful of them at the LHC, and I'm still not entirely clear about, well, much of anything. Apparently, the Higgs particle may or may not exist, gravity may or may not have some relationship to its theoretical existence, and this chair I'm sitting in may or may not be a washing machine. I'm cool with that.

       The "Higgs Boson Blues," known to at least one confabulatory music fan as "the catchiest song" on the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album Push the Sky Away, is possibly the catchiest song on the new album by Nick Cave and the latest configuration of his longtime band the Bad Seeds. It absolutely has a certain gravity, in the sense that it is weighty, although, in keeping with Einstein's theory of relativity, there's no objective way to measure its theoretical heaviness.

       Like the rest of Push the Sky Away, "Higgs Boson Blues" was recorded at La Fabrique, a studio that almost has to be in France, which means it can't be that far from Switzerland. And, after spending what amounted to at least an hour with the song over the weekend, I'm still not entirely clear exactly what it's about, even though I have a pretty good idea what Cave's getting at when he pleads, dramatically, "Bury me in my favorite yellow patent leather shoes." And, I'm cool with that too.

       At this point, it's probably worth noting that Cave, an Australian-born, post-punk freak with a deep, dark goth streak, got his start fronting the art-damaged, noise-battered Birthday Party in the late-'70s. He formed the Bad Seeds a full three decades ago, after relocating to England with fellow Birthday Partier Mick Harvey, and joining forces with German avant-guitarist Blixa Bargeld, leader of the notorious renegade industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten (try spelling that three times fast). In other words, Cave's been around the rock block more than a couple of times even if you don't happen to be familiar with his repertoire, which is just another way of saying that he's really huge in Europe, not quite as mammoth as the Large Hedron Collider, and possibly even bigger in Japan.

       That said, Push the Sky Away is only the 15th album he's made with the Bad Seeds, owing, in part, to the fact that he's done a whole lot of other stuff. Like, for example, scoring films, writing novels, and acting in films and on stage. Oh, and in 2007, he also found the energy to form a rather Bad Seedy side-project called Grinderman, featuring mulit-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, basset Martyn Casey, and percussionist Jim Sclavunos.

       That final factoid wouldn't be particularly relevant if it didn't offer a convenient bridge back to Push the Sky Away, the first Bad Seeds album to feature Cave as the last man standing from the original band. Bargeld packed it in a full decade ago. And Harvey finally called it quits in 2009, shortly after the band released their 14th studio album, the raucously decadent descent into finely cultivated garage blooze that was Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (At last, the critics agreed, an album title with not one, not two, but six exclamation points!!!!!! LOL:—)

       What's left of the Bad Seeds on the new album looks suspiciously like Grinderman, with Ellis, a masterful minimalist, playing the part of mad sonic scientist, applying a radical reductionist theory of anti-rock to Cave's penchant for reveling in dark matter. Casey and Sclavunos are on board too, acting as something along the lines of a severely deconstructed, at times almost entirely absent rhythm section. Aside from the two women who sing ethereal harmonies on several tracks, and the harmonizing members of the Children of the Ecole Saint Martin choir who grace the disc's devastatingly solemn title track, it's kinda hard to tell whether the other credited players made the final cut. I mean, I do believe, as the liner notes indicate, that some dude named Ryan Porter brought a trombone into the studio. It's just not all that easy to tell which tune he might have played on.

          Fortunately, Cave's a guy who's not short on personality. So filling all the empty space left by Ellis' austere arrangements is not a problem. A fractal trip-hoppish groove and the ambient echo of a few synth chords are all that frame Cave's world weary vocals on the languid opening track, a menacing reflection on nature's ambivalence called "We No Who U R." And, Cave basically talks his way through "Water's Edge," a taut meditation on the maddeningly fleeting nature of young love framed by little more than the incessant thrum of a sinewy bass line, some spare percussion, and astrally projected string embellishments. "The will of love/The thrill of love/But the chill of love, is coming on," Cave muses with tender disgust, after watching the city girls "take apart their bodies like toys for the local boys."

       The less is more aesthetic of Push the Sky Away suits Cave, who pulls off a pitch perfect impression of Nick Cave imagining Nick Cave a decade or so ago. So, yes, there are ways in which his delivery resembles the deadpan demeanor of Lou Reed the elder, or, better yet, the stark spiritual yearning of Leonard Cohen. But Cave's pretty singular in his vocal stylings, which amount to a sardonic spin on some mythical Southern Baptist preacherman testifying about the coming Rapture at the unholy crossroads. "I am beyond recriminations," he spits into the hollow void of "Jubilee Street," "I'm glowing. . . I'm flying," until, at last, churning guitar chords crash in around him.

       More often than not, Cave seems to begin songs as if he were in the middle of a thought, and then proceed in stream-of-consciousness fashion. It's a strategy that works well with Ellis's diffuse sonic palette. "I'd just finished writing 'Jubilee Street,'" he informs the gathered congregants at the start of "Finishing Jubilee Street," a song about a song that's actually on the album, "I lay down on my bed and fell into a deep sleep. . ." And, on "Higgs Boson Blues," he manages to rhyme Hannah Montana with "African savanna," name-check the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, and find Miley Cyrus "floating in a swimming pool," all without skipping a beat or breaking the the unsettling spell cast by the song's portentous ruminations on the future.

       Ultimately, Cave trades in broken beauty on what's arguably one his most beautifully broken albums as a Bad Seed. "I got a feeling I can't shake/I got a feeling that just won't go away," he intones at the start of the disc's final track, a painful prayer about the power of endurance that ends on a somewhat romantic note. "Some people say it's just rock and roll," Cave admits. "Ah, but it gets you right down to your soul. . ."  

       When you get past Cave's poetry slamming — when you arrive somewhere in the vicinity of his soul — the real message of Push the Sky Away is rather simple: Reality may sorta suck some of the time, but mortality really bites. It's not exactly a major revelation. But in an age when science continues, even in the face of diminishing returns, to find ways for us mortals to cheat death, it's probably worth pondering. It may even be worth a few more Bad Seeds albums from Cave.

HORSEHEAD

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE

Richmond's rootsy Horsehead bring their American-bred rock to Lynchburg

By Matt Ashare |   

Posted February 13, 2013

When Jon Brown arrives in Lynchburg with his Richmond-based band Horsehead this Friday, February 22, for a show at Rivermont Pizza, he'll be on fairly familiar ground. And not just because he's played here before, both with the full Horsehead complement, and with longtime guitar-slinger Kevin Inge as the stripped-down duo the Dimmer Twins. No, Brown's ties to the Lynchburg area go much deeper.
    "I'm originally from Madison Heights," he says, when I'm catch him at home on a Saturday afternoon. "I went to Amherst County High School and all. . . It's where I grew up."
    Brown found his way to Richmond  in ’97, and and quickly cemented a lasting partnership with Inge, a formidable guitarist who's since expanded his repertoire to include keyboards and pedal steel. "We had a band called Drag Strip Syndicate," Brown recalls. "When that broke up, I decided to make a solo record. I just had a bunch of songs that Kevin was recording with me. This was in 2004. We started demoing stuff, and then we added people to play on the record. So, I figured we should just make it a band and call it a band. That was the beginning of Horsehead. I guess I've just never been one to be, like, 'here's my record that a bunch of people played on.'"
    Having bonded over a shared fondness for bold, bluesy guitar riffs, and earnest, no-frills, heartland rock with a touch of country twang, Brown and Inge have driven Horsehead, now rounded out by bassist Randy Mendicino and drummer Gregg Brooks, down a well-worn path toward a gutsy brand of anthemic, yet reflective Americana. "Kevin and I have been playing together for years and years and years," Brown says. "When you have any kind of relationship with somebody for that long, particularly a musical one, there's an unspoken connection. I can make obscure references, and he'll know exactly what I'm talking about because we've spent so much time around each other and we go home and listen to the same records."
    The new Sympathetic Vibrations, Horsehead's fourth full-length, opens on a pensive note, with Brown strumming sparely on an acoustic guitar as Inge paints the corners with soulful keyboards tones and haunting wisps of pedal steel. "Raise your head up to the sunlight, feel the heat on your face," Brown intones, his voice clenched tight, "We been hanging here for a while, we got time to waste." But there's little time wasted before electric guitars get to humming, and the band settle into the solid, Stonesy groove of "Darkened Streets," a hard-driving ode to hard-won transcendence that leans in the direction of the kind of epic rock Springsteen mined in the ’70s.
    Elsewhere, Horsehead get a little help from their Drive-By Truckers friend Jay Gonzalez, who adds some juke-joint piano stylings to the gritty "Big Sun," and sits in on two more of the disc's 13 tracks. And, banjo picking adds a kiss of bluegrass to the waltzing "God Damned the Rain to Fall," the most overtly country tune on an album that jangles, pops, and churns through Americana idioms without settling into a predictable Nashville rut.
    "People ask me what kind of music we play," offers Brown, "and you never want to hear that question because it's so hard to answer. But I always say that it's American rock and roll. Because it incorporates so much music. I mean, I love Sam Cooke and Al Green as much as I love George Jones and Tom Petty. It's all important to me. And it comes out in what we play. There's a little bit of soul, a little bit of country, and a whole lot of rock and roll. I love all of those things."
    Here's more of what Brown had to say about singing, songwriting, and taking the show on the road. . .

Q: Are you and Kevin a Jagger/Richards team when it comes to songwriting; or is it more like David Lowry and Johnny Hickman in Cracker, a Virginia band that I'm guessing you're familiar with?
A: Actually, our first bass player, Bob Rupe, was from Cracker. But, I've only ever known those guys in passing. And David doesn't live in Richmond anymore. We did end up in a lot of the same places back when Bob was in the band. I think Richmond is on that cusp, where you can hear the Southern influence in the music that comes out of here, but there's also that straight ahead rock and roll feel to it. Cracker did that real well.

Q: I think it's what people are calling the new Southern rock. . .

A: Yeah, it's not a bunch of dumb rednecks playing rock. It's a bunch of dumb rednecks playing new Southern rock. 

Q: I hear that. But there's also a healthy dose of the Stones in there. And there are strong hints of Springsteen as well.

A: We are big Stones fans. They made some great records in that period between '67 and '76. And Springsteen is in there, especially in my approach to songwriting. I mean, it may not sound like Springsteen once the whole band plays it together, but I really respect his songwriting. He had a certain era too, from "Born to Run" to "The River," where it was brilliant storytelling in three minutes. It's tough to do that. I really respect that art. So, when it comes to songwriting, big influences of mine are Springsteen and Tom Petty and, obviously, Bob Dylan. He's kind of the pinnacle of that.

Q: Yeah, it's amazing that Dylan is still out there doing it — writing new songs, and always touring. . .

A: It really is. I think there's some people that were intended only to do what they do. It's like him and Stevie Wonder are two guys who could only have ever played music. It would have been a travesty if they'd done anything else. And, with Dylan, I think he just doesn't have any choice except to keep doing it because, well, you just do it until you can't do it anymore. It's funny because I was talking to my dad about something like this earlier today. He's a Baptist preacher, and he was saying that it must be pretty tough to do all the traveling that I do to play some of the smaller shows I play. And I said, "yeah, but think about what you do" — he's been preaching for forty years now. I said, "you've never gotten rich from it, but you do it because you love it." I know he wouldn't quit unless he had to. So, I told him that that's how I feel about playing music. I wouldn't just stop, because I can't. It's what I love to do. And I can feel that in what Dylan does. You can tell he still loves it.

Q: I going to guess that that's why you and Kevin started doing the Dimmer Twins thing.

A: Exactly. If you have that need, you have to keep doing it. Sometimes I'll play shows by myself, and sometimes we do it as the Dimmer Twins. We love to include the whole band. But if they can't do it, then we're not going to stop traveling and playing because we can't. It can be tough some times for guys who have familial obligations to get out of town for gigs. But you have to keep the car running.

Q: What are you happiest about with the new album?

A: Well, the biggest thing I can say about it is that you can hear the influences, but you can't say that this song sounds like a particular artist because it sounds like us. On the previous albums, you could maybe pick out individual songs and say, that sounds like a Stones song, or that sounds like a Tom Petty song. I think we've matured to where it sounds like us with certain influences. That's the major progression. And, I would also say that the production has gotten better, thanks to Kickstarter. It's just unbelievable. Sometimes as a musician you start to think that nobody really cares if I'm doing this or not. You can start to feel sorry for yourself. But, when you have people contributing money to help you make a record, well, it shows you that they really do care that you're doing it. It's an amazing boost of confidence.

EELS, HAYDEN, AND JIM JAMES

DIFFERENT DUDES

The skewed sounds of Eels, Hayden, and My Morning Jacket's Jim James

By Matt Ashare |    

Posted February 8, 2013

Demos, home recordings, and rough-cut outtakes have been an integral part of the secret history of rock since, well, reel-to-reel machines made it possible for artists to commit sound to tape. The so-called "Basement Tapes," a collection of dozens tracks Bob Dylan recorded with the Band in and around Woodstock in 1967, is perhaps the most legendary treasure trove of such material, which was officially mined for Dylan's 1975 album The Basements Tapes, although well over 100 other recordings from the sessions have since appeared on compilations and bootlegs. The appeal of such gems from the mythical vault is that they carry the promise of capturing an artist in an unguarded moment, outside of the sterile walls of a pro-audio studio, unselfconsciously engaged in the process of creation, maybe even veering off script in revealing ways.
    Of course, the immediacy of the digital world, coupled with technological advances that have made it increasingly easy for artists to record and release material without submitting it to major-label gatekeepers for revue, has, over the past two decades, blurred the lines between what constitutes a demo/outtake, and a finished product. And we've got three new albums by three very different dudes that illustrate that point, each in its own unique way. There's Regions of Light and Sound of God, the full-length solo debut by Jim James, best known as the frontman in the trippy, Kentucky-bred, roots band My Morning Jacket; Us Alone, the seventh studio album by the quiet Canadian singer-songwriter Hayden (a/k/a Paul Hayden Dresser); and Wonderful, Glorious, the latest installment of idiosyncratic pop from Eels, a project built around the skewed sensibilities of multi-instrumentalist Mark Oliver Everett, who also goes by just plain "E."
    Hayden and Everett were two of the more notable young upstarts signed to big-budget major-label deals in the wake of Beck's big "Loser" breakthrough in the mid-’90s. Both were the object of bidding wars, and neither panned out particularly well, although Eels were eccentrically nerdy enough to gain a cult following for Everett (the only permanent member of the "group"), and Hayden's nascent grunge-folk seemed like it might grow into something beyond Beckian. Indeed, Everett has become something of an underground hero, as he's guided Eels through various incarnations, from perky modern-rock trio to quirky indie-pop orchestra. And, after a pair of early albums on Geffen, Hayden has continued to find comfortable homes for his brand of hushed and moody blues, including the Portland, Oregon boutique label Badman and, most recently, the Toronto-based indie powerhouse Arts & Crafts.
    James' trajectory with My Morning Jacket — an actual band, rather than a shapeshifting entity like Eels — has been more of a slow yet steady build that began with a pair of discs, in 1999 and 2001, on the small label Darla. By 2003, the band had signed with Dave Matthews' RCA imprint, ATO, and they were making a name for themselves as something of an alt-country jam band with a distinct indie-rock sensibility and a penchant for murky psychedelia. He's ventured beyond the MMJ fold several times in recent years, releasing an EP of George Harrison covers in 2009 as Yim Yames, partnering that same year with Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst in Monsters of Folk, and then teaming with alt-county blueblood Jay Farrar last year to commemorate the centennial of Woodie Guthrie's birth on New Multitudes.
    But, Regions of Light and Sound of God is James' first real solo album, in the sense that he wrote the songs, played most of the instruments (except drums on a couple tracks and the string arrangements), produced and engineered the sessions, and put his actual name on the cover. And, as mercurial as James can be, it's not a wholesale departure from the MMJ script, so much as it's a minimalist extrapolation from the sort of art-damaged roots experiments that have always been part of the his aesthetic.
    A simple, deliberate, vaguely soulful piano vamp is all that supports James etherial, reverb-drenched voice as "Regions" comes into hazy focus with "State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.)," a ruminative tune that quotes a nursery rhyme ("When the dawn breaks/The cradle will fall/Down will come baby/Cradle and all") and features an eerily fragile recitation of the vowels in its title. "I use state-of-the-art technology," James croons wearily, as a solid backbeat emerges to support the two piano chords he's riding, "Supposed to make for better living/But are we better human beings?"
    A funky guitar riff slithers into the mix around the three-minute mark. But, James mostly downplays the instrument he's known best for in favor of using keyboards and strings to ethereal effect on "Regions." There's some acoustic strumming on "A New Life," a simple, almost upbeat ditty that betrays James' fondness for George Harrison. And a a buzzing guitar figure intrudes noisily into the groovy, Eastern-tinged undulations of "Actress," one of several overtly spiritual excursions on an introspective disc that at least succeeds in revealing another side of the elusive character who fronts My Morning Jacket.
    Like James, Hayden handles just about everything on his new album. But that's is nothing new for him. Like Beck back in his early days, Hayden's a fully DIY dude, and Us Alone was recorded mostly alone at his home in Ontario. As he details in the autobiographical "Almost Everything," a rootsy folk-rocker built around spare piano chords, a lo-fi drum-machine backbeat, and some honking harmonica, "I'm recording once again/While my kid is upstairs in bed. . ." It's a song that begins back in 1994, when the music was "everything," and works it's way to the present day, with Hayden coyly conceding, "The music is still everything, well, almost everything."   
    There's an invitingly ramshackle quality to Us Alone. A guitar hums ominously as fingers steer a few organ notes toward the right chord, and, slowly, the pieces of a programmed rhythm track settle into place on "Motel," a ruminative track that seems to begin in the middle of a conversation. "I agree, we should leave, here in an hour, or better right now. . .," Hayden half-sings, his voice trailing off unsteadily at the end of each sentence fragment. The effect is at once unsettling and alluring: it's as if, by listening closely, you may eventually be privy to some dark truth. But Hayden's not your typical confessional singer-songwriter. While he can be blunt, as he is in the over 11-minute "Instructions," a funereal mood piece in which he matter-of-factly explains how he'd like his ashes spread after his death, more often his lyrics trace an elliptical path. "Just Give Me A Name," the disc's only straightforwardly folky acoustic strummer, offers one side of a conversation with a partner who's cheated, delivering details of the situation sparingly. And "Blurry Nights," a rocky duet with Lou Canon (Hayden's sister-in-law), alludes only to fragments of an illicit romantic encounter, yet still manages to convey in simple words a complex mix of emotions.
    If Hayden's from the less-is-more school of home recording, Eels leader Mark Everett tends toward the other end of the spectrum, where you might just hear a close-mic'd loop of the kitchen sink. His new Eels concoction, Wonderful, Glorious, was recorded at his house, but his is a place in LA that's wired for sound from basement to attic. And, if the crashing drums, noise guitars, and distorted synths on a track like garage-rocky "Peach Blossom" are any indication, there probably weren't any kids sleeping upstairs.
    Wonderful Glorious was produced somewhat organically with a band of multi-instrumentalists Everett put together to tour behind a trio of Eels albums he released in 2009/2010, and it has the feel of the kind of freewheeling, anything goes jam session the typically detail obsessed, and often brutally confessional Everett has rarely attempted. There's the Gorillaz-style retro-futurist jumble of "Bombs Away," a slithering glitch-rock ode to exacting revenge of some sort; the meandering atmospherics of "Accident Prone," an airy reflection on, well, happy accidents; and the relatively straightforward guitar churn of "New Alphabet," a gritty anthem about overcoming personal demons that brings to mind a less bluesy Tom Waits.
    All of which is well and good, except Everett doesn't seem to be particularly invested in any of the songs on Wonderful, Glorious. At least, it doesn't have the force of conviction, the same dark intensity, that Hayden and James bring to their latest projects. Wonderful, Glorious is a bit more fun, but only fleetingly so. The moods that Hayden and James evoke linger like an intoxicating scent, or perhaps a sublime secret.  

TEGAN AND SARA

TWIN PEAKS

Tegan and Sara try their hand a percolating synth pop

by Matt Ashare |   Posted February 1, 2013

Now in their thirties, Tegan and Sara have  packed away their acoustic guitars and taken a dive  tween pop.

Okay. So, a couple of things struck me as a little bit strange last year. Not bad strange. Not good strange. Just strange in an interesting sorta way, like maybe there's a pattern or a trend developing here. First, there was Some Nights, the meta-pop blockbuster album by fun. (who I will henceforth simply refer to as Fun), a trio of former indie rockers led by Nate Ruess (formerly of the Format). Released in February, it spawned three huge singles and garnered six Grammy nominations. Oh, and it didn't seem like the sort of ironic gesture you'd expect from a trio of former indie rockers led by Ruess). It seemed, well, genuine.

       And then there was dance-diva party-girl Ke$ha, who showed up months before the eagerly anticipated release of her sophomore album, guest vocalizing on the opening track of a strange little project by twisted alt-rockers the Flaming Lips called The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. No irony there either, at least not as far as I could tell. And then, in late November, there was Warrior, the aforementioned eagerly anticipated sophomore album by dance-diva party-girl Ke$ha, who I'd prefer to refer to as Kesha but one can't expect to win them all. Warrior not only featured a cameo by proto-punk poster boy Iggy Pop, but some dude named Nate Ruess (formerly of the Format) was listed as co-writing the unintentionally controversial first single ("Die Young"). And, if you got the deluxe edition, it included a tune produced by the Flaming Lips, of twisted alt-rock fame.

       If two's a coincidence and three's a trend, then it goes to figure that something interesting, in a strange sorta way, might be in the cultural works, especially since I forgot to mention that last year also saw the release of an unfortunately disappointing major-label album by the Gossip, a once very hip indie-punk trio from Arkansas-by-way-of-Olympia who threw caution to the wind and tried gussying up their sound with arena-rock production and a little synth sheen, although I think the latter may have been ironic. Not that there isn't a long and storied tradition of such transformations, like when Blondie, punkish denizens of NYC's seedy CBGB's scene, embraced the enemy (at the time it was known as disco), and scored mainstream moolah with "Heart of Glass." Plus, a lot of hip alt/punk/indie-rockers have unironically touted the intrinsic artistic value of Abba and the Carpenters and I think even Kelly Clarkson, although I'm not 100% on that. But, I'm fairly certain most of us can agree that there's a qualitative difference between throwing "SOS" or "Miss Independent" on a mixtape and spending lots of time and money trying to sound like Abba or Clarkson.

       In any case, nagging concerns that my zeitgeist radar might be on the fritz have been anecdotally and rather amusingly put on hold with the arrival of Heartthrob, the primly and not at all ironically titled seventh album by Tegan and Sara, a "band,” or as allmusic.com calls them, a "folk-rock duo" that take their name from a pair of identical twin sisters, Tegan Rain and Sara Keirsten Quinn. Born September 19, 1980, they were 18 when they won Calgary's esteemed Garage Warz battle of the bands, and not much older than that when their major label debut, The Business of Art, came out on Vapor, a Warner Bros. imprint run by Neil Young and his manager. They were awfully cute, convincingly earnest, and pretty good at harmonizing wholesomely about the intense ennui of being awfully cute, and convincingly earnest in 2000, the year Brittney Spears was having her way with the charts with "Oops. . . I Did It Again." They even got to tour with Neil Young. And, by 2005, Tegan and Sara had set some sort of dubious record when the thoughtful TV drama Grey's Anatomy featured seven of their songs, and the White Stripes covered one of them ("Walking Like a Ghost). They'd essentially become the indie equivalent of Indigo Girls, or something like that. Which isn't a bad gig, right?

       Well, maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be because, by 2007's The Con, the twins were moving off script. They dropped the folk and pivoted toward another awfully cute and convincingly earnest genre, emo-pop, with help from Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, Weezer's Matt Sharp, and some dude from AFI. Apparently, that didn't quite cut it in terms of artistic fulfillment or, perhaps, commercial returns.

       So, having made the crucial and often painful crossover from twentysomething to thirtysomethingscarier, Tegan and Sara are in the midst of a major rebranding operation. No longer content to reflect introspectively on the paradoxical complexities of the examined life, they've lightened their mental load, bought into the pop narcotic, packed away the acoustic guitars, and put themselves in the hands of Greg Kurstin, a producer/song-doctor who's credits coincidentally include Ke$ha and Kelly Clarkson. Bingo!

       It's a pretty major left turn, one that makes up for any lack of subtlety with unabashedly blatant disregard for anything resembling subtlety. Which is to say, Heartthrob doesn't waste time easing any longtime fans of Tegan and Sara outta the contemplative coffee house and onto the dirty dancefloor. "Let's make things physical/I won't treat you like you're typical," the sisters sing on "Closer," the disc's sexed-up opener, which also has a couple of awkward lines that I'm pretty sure address the question of who's going to be on top once they're, you know, in bed. (For reasons of taste, I will, at this point, refrain from pointing out that those sentiments are voiced by twin sisters, raising all kinds of interesting questions that I'm not even going to allude to.)

       The production is pure sugar, with a thumping house electro-beat anchoring plenty of percolating synths and an ebullient melody that fizzes like a freshly cracked can of Fresca. That’s about as rique as Tegan and Sara get on Heartthrob. Like most of the songs here, the oddly upbeat “Goodbye” is, as advertised, a polite kiss-off to a guy who just wasn’t cutting it. The slower, more deliberate, and kinda sad “I Was a Fool” actually includes the line, “I was a fool for love,” which is marginally better than “I was a fool 4 luv.” And, “Drove Me Wild,” with its pulsing synths, is peppered with insights like, “When I picture you/I think of your smile/And it drives me wild.” (“Drives Me Mild” would have been a funnier, if no less appropriate, title.)

       Tegan and Sara may have aged a bit. But they’re still awfully cute and perhaps a little too convincingly earnest given the general gist of “Heartthrob” — i.e., synthetic production meets synthetic emotions in a sanitized world of pitch-corrected harmonies. I mean, “How Come You Don’t Want Me” would be a clever spoof of teen angst, only it’s not because the girls, their voices sounding oddly robotic, are genuinely posing that question to a dude who at least one of them — I’m not sure which — has seen walking by her house with a different girl.

       So, this is where I do an about-face and, overlooking the perversity of two grown women raiding their high school diaries for song content, concede that Heartthrob is a whole lotta fun, if not a little bit Fun-ish. Tegan and Sara haven’t sold out so much as they’ve doubled down on an investment that might just yield some serious Gossip Girl exposure. Or, something like that. I’m not sure where this clash of cultures might lead, but my spirits are buoyed by track number eight, the movingly thoughtful “Love They Say.” As Tegan and Sara sing it, “You don’t need to wonder/If love will make us stronger/There’s nothing love can’t do.” Amen.