notes - archives - september 2004

9.1.04
I have only been to two concerts in the last four years (Modest Mouse in 2000 and Godspeed You Black Emperor! in 2003), but it looks like I'll be going to two concerts this month. First up is the Decemberists, one of my favorite bands of the last couple of years, who are playing the Recher Theater on the 26th, followed only two days later by Wilco at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Tickets for Wilco went on sale on Saturday morning, and I had every intention of getting up at 9:30 to start jockeying for position when the tickets went on sale at 10, but I stayed up late, slept til noon, and then forgot about the tickets until after lunch. Luckily they weren't sold out yet, although we did end up in the balcony, but as an added bonus, the Fiery Furnaces (whose Blueberry Boat has really been growing on me) are opening.

That's actually going to be a pretty busy week for me: Sunday is the Decemberists, Monday I have class, Tuesday is Wilco, Wednesday I do my internship hours, and Thursday we have our final Orioles game of the season. That's pushing the my weekly activity threshold, but I can't wait to see those shows.

9.2.04
Animal Collective's "Leaf House" (from their latest record, Sung Tongs) is an amazingly excellent song. It's almost worth the price of admission on its own, but when coupled with gems like "Who Could Win a Rabbit" and "We Tigers", this is definitely a disc worth investing in. It's very, very odd, but very, very good, like the Fiery Furnances' Blueberry Boat. But weirder.

9.3.04
It's my sister Tori's birthday today, and this year I decided to send her some of the CDs she seemed to like from our road trip to Iowa: Greetings from Michigan from Sufjan Stevens, The Electric Version from the New Pornographers, Fingers Crossed from Architecture in Helsinki, and Hearts of Oak from Ted Leo. My favorite of these is probably the Ted Leo (can't wait for his new one), but I'm pretty fond of the others as well. No one in my family really shares my passion for or taste in music, but I guess Tori comes the closest, and so it was very cool to see her enjoying this music. And now she can enjoy it whenever she wants.

9.7.04
The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat has officially crossed the threshold from compelling new release with lots of good stuff to absorb to full-on obsession. It takes a while to get used the Furnaces' special brand of song construction, but once you get it, you get it. They pack more stuff into the average song than a lot of bands do into a whole record (granted, that's a little easier to do when your average track length is in the neighborhood of seven minutes, but still). My favorite song right now is "Chief Inspector Blancheflower", especially the dialogue in the middle between two brothers, but "Quay Cur", "Blueberry Boat", "Mason City", and "Chris Michaels" are all outstanding as well. Really, everything on the record is great, but since those are the longest tracks, they just naturally have more good stuff in them. I'm almost looking forward to seeing them more in concert when they open for Wilco than I am Wilco (and I love Wilco and have never seen them live before), but I'm already disappointed because I know that in an opening slot, they won't have enough time to perform everything from Blueberry Boat.

9.8.04
Only 20 more days until we finally get to hear Smile, Brian Wilson's follow-up to Pet Sounds. I've been pretty pleased with the crop of new releases this year, but it's going to be hard to top this one if it's even half as good as the demos that I've been listening to for the past few months.

9.9.04
So that's that. I wondered how long I would end up keeping the message on my answering machine where Tom called from from a Good Life concert and held up his phone in the crowd to record the concert until my machine hung up on him. The song it recorded was one of my favorites, "Some Bullshit Escape", and I'd had it on the machine since March of 2003, but now it's gone, accidentally deleted by Julie while she was working her way through yesterday's messages. <sigh>

9.10.04
I love my iPod with a passion that borders on obsessive, but man, those ads are getting fucking annoying.

9.13.04
I really love Lyle Lovett, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what ever possessed him to collaborate with Randy Newman. Ugh.

9.14.04
There was a time when Helmet was my favorite band. Meantime and Betty are two of my all-timers, both deserving a 10 out of 10, and their live show was one of the tightest I've ever seen. I even set up a web site dedicated to them back when the web was young. And so I was really psyched a couple of months ago when I saw they had a new record, Size Matters, scheduled for release today (it's now been pushed back to October 5 after Page Hamilton broke his collarbone and had to postpone the supporting tour).

Unfortunately, it's terrible, like Liz-Phair's-recent-eponymous-CD terrible, career-ending terrible. Page sounds like he's actually trying to sing, instead of remembering that the reason he used that harsh bark in the first place is because he can't sing. Luckily, I was able to discern the suckiness of the record by listening to clips on the band's official web site, so now I can save my money for something good, like the Black Keys. I mourn you Helmet, and I wish things were different, but I'm not going to give you any more of my money. Not for this record, anyway.

9.15.04
My iPod has been feeding me a steady diet of Jane's Addiction's Nothing's Shocking, which I'm really enjoying. I'd forgotten how great this record was, and I'm surprised to find out how well it holds up given the glam overtones and the funk influences that the Red Hot Chili Peppers made unfashionable by the end of the 90s. Most bands try their whole careers and don't record five songs as good as the first half of this record; just brilliant.

9.16.04
Broken Social Scene. "Cause = Time". A good song for work recently. That and "Little House of Savages" by the Walkmen.

9.17.04
I may finally be ready to become a Bjork fan.

9.20.04
I made my first new purchases in a few weeks this weekend, which should keep me busy until the 28th when Brian Wilson's Smile finally hits stores. I really wanted to get Arcade Fire's Funeral, but as usual, it wasn't in stock at the local store (based on their previous history of getting heavily hyped indie releases from little-known bands on the shelves, they'll probably get it in a month or so), so instead I picked up the Black Keys' Thickfreakness (and also noticed that they have finally started stocking their earlier releases since the release of their latest record, Rubber Factory), Madvillain's Madvillainy (an underground hip hop record that I've heard good things about), Bjork's Medulla (this is my first Bjork purchase since her first album with the Sugarcubes, but I've been listening a lot to a borrowed copy of Debut recently, and I liked what I heard in the iTunes sample clips from Medulla), and the Faint's much anticipated follow-up to Danse Macabre, Wet from Birth.

They all sound pretty good so far, but I'm spending the most time with the Faint——they're the ones responsible, in my opinion, for the recent new wave/no wave revival that includes bands like !!!, Franz Ferdinand, the Liars (well, their first record, anyway), the Rapture, Hot Hot Heat, etc. But most of the bands that followed in the Faint's footsteps have released two records since Danse Macabre, the Faint's last studio release (they put out a Danse Macabre remix album last year to capitolize on the growing dancepunk craze, but that hardly counts as a new release), so it was imperative that the band not only catch up to the bands who came after them, but also blow right past them. And for the most part, I think they have——a lot of these other bands are drifting dangerously close to a disco revival, which is moving even farther back in time, but with Wet from Birth, the Faint have managed to stay true to their 80s-inspired synth-driven sound while still moving forward and incorporating new sounds into the mix. The only bad thing about the new record is that it has only 10 tracks and clocks in at just over half an hour, which is a little disappointing given the three years since Danse Macabre. And though I hope that we don't have a similar gap between Wet from Birth and the next record, this one was definitely worth the wait.

9.21.04
Bands Reunited is back (or was back, I guess, since we Tivo'd the episodes a couple weeks ago), and although it's still a pretty good show, so far it's not nearly as compelling and emotionally satisfying as the first season. I also suspect they're running out of bands to reunite, since this run is only four episodes compared to eight for the original run. This might be the kind of show that you can pull off every decade or so, but I don't think they're going to be able to get very much more out of it in the near future.

9.22.04
By the way, the Black Keys fucking rock.

9.22.04
Hmmm...American Idiot. To buy or not to buy? I haven't bought anything of Green Day's since Insomniac, the follow up to their phenomenally successful breakthough disc, Dookie. I loved Dookie, just like pretty much everyone else who was buying guitar-based pop at the time, but always felt a little guilty about it because I knew it was just a sugary ripoff of the more mainstream work of the Clash (who I adore beyond reason). Insomniac wasn't bad, but I just didn't hear anything that new there, so I didn't really follow the band's career after that point (although I do recall, as do most of you, I'm sure, the irritating overuse of "Good Riddance", better known as "The Time of Your Life"). And Green Day is almost singlehandedly responsible for foisting the current crop of know-nothing punk-pop sugarcubes on us, empty calories like blink-182, Sum 41, Good Charlotte, and Simple Plan, so they lose more points there.

But American Idiot has been getting a lot of praise for its use of various non-rock instruments, its rock-opera concept-album vibe, and its epic song lengths (four of the nine tracks clock in at eight minutes or more, which in the 2:30 punk world make up a whole album by themselves). It's just the kind of bizarre comeback album that I can see myself getting on board with, like Loretta Lynn's collaboration with Jack White, Van Lear Rose, or Johnny Cash's rebirth with Rick Rubin, American Recordings (or even, god help me, William Shatner's upcoming work with Ben Folds, Has Been). However, listening to the song samples on iTunes, I don't hear much on American Idiot that sounds all that different from what I remember from Dookie, so we'll have to see. Maybe sometime a month from now, when there aren't any good new releases, and I see it in the used bin for $9, it will seem more appealing.

9.23.04
I don't think that a band should be allowed to put out a live album unless they have at least three studio albums to their credit. Unless, of course, it's Jane's Addiction.

9.24.04
A post on A Fool's Fate (specifically the first paragraph) reminded me of a favorite lyric from Fiona Apple's "Fast As You Can" off of When the Pawn...:

I'm tired of whys
Choking on whys
Just need a little because, because

Then I had to hear When the Pawn..., which really is one of my favorite records of the past ten years despite my initial difficulty with embracing Fiona's spastic psycho stage persona. And as I was listening to it and remembering all the reasons that it dominated my playlist for months after I purchased it, I got even more pissed off about Sony's recent decision to shelve Extraordinary Machine, her latest offering produced by supergenius Jon Brion, because they can't figure out which song to release as the single (which is, of course, code for "We don't like this record, so go back in the studio and make us a new one that we can build an MTV campaign around").

Let's look at the big labels' track record with these things: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, shelved for over a year after Reprise couldn't find a single: big hit. Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, put on hold for eight months because Sony/Epic (Fiona's current label, by the way) wasn't quite sure what to do with it: monster hit. And now ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's recently completed album has been pushed back to next spring by Interscope for similar reasons. Come on, you idiots. You've invested a lot of money in letting these bands slowly build a loyal following, and you've seen that it pays off in the end. But you have to RELEASE THE FUCKING ALBUMS. Is everyone in the music industry a moron?

9.27.04
The Decemberists are gods. I've been in love with them since the first time I heard their music, but seeing them live adds a whole new dimension to my understanding of the band. Unfortunately, I didn't get back from seeing them til pretty late last night, so this is all I'm going to write for now, but I'll give more details tomorrow.

9.28.04
I haven't finished my Decemberists write-up yet, and tonight we've got the Fiery Furnaces opening for Wilco, which should be a ridiculously good combo. So tomorrow I'll have the Decemberists recap, followed on Thursday by a recounting of the show tonight. Probably.

9.29.04
We went to the Decemberists show on Sunday night at the Recher Theatre in Towson, which I'd never been to before but which seems to regularly get decent acts (They Might Be Giants and the Old '97s both played there recently, and ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is slated for next month). The show was supposed to start at 8, so we decided to head into town and have dinner around 7, figuring that would give us enough time to get to the show before it got too much past 8. I wasn't that into the opening act, the French Kicks, but it's always good to give a band a chance to impress you with their live performance.

According to the schedule, there was just supposed to be one opening act, so we figured that the Decemberists would be on by 9:30 at the latest. However, when we arrived at the theatre just as the opening band was starting its set, it was pretty clear that the guitarist-drummer duo playing quiety on stage were not the French Kicks. It turned out that there were two opening acts, and this one was a band called Norfolk & Western, who happen to share a drummer with the Decemberists. They used tape loops to provide additional percussion, orchestral elements, and sometimes even vocal harmonies and guitars, which I found a little disconcerting. I mean, at least with a band like They Might Be Giants, who use a drum machine, you know that aside from the drums, everything else you hear is being performed live. With this guy, how could I be sure any of it was real? Anyway. They weren't too bad——you could hear a little of the softer side of Sparklehorse, or the harder side of Elliott Smith——but I'm not sure if I was taken enough by any of the tunes to add him to my record collection. He played a fairly short set and was off the stage shortly after 8:30.

Next up was a band called the French Kicks, who are trying to ride the current NYC obsession with the early 80s into their own Strokes or Franz Ferdinand-style success. Which is a problem, because all they did was remind me of those other bands without giving me a reason to like them. They also borrowed liberally from the Walkmen and Hot Hot Heat, and the singer had the perfect stoned-out dead eyes that you want in an ubercool frontman, but it just wasn't working for me. There was a very excitable girl next to me, however, who enjoyed the show immensely even though her dancing——and I'm being kind by calling it that——seemed to have a half-second tolerance for the beat and her cigarette cherry came dangerously close to burning anyone who made the mistake of coming within a three foot radius of her. She would scream out, "1985!" in between each song, which I gather is their biggest single, and they finally played it for her for their second-to-last song. They weren't terrible, but they didn't do very much to convince me that I should go spend money on their records.

The French Kicks finished up around 9:20 or so, and by 9:40 the stage was set for the Decemberists. They made their way on stage around ten to ten, and launched into one of the tightest, more joyous sets I've seen a band play. The singer, Colin Meloy, wasn't at all what I expected, looking like a scruffy American version of XTC's Andy Partridge, bookish glasses and all. He played rhythm guitar and sang, and he was joined on stage by a bassist who alternated between a regular electric bass and an upright bass; a lead guitarist who switched between a couple of electrics, a twelve string, and a banjo; a multi-instrumentalist who played organ, keyboards, accordian, and one of those weird little keyboard things you can blow in to; and finally the female drummer we had seen earlier with Norfolk & Western.

I don't remember the exact setlist, but the opening song was "The Soldiering Life", followed by a song I didn't recognize and which I assume is from their new record, slated to come out early next year. After that it was some mix of the following:

Leslie Anne Levine
Billy Liar
The Legionnaire's Lament
Odalisque
Grace Cathedral Hill
Clementine
Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Song for Myla Goldberg

There was also another new song called "The Sporting Life" somewhere in the middle there, and there may be one or two others I'm forgetting. The closing song for the main set was, I think, "The Chimbley Sweep", which culminated with the each member of the band getting a solo before the whole composition disintegrated into a cacophonous mess. The band members sunk to the ground as their song sunk into discord, and when it finally died, they lay quiet for a moment on the stage before exiting.

After a few minutes, Colin wandered back onstage alone to start the encore with an acoustic cover of Joanna Newsom's "Bridges and Balloons" (I only know this because he announced it, and looking over their other recent setlists, I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get the Smiths' "Ask" or Echo & the Bunnymen's "Bring on the Dancing Horses"). He followed that with "Red Right Ankle", which is an acoustic Decemberists tune, and then closed the show with "I Was Meant for the Stage". On the CD, this song starts out with just Colin and a guitar, but other instruments gradually work their way in, and this was the case in the live performance, too: as their parts approached, the other band members crept back on stage and seamlessly joined in. It was the perfect way to end the show.

9.30.04
It should tell you something about how busy I've been recently that it has now been two days since Brian Wilson released Smile, an album I've been waiting for literally since before I was born, and I haven't had a chance to pick up a copy yet.