Filling the void

Columbus is certainly still feeling the effects of Little Brother's closing, but it's nice to see other venues attempting to pick up the slack recently. These are/were some noteworthy shows just from last Thursday to this Tuesday, and I'm probably forgetting a couple:

Thurs:
British Sea Power, The Basement
Lewis and Clarke w/ The Black Swans, Surly Girl
Aids Wolf, Cafe Bourbon St.

Friday:
Xiu Xiu w/ Thao Nguyen and El Jesus de Magico, Skully's
The Kyle Sowashes w/ Miranda Sound, Andyman's

Saturday:
Dave Fischoff, Cafe Bourbon St.
Prezens, Wexner Center

Tuesday:
Throw Me the Statue, Skully's (free; live review to come)
Jens Lekman, Wexner Center

Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit - Cafe Bourbon St., 3-22-08

Recently I was listening to Psychedelic Horseshit through headphones, and halfway through the song there was no sound coming through the right earbud. Normally, this would cause me to check my headphone connection to see if the jack had become partially unplugged. But I didn’t. I just assumed it was purposeful, and I didn’t realize it was a faulty connection until the next song started.

The fact that I didn’t check is telling. Horseshit’s sound is messiness to the max, the exact opposite of a headphone album. On the band’s Siltbreeze full-length, Magic Flowers Droned, and on Columbus Discount Records seven-inch Who Let the Dogs Out, it’s as if every instrument, including singer Matt Whitehurst’s voice, was dragged across sandpaper before being recorded in low fidelity. Every song is scratched and scraped, a jumbled muddle of fuzzy guitars, synth organ and brittle drums.

At Cafe Bourbon St. on Saturday night, it was the same story. But what makes the band compelling, along with headliners and fellow shitgazers Times New Viking, is that cloaked underneath that scarred exterior and disaffected aesthetic are pop tunes.

One of the best examples is Horseshit’s “Bad Vibrations,” a song the Bourbon St. crowd chanted along to as Whitehurst spewed the refrain with a snarl: “I’m picking up bad vibrations everywhere that I go. I’m picking up bad vibrations from everyone that I know.” It’s a purposeful reference to the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” a clever way of revealing the band’s intentions for taking simple pop songs and deconstructing them almost to the point of obliteration, but still leaving that scrap of a hook that you may just barely decipher once, but with a little patience and willingness to damage your eardrums, will begin to reveal itself more and more.

A fair amount of the band’s short set felt improvised, as bassist and kindred spirit Kevin DeBroux--also the sole static member of Pink Reason--followed Whitehurst’s lead and occasionally banged some notes on a Korg that teetered on top of a stack of milk crates. Drummer Rich Johnston held the beat (usually) on a stripped-down kit that featured a cardboard box with a cinder block inside instead of a bass drum, as is his custom. Not surprisingly, it was barely audible. Johnston also stuck a mic inside a saxophone at the end of the set and squealed for a bit too long.

Times New Viking is like Psychedelic Horseshit’s older brother, a band in the same fuzzy vein, but with more of a pop sensibility and a record on super-indie label Matador. The show was a sort of homecoming for TNV, playing its home-base venue after weeks on the road. The place was full for Horseshit, but it was absolutely packed to bursting capacity for Times New Viking. The entire front section of the bar turned into a giant mosh pit that had frightened girlfriends retreating back to the safe zone.

“We are not Vampire Weekend,” drummer/singer Adam Elliott announced as the band took the stage, just in case there was any confusion with the other blogosphere buzz band. TNV sounded at home at Cafe Bobo, keeping its set loose and its chemistry tight while favoring mostly older songs, including one the band hadn’t played since 2005. I’ve come to love Rip It Off, so I was a bit disappointed with the lack of newer material, but the fervor of the band’s performance mostly made up for it. On vocals and keys, Beth Murphy looked and sounded entirely more comfortable than she did at the recent Wexner Center show. The trio are bonified Columbus rock stars, and it showed.

There’s a reason some people prefer the term “shit-pop” over “shitgaze” when describing Times New Viking’s sound. “Devo and Wine,” “Teenage Lust!” and “DROP-OUT” were perfect examples of crowd sing-alongs that easily get lodged in your head for days.

Yuppies from Omaha screamed with an intensity I haven’t seen in a while, but it wasn’t contagious. The trio mostly took turns screaming, and I’m pretty sure the guitarist’s voice hadn’t changed yet, so these guys will have plenty of time to refine their sound. There’s plenty of potential and passion there, but I’d like to see them develop some tunes that are a bit less predictable.

I never caught the name of the second band on the bill, but it didn’t matter because it sounded like a high school band playing Against Me covers. Openers RTFO Bandwagon were obviously unrehearsed, with at least two false starts, an inordinately out-of-tune guitar and Horseshit’s borrowed drummer, who seemed perpetually lost. But despite all that, the band was the most impressive of the openers, playing jittery, catchy tunes with playful yet earnest vocals. With some more practice, this band’s art pop could take off. The sheepish-looking tambourine player probably isn’t needed, though.

More photos here.

mp3: Psychedelic Horseshit - New Wave Hippies

Counting Crows - Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Adam Duritz, the face and voice behind Counting Crows, has mastered the art of sad-sack rock. He proved that on the band’s debut, August and Everything After, now a ’90s classic that would probably be cited as an influence by more bands if they weren’t too hip to admit it. There aren’t many singers in mainstream rock who can lament like Duritz.

But on August’s follow-up, Recovering the Satellites, the revamped band proved it could rock, too. There were still slow numbers like “A Long December,” but with the addition of new guitarists (of which there are now three), sparse guitars were replaced by surprisingly distorted ones on several angsty rockers.

It’s in those extreme ends of the sonic spectrum that Duritz is at his best. The gray area in between is where the band tends to get tripped up. Occupying that space was 1999’s This Desert Life, which failed to make a lasting impression. Hard Candy in 2002 was spotty, as well. The album had some sparkling pop songs, but Counting Crows had lost much of its visceral quality, bounding unabashedly into Adult Contemporary Land. It seemed a natural progression for the band to contribute a forgettable track to the Shrek 2 soundtrack a couple of years later.

Which brings us to Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, a promising release mainly because the concept of the album represents what the band usually does best. The record is divided into two parts: Saturday Nights features uptempo rockers produced by Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, The Pixies), and Sunday Mornings, produced mostly by Brian Deck (Iron and Wine, Josh Ritter), represents the more mellow side of Counting Crows.

Saturday Nights kicks off mightily with “1492,” establishing the edgy feeling of side A with a tune in the vein of Satellites’ “Angels of the Silences,” complete with a spot-on guitar solo during which Duritz lets loose a Dave Grohl-style scream. The frustrated lyrics fit the unchained mood of the song as Duritz cries out, “I am the king of everything. I am the king of nothing.”

As usual, the solipsistic songs find Duritz hurling himself toward various forms of self-destruction, especially on the Saturday Nights material. He never pretends to have anything completely figured out, particularly in regards to matters of faith. On “Sundays” he sings, “I don’t believe in anything.” But on “Cowboys,” the strongest song on the album, he backpedals, saying, “I’ll wait for you where Saturday’s a memory, and comes to gather me into the arms of God, who’ll welcome me because I believe.”

Side B, Sunday Mornings, mostly fails in its attempt to capture the hangover of the previous night, instead feeling like a second-rate repackaging of former Counting Crows songs. Part of that is Duritz’s predictable phrasing and word choice that feel way too familiar. In “Washington Square,” he elongates “songbirrrrd” just like “sunburrrrn” from “Raining in Baltimore” and refers to a “blanket of stars” just like the “blanket of starlight” from “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby.” The repetition of “Can you see me” in “Insignificant” evokes “Have You Seen Me Lately?” all too much.

The most blatant lyric recycling is found on “I Dream of Michelangelo,” which comes from a line found in “Angels of the Silences.” While certainly intentional, it also smacks of a transparent attempt to reclaim the band’s former glory. That disingenuous feeling, combined with some lazy songwriting, makes these slower tunes overly sentimental rather than moving. And Duritz’s tendency to reach for an emotional peak by repeating phrases has worked in the past, but on these tunes it often dampens the impact instead. The ad nauseam “Come back to me” at the end of “On a Tuesday in Amsterdam Long Ago” is a classic case of Duritz overdoing it.

So the promise of a dichotomized album with two equally powerful parts is never fully delivered. But if you want to play producer and take it all apart, Saturday Nights would make a fairly solid EP on its own, and for a laid-back coda to help it go down easy, just tack “Le Ballet D’or” on the end. Nobody wants a hangover to last too long, anyway.

Anti-Springsteen martyr

I don't like Bruce Springsteen, and I'm in the vast minority on this. I can't really explain why, because I like bands he has heavily influenced--Arcade Fire, The Hold Steady, etc. I just find his music, well, cheesy. It doesn't do anything for me.

But I found a kindred spirit. Apparently a woman in Australia stabbed her boyfriend, Kevin Watson, because he didn't want to listen to the Bruce. The woman, Karen Lee Cooper, is quoted in the article as saying, "I mean, who doesn't like Bruce Springsteen?" Kevin Watson and I obviously don't, and I salute him for sticking to his guns and inadvertently becoming the first anti-Springsteen martyr. May there be more converted to the dislike of Springsteen for years to come because of Mr. Watson (though hopefully no more stabbings).

Springsteen will be at the Schottenstein Center March 24. I won't.

Punch Brothers - Southern Theatre, 3/7

While every fish fry and high school basketball game was canceled on Friday night due to the Blizzard of 2008, CAPA decided to go ahead with the Punch Brothers concert at the Southern Theatre. To be honest, I wasn’t excited about driving downtown in the quickly accumulating snow to cover the show.

But it turns out CAPA was right, and I was wrong. Those who ventured out had the privilege of witnessing a bluegrass quintet with limitless talent. And besides, despite the testimony of overexcited TV news crews, the roads really weren’t that bad.

Mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile is the bandleader of the Punch Brothers, having garnered wide critical acclaim from his time in Nickel Creek and his impressive solo albums. Even though Thile just turned 27, he’s a seasoned performer, having released his first solo album at age 12, rightfully earning the tag “child prodigy.” You can apply just about any superlative to his mandolin picking, and his voice ain’t bad, either--a pleasant Toad the Wet Sprocket-style tenor.

Thile assembled this lineup of musicians for his 2006 album, How to Grow a Woman from the Ground, later re-dubbing the group as the Punch Brothers (taken from Mark Twain’s short story “Punch, Brothers, Punch!“) for the band’s Punch album released a couple of weeks ago. It was apparent from the performance that he’s found a kinship among the musicians, who must be recognized by name: fiddler Gabe Witcher, banjo-picker Noam Pikelny, guitarist Chris Eldridge and upright bass player Greg Garrison.

One of the dangers for musicians who have complete mastery of their instruments is a tendency to be overly technical and unrestrained to the point that little or no emotion comes through in the songs. No one doubts Yngwie Malmsteen’s guitar prowess, but who wants to actually listen to his songs? The Punch Brothers didn’t fall into that trap.

The group’s expert playing and well-placed restraint was on full display during the 42-minute piece “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” which was divided into four movements as it is on Punch. Another personal bias disclosure to put this in context: I don’t like long, extended jams. Usually I find them extremely tiresome and unnecessary. So I was again surprised to find the suite engaging and wonderfully creative, combining elements of classical music, jazz, rock, blues and more to create an entirely new brand of progressive bluegrass.

Thile incorporated lyrics into the long-form composition as well, most of which are drawn from the relationship with his former wife, the aftermath of the divorce and the vagaries of youth. In the first movement he describes a scene in which he drives to a fountain in a park “where he used to play when he was young. He’s gonna wash off in front of God and everyone.” The second movement, probably the most emotionally compelling, is interspersed with the line “I’m over it.” You might even say a couple of the movements have a chorus, though it always left room for some improvisation. Movement four had the quickest pace and really showcased the players’ virtuosity.

All that said, if compositions like that had made up the entire concert, it would have inevitably become boring. So covers of the Strokes “Heart in a Cage” and the White Stripes’ “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” were welcome additions. And since Thile claimed the Southern Theatre was “one of the best-sounding halls I’ve ever played in,” the group decided to do a lovely rendition of the Norman Blake tune “Green Light on the Southern.”

“You’re an Angel and I’m Gonna Cry” was the only ballad of the evening, and featured a mostly solo Thile singing the song’s title to a melody similar to Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” but with a much softer edge. “Wayside (Back in Time)” ended the evening, and once the show was over, I wouldn’t have minded hitting the replay button and going back in time myself.

What Made Milwaukee Famous - What Doesn't Kill Us

The new album from What Made Milwaukee Famous is called What Doesn’t Kill Us, but it probably shouldn’t be. According to Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West, the common way to complete the album title’s epigram is “makes us stronger.” The implication doesn’t really work, because whatever didn’t kill this band also neglected to make its sophomore album stronger.

WMMF hails from Austin, not Milwaukee; the moniker is likely from the Jerry Lee Lewis song of the same name. The band released its debut, Trying to Never Catch Up, on Barsuk in 2006 after self-releasing a previous version in 2004. It was a promising first album, enough to earn the band a coveted slot on Austin City Limits before it was even signed. Now, the five-piece is surely hoping to build on the positive momentum with its newest release and a tour with Louis XIV that will stop at the Basement for a sold-out show on March 21 (one of CD101’s Low Dough shows).

Sparklehorse’s Chris Michaels produced What Doesn’t Kill Us, and he seems to favor a shiny, polished sound. So much so that there’s an undeniable flavor of the current radio-friendly incarnation of emo/pop punk beneath the album’s surface, mostly stemming from the processed guitars that punctuate songs like “Cheap Wine” with enough neat and tidy power chords to fill a Simple Plan single.

What Made Milwaukee Famous also elicits a lot of comparisons to Spoon, but there are far fewer eccentricities here than in fellow Austinite Brit Daniel’s band. “Sultan” is probably the closest Spoon clone on the album, but it comes off as a poor-man’s version, like bargain-brand Toasty O’s that look the same as Cheerios but are never quite as tasty.

“For the Birds” is one of the album’s best tracks--breezy power-pop that conjures some of Butch Walker’s more successful solo material. “The Right Place” would be a good, tight two-minute pop song if it weren’t for the fairly inane lyrics. The song opens with front man Michael Kingcaid singing, “Plead with me and beg me not to stay so you can still get stoned every day.” “To Each His Own” centers around a watered-down “American Idiot”-style guitar riff, and “Prevailing Wind” shows the band at its most uninteresting, channeling ultra-average Clear Channel rock. And so on and so on.

Perhaps I’m overstating the case here. WMMF does have a good pop intellect and a penchant for choruses that are easy to sing along to. But the sum of its parts makes for a decidedly middling effort that’s doubtful to be remembered alongside other 2008 releases. Or even March 2008 releases.

mp3: What Made Milwaukee Famous - Sultan

Snowed in

Three things I learned about this 20-inch snowstorm:
1. Our driveway is absurdly long.
2. We need two shovels.
3. The Whigs' Mission Control is a fairly solid 3-star album, but it's a four-star shoveling album.

Beach House - Devotion

Once upon a time, in what feels like a different lifetime, I went to a North Carolina beach with some college friends for spring break. We piled into the car with beach clothes, towels, sunscreen, Easy Mac, Ramen Noodles and copious amounts of alcohol. When we pulled up to the house we rented, the sun was shining and the waves were breaking gently onto the white sand in the distance. All that was missing from the postcard image were cartoon letters across the sky saying, “Welcome to Nags Head!”

But after exiting the car, something was very wrong with the picture. It was freezing. Well, not freezing, but spring break fell in early March, so it was still in the low 50s. In that moment, the environment changed from an idyllic beach setting to a bizarre scene of shivering in the sunshine with your feet in the sand.

It’s that atmosphere that Beach House has captured on its sophomore album, Devotion. The record creates a mood that has moments of warmth and light but never gets too comfortable. Singer Victoria Legrand’s whispy, reverb-laden vocals set the tone, with a Nico vibe that’s dreary and drony yet consistently pretty. Completing the Baltimore duo is Alex Scally, who contributes fuzzy, finespun layers of guitar and keyboards; Legrand lends her piano/organ/keyboard skills as well, and she comes from a good pedigree--her uncle is French composer Michel Legrand. Beats are usually carried by minimalist electronic drums.

Countless blogs have lavished praise on Beach House’s 2006 eponymous debut, and they’ll most likely do the same for Devotion. Most of that comes back to that hazy, dream-like ambience the duo has created. I’m a big fan of artists creating a particular, one-of-a-kind atmosphere for an album, but mood alone only goes so far. The songs themselves have to sparkle, and while there’s nothing particularly unpleasant about these tunes, there’s nothing spectacular about them, either.

Sure, there are some bright spots, like “Gila,” “Heart of Chambers” and the Daniel Johnston cover “Some Things Last a Long Time.” And most, if not all, of the tracks feel more finished and composed than those on the band’s debut. But after a couple of listens, it’s hard not to say, “OK, I get it,” and move on. Devotion never quite lives up to its atmospheric potential, eventually becoming mildly boring. Sort of like being stuck indoors for a week at the beach.

mp3: Beach House - Gila