Digital Spin

Spin has a pretty cool digital version of its magazine. It just debuted with the May issue, and I have to say I'm impressed. You can look through an exact replica of the print magazine, with different bands, etc. highlighted with links. Pretty impressive. Having that magazine-style layout is something I miss on other publications' websites.

And yes, if you haven't picked up the June issue, you can read that sh*tgaze article I wrote here.

The Raconteurs w/ the Black Lips, LC Pavilion, 6-9

When the Raconteurs recorded their debut album Broken Boy Soldiers, Jack White, Brendan Benson and Greenhornes rhythm vets Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler hadn’t even played a show together yet. So it makes sense that after playing dozens of shows, the band has now started to jell. The Raconteurs have created a new album worthy of its talented members, and on Monday night at the open-air version of the LC Pavilion, they put on a thrilling concert.

White has clearly learned how to fill a stage playing as a duo with Meg in the White Stripes. He possesses a charisma that reached to the back wall of the lawn, but not because of over-the-top antics of any sort (though he does wield a mean guitar). He’s one of the rare performers whose mere presence can inspire the musicians around him and demand the eyes and ears of concertgoers.

But this wasn’t just the Jack White Show. It was truly all about chemistry, as co-leader Benson held his own with a voice more complementary than comparable to White’s, and Keeler’s outstanding drumming served as a touchstone for the rest of the Nashville-based band to play off each other in surprising and unforced ways.

The Raconteurs’ blues-rock sound is classic rock-inspired, for sure. The band even covers late-’60s Brit-rocker Terry Reid’s “Rich Kid Blues” on Consolers of the Lonely, and on Monday night Benson sang it with gusto before the song merged into a trippy breakdown that briefly became the Doors’ “The End” before ramping back up. That tactic was a common one in the performance--“You Don’t Understand Me” went from a ballad with White on piano to a rocker and then back again.

But the best use of the loud-quiet-loud device was on the first-set closer, “Blue Veins.” The extended guitar-jam intro would have disguised the song if it weren’t for Lawrence’s distinctive bass line providing the bluesy backbone to what was probably the best song of the night. The band built the anticipation to its peak right before stopping as White delivered the first line, “When I was surrounded you were the only one who came,” followed by sharp guitar blasts punctuating the backbeat. Later in the song White’s lead-guitar skills took center stage as the band went silent to highlight his Jimmy Page-style attack. It was the type of jamming that served the song instead of detracting from it.

Right before the closing song of the encore, the Raconteurs blasted through the first single off the new record, “Salute Your Solution.” It’s a near-perfect classic rock/pop song: rocking, grooving, bluesy, gritty, catchy and frenzied enough to avoid the stylistic cliches that come along with the genre.

Atlanta band the Black Lips proved to be a worthy opener for the most part. The band’s garage rock comes with lots of punk flavor and slightly southern-fried. They were messy and scruffy; one of the singer/guitarists had a stain-covered shirt and liked to spit, which isn’t that weird for a rock band, but even when he accidentally (I think) spit all over his face, he didn’t bother to clean it up until a couple songs later. Still, judging from what I’ve heard about how their shows used to be (puking on each other, playing guitar with their junk), I guess the Black Lips are fairly tame now.

“Bad Kids” and “Katrina” were pretty good, and “Dirty Hands” is a particularly great song, merging hillbilly rock and ’60s pop on the hilariously appropriate chorus: “Do you really wanna hold my dirty hand?”

None of the four members can really sing, but that’s OK. It would sound weird if their voices were too pretty. The digital vocal effects were forced and didn’t really fit the vibe the band’s going for, but the main thing the band suffered from was the venue. It’s not the LC’s fault, it’s just that the Black Lips belong in a small, dingy rock club. But it’s a rare group of musicians who can convey their stuff all the way to that back wall.

Weezer - The Red Album

By this point, Weezer leader Rivers Cuomo should know that self-titling a record and slapping a solid color behind a photo of his band won’t bring black the Blue Album’s 1994 glory days, when songs like “Buddy Holly” and “Undone--The Sweater Song” pushed the band to the top of modern-rock radio as all the neo-grunge peddlers watched in envy.

He tried it with the Green Album in 2001, a valiant effort with some stand-out tracks (“Photograph,” “Hash Pipe”), but still not a classic on the level of ‘ole Blue. And now we’ve got the Red Album, the cover of which reveals a mustachioed Cuomo in a cowboy hat and big belt buckle alongside his bandmates. Despite the earnest expression on his face, it’s gotta be a joke, because the whole album is downright goofy. Cuomo’s obviously trying to have as much fun as possible with his music, a laudable goal. But the result is a lot like that cover image of Cuomo--both awesome and awful. And you can almost divide the awesome from the awful right down the middle of the 10-track record. Weezer showcases its knack for writing breezy, hooky songs on only the first four tracks, making the album as top heavy as a toddler.

The first single, “Pork and Beans,” is Weezer at its best, playful and consciously catchy, musically mixing the quirkiness “El Scorcho” with the big, power-pop guitars of “No One Else.” There’s a reason Cuomo sings, “Everyone likes to dance to a happy song/ with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along.” And the chorus--“I’ma do the things that I wanna do/ I ain’t got a thing to prove to you”--brazenly shakes off all the critics who lambasted the band’s last album, Make Believe. “Troublemaker” cops a riff from Pinkerton’s “The Good Life” and transforms it into another classic, and “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)” reveals how promiscuous Cuomo has become with genres. It incorporates rap, old-school metal, emo, a monk-like chorus and more. Excessive? Certainly, but I dare you not to like it.

“Heart Songs” is a laundry list of artists and songs that have inspired Cuomo over the years. The fact that he calls them “heart songs” is the biggest drawback to the track, conjuring up the title of a mix tape a coifed teen would nervously give to his doe-eyed sweetheart on One Tree Hill. But again, it’s impossible to dislike, and kudos to Cuomo for admitting that artists like Gordon Lightfoot and Quiet Riot are part of his musical history. (Take note, songwriters who claim they were listening to Captain Beefheart and Philip Glass in second grade.)

Then the hammer drops. The album goes from songs that are kinda fun to have stuck in your head to songs that will hopefully slip away immediately, because if they do stick it will make commercial jingles seem like a nice alternative. “Everybody Get Dangerous” centers around an overly familiar guitar riff and a chorus of “Everybody get dangerous, boo yah.” It reminds me of horribly trite songs I used to hear every weekend from so many Philadelphia bar bands--repetitive and unimaginative. “Dreamin’” features some of the cheesiest lyrics I’ve heard in quite a while. Over the sound of birds chirping, we hear about bluebirds in the meadows, bees in the air, goslings in the river and angels in the heavens. It wouldn’t be out of place on a Celine Dion song.

And gone are the days when Cuomo would fine his bandmates for various infractions. The band dynamics seem to be a lot better these days, with Cuomo even letting the other dudes write and sing. I’m glad they’re all getting along now, but guitarist Brian Bell’s “Thought I Knew” and drummer Pat Wilson’s “Automatic” are dreadfully out of place, and the choice to let bassist Scott Shriner sing “Cold Dark World” destroyed an already below-average song.

Yes, it’s unreasonable and unfair to expect Blue Album songs from every Weezer release, but those little splices of greatness at the beginning make the bad tunes all the more disappointing. Maybe it’s that bushy mustache that’s throwing Cuomo off. I vote for a neck beard on the next album.

mp3: Weezer - The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)

Radiohead, NIN... Journey?

The New York Times has a story about Wal-Mart's recent deals with artists that cut out record companies, who are increasingly becoming unneeded middlemen. A quote:

"In some ways, the arrangements that Wal-Mart has made with Journey and the Eagles represent the mainstream equivalent of the path that artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have taken by releasing albums on the Internet without a traditional label."

In other news, Journey's new album features the band's third singer in three years (above, posing dramatically in front).

Leviathan Bound

Matador is offering up another track for free from Shearwater's Rook. Download "Leviathan Bound" here.

Shearwater - Rook

With the release of Shearwater’s Rook, the band Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff started as an Okkervil River side project has officially (and amicably) become its own unhinged force to be reckoned with. Meiburg has been providing most of Shearwater’s creative juice for a while now, and he recently said he’ll no longer be a part of the Sheff-led Okkervil River. And that’s as it should be.

After Shearwater showed what it was capable of on 2006’s impressive Palo Santo, it became apparent that relegating this band to side-project status would be a big mistake. Rook just confirms that further. It’s a continuation of Palo Santo stylistically, but with better songwriting, more thoughtful arrangements and a cohesiveness Shearwater had yet to capture previously. Driving it all is Meiburg’s magnificent tenor. The vocal histrionics would normally be a turn-off for me, but he succeeds by incorporating subtleties into Shearwater’s sound. There’s bombast, but there’s also plenty of open space with dynamic swells.

One thing we should clear up: The album’s title doesn’t refer to those chess pieces that look like castles. Nor does it refer to the Eurasian cow of the same name. This rook is a black bird in the crow family, a reference that makes sense given that Meiburg is a bird fanatic, studying little-known species in far-flung locales like Tierra del Fuego. In fact, Shearwater is named after a seabird, one of its previous albums is titled Winged Life and on the cover of Rook is a man covered with birds. So yeah, he really likes birds.

On the sorta title track “Rooks,” the birds are “laid in piles by the sides of the road” and “burned in a feathering pyre.” This destruction of the natural world is a theme that wends like a river through the album as Meiburg despairs over all the vanishing beauty. “Century Eyes” ominously warns humanity that “You were not the first to arrive and will not be the last to survive.” It’s a decidedly (post)modern concept, but Shearwater’s songs have an ancient feel, filled with natural imagery: the sea, forests, clouds, the moon, stars and lots of animals (ox, leopard, swallows, tiger, etc.). It comes off as haunting and beautiful, as opposed to dorky in an early Genesis kind of way.

“Rooks” is the obvious single, by far the catchiest song on the album despite the incinerating-birds subject matter. “Leviathan Bound” and “Home Life” have some of the best, lush string arrangements, while “Lost Boys” employs a marching band beat. “I Was a Cloud” is appropriately airy and ethereal, Meiburg’s whispy falsetto combining with light piano plinks and softly picked guitar to create a vibe not unlike Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. “South Col” is the only slightly weak spot, an instrumental track filled with eerie screeching you probably won’t need to hear more than once or twice.

I’d bet the album is particularly nice on vinyl, but even on compressed mp3s the range of volume is wide, going from a whisper to a clamor and back again. It makes for a mildly frustrating car album (unless your vehicle is super quiet) but a great headphone album. Either way, if you play Rook loud--fully capturing those quiet subtleties and permitting the stentorian sections to blast as they should--it’ll take flight.

Rook is out today on Matador Records.

mp3: Shearwater - Rooks (highly recommended)

More TNV

Drowned in Sound has an interview with Times New Viking here. The band just wrapped up its UK tour.

(Above: TNV at Andrew's Lane Theatre in Dublin, 5/26; photo courtesy Redheadwalking.)