Margot & the Nuclear So and So's: A review/preview

It’s not uncommon for a band making the leap from the indies to the majors to have some disagreements with its deep-pocketed but often creatively impaired new boss. What is uncommon is resolving those conflicts by releasing two different albums—one to appease the band, the other to appease the label.

But that’s the route Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s and their new label, Epic, decided to take. The Indianapolis eight-piece just released Animal! (the band’s preferred version) digitally and on vinyl, while Not Animal is available on CD, digital and vinyl. The two records have five songs in common, but according to Margot member and Columbus musician Erik Kang, Animal! feels a bit darker.

“It probably reflects the fact that we were cooped up in a studio in Chicago during the coldest months of the winter,” Kang said. “I think there’s some songs on (Not Animal) that are a little bit lighter. Some people may like it better because of that.”

Kang, an alumnus of cowtown bands Tiara, the Emerald Down and Alasdair, joined Margot in 2006—a few months after the release of the band’s debut, The Dust of Retreat—and now handles violin and lap-steel duties. He admits there was some uncomfortable wrangling over the new album(s).

“It’s a complicated situation when you present music that you spent two months working on night and day,” he said. “To present what we felt was the strongest record, to have that rejected, you can’t help but take that personally and be hurt and be upset by it. It was really important to us to have that record released.”

At the same time, though, Kang said the band recognizes the strengths of Not Animal. “These were not songs that we never wanted to see the light of day,” he said. “We were proud of all of them. It was just a matter of which songs flowed the right way.”

Still, Kang recommends purchasing Animal! to hear the album the way the band intended it to sound. “We picked the songs that flowed the best and made sense as an entity itself. Not Animal is more just a collection of songs. They don’t necessarily flow as a record,” he said.

Both new albums reveal a much different band than Dust of Retreat-era Margot, trading some of its slightly emo tendencies for more orchestral, layered, atmospheric chamber pop. The hooks aren’t as immediate, and some of Retreat’s childlike spark is gone, but the slow burn usually pays off.

Is Animal! vastly superior to Not Animal? Not really, but it would have been a shame to miss out on the former’s boozy, string-heavy “Mariel’s Brazen Overture” and “There’s Talk of Mine Shafts.” Both find singer Richard Edwards in a duet with keyboardist Emily Watkins, whose ethereal harmonies can be found all over the new songs.

In general, Margot has discovered how to be an eight-piece without always sounding like an eight-piece, forgoing the bombastic tendencies of large bands. Edwards’ voice is always up front in the mix, often with scant accompaniment.

“Having all the instruments isn’t a gimmick,” Kang said. “It just makes sense for the songs that we’re doing. We’re very cautious and sensitive to only having the parts that really matter for the song and not overcrowding it.”

On the current tour, which will make a stop in Columbus on Sunday for the first time since Kang joined the band, fans can probably expect to hear more from Animal! than Not Animal because that’s the record Margot wanted to put together, Kang said.

Plus, the band has been keeping tallies of which album is selling better, and overall, Animal! is winning.

“So we’re right,” Kang said, laughing.

Margot & the Nuclear So and So's will perform Sunday at Skully's, 1151 N. High St., along with Judgement Day and David Vandervelde. Doors open at 6 p.m.; all ages. 614-291-8856.

(Also at The Other Paper)

This excites me

That's the cover of Ryan Adams's new Cardinology LP, out on collector's edition red vinyl at the end of the month. Here's the description from the store:

This first run of Cardinology will be pressed on translucent red vinyl. Leah Hayes gives an incredible aesthetic to the packaging art, as well as an included Lyrics/Comic Book. Her artwork will only be used in this first vinyl pressing. This release will also include a Bonus 7" and digital download code.

Pre-orders here.

Damien Jurado w/ Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Milo, 10-4

Damien Jurado is a singer/songwriter whom I’d always resisted over the years until recently, because really, does the world need one more sensitive folkie with an acoustic guitar? And this is coming from someone who’s often a sucker for sensitive folkies with acoustic guitars.

But I’ve discovered that Jurado sets himself apart with his words, which was evident Saturday night at the Milo Arts show. While his guitar playing and voice aren’t poor by any means--he sounds a little like a mash-up of Josh Ritter and Mark Kozelek--they’re fairly unremarkable without those profound, literate lyrics that often turn the lens outward instead of inward.

For a guy whose biggest strength is stories, the songs usually work best when pared down, so as not to distract from the words coming through. A few of the tracks on Jurado’s new album, Caught in the Trees, suffer from overdone production and a lack of intimacy (unlike 2006’s spare And Now That I’m in Your Shadow), but Milo’s spartan stage setup served the songs well, as did the respectful crowd. Jurado stayed mostly seated with his guitar while his two bandmates added percussion, keys and guitar flourishes. Jenna Conrad’s vocal harmonies were a highlight throughout the night.

Jurado is a somber-looking fellow and a little schlubby (losing the crustache would do wonders), but he’s got a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor that I appreciated. He apologized for not coming to Ohio in a while and appealed to the crowd by playing “Ohio,” a song he said he wrote on a codeine high from a toe operation. Jurado asked the crowd to lobby their politicians to make it the state song, “So I can be really rich.”

Not likely. “Ohio” is about a girl who’s taken away from her mother by bounty hunters. That’s his specialty, really. Jurado writes consistently depressing songs. You’d probably get into quite a funk if you listened to Jurado all day, but not many songwriters can do depressing better than he, so stick with what works, right?

Jurado seems to be very aware of this. “This is an upbeat number,” he announced before playing the sprightly “Gillian was a Horse,” but quickly added, “Not lyrically. Just the music.” And “Coats of Ice,” which reminded me a lot of an Aimee Mann song, showed that all the sullenness is starting to catch up with him. “How does it feel to be what you sing about?” he sang, adding in the chorus, “You look like you could use a rest/ You look like you’d be better dead.”

But on one of the night’s final songs, “Best Dress,” he offered a possible remedy for the malaise. “Hey now, put your best dress on. . . We should just have a good time.” A good time, indeed.

I was sorely disappointed by Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson’s opening set, especially because I’ve been enjoying his self-titled debut, an album of bedraggled, folk-inspired songs that come across as both dark and rambunctious. But I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard an artist sound so utterly different, and worse, than on record.

For one, the mix was bad, but I don’t think a better one would have saved him. Robinson attempted a vocal tremolo that vacillated between loud, thin yelps and almost inaudible marbles-in-the-mouth mumbling. All the songs’ hooks and clever turns of phrase were lost, and his bandmates looked alternately embarrassed and confused as to what the four-named man was up to.

I think Robinson was going for a Pavement feel, or something like that. Whatever the reason, the young man needs some more touring underneath his belt.

mp3: Damien Jurado - Ohio

(Also at The Other Paper)

My Morning Jacket - LC Pavilion, 10-6

For the first five or six years of My Morning Jacket’s existence, the band was on the low diving board, bobbing up and down to prime the board and giving consistently good--sometimes great--performances. But in the last few years, Jim James has taken his band up to the platform high above the pool with even more success, plunging My Morning Jacket into the hard-to-reach category of an “important” rock band.

The old My Morning Jacket built its sound on Southern rock archetypes, importing Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd into a new indie Americana led by James’s trusty abandoned-grain-silo tenor. (And that ample use of reverb has inspired countless copycats in recent years, from Band of Horses to Fleet Foxes.)

But starting in 2005 with the release of Z, MMJ went out of its Kentucky comfort zone, opening the album with a bubbly bass line and adding some psychedelic art-rock into its pop songs, while still remaining accessible. This year’s Evil Urges stretches the band even further, at times conjuring the Flaming Lips and Prince but still not forgetting its roots.

Monday night’s concert at the LC Pavilion--billed as “An Evening with My Morning Jacket”--drew heavily from those last two albums, along with some choice morsels from the past. What astounded me most as I watched James twirling across the stage, his curly mop flopping around him, was how well MMJ has merged their two identities into one conjoined, unstoppable rock beast.

October 6 seemed a little late to have an outdoor show at the LC, but the crisp, chilly air ended up creating a nice autumnal atmosphere. Right from opening number “Evil Urges,” the band appeared to be enjoying themselves quite a bit, as well. Throughout the night James used a litany of quirky, complimentary adjectives to describe Columbus and the crowd: powerful, elegant, beautiful, fragrant, faithful and “luxurious, like finely conditioned hair just out of the shower.”

The set list was one that made me realize just how many great songs this band has, from “Gideon” and “Lay Low” off Z to “Mahgeetah” and “Golden” from It Still Moves, plus a lot of solid new ones like “I’m Amazed” and “Librarian.” Even “Highly Suspicious,” which I viewed as sort of a failed experiment on Evil Urges, was an unexpected surprise, with James channeling his inner Prince for a funky, falsetto bookend to “Wordless Chorus”--one of several tunes that found the bearded singer sporting a cape. (I know, I know. Sounds stupid, right? I’m not sure how he made a cape cool, either.)

Lots of these songs opened up and provided space for the band to jam, which is often a dose of Ambien for me. But these guys could give workshops on how to jam successfully, a workshop many bands need (cough, Black Crowes, cough cough). “Dondante” was the only song that lost a little of its energy in the instrumental section. Others, like “Off the Record,” featured an extended ending with spicy guitar that only enhanced the song’s feeling.

But “One Big Holiday,” the “Free Bird” for the new millennium, was the Flying V guitar song the whole crowd was waiting for, and MMJ didn’t disappoint in the encore. Even though the band probably doesn’t let a show go by without playing the song, they performed it like it was the inaugural night--just another reason an evening with My Morning Jacket is an evening well spent.

The Avett Brothers - Murder in the City

There hasn't been much buzz around the Avett Brothers' The Second Gleam, but I like this EP, especially the bare-bones "Murder in the City." Here's the bare-bones video to go along with it:

To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story

On the DVD included in the just-released box set To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story, Simone explained to an interviewer in 1970 the effect she wanted her music to have. “I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub when I’ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces,” she says. “I want to go in that den of those elegant people with their old ideas, smugness, and just drive them insane.”

What’s fascinating about Simone is not just how well she succeeded in shaking people up, but how she did it in so many different ways. Just when you think you’ve got her figured out, she jumps ship, using genres like jazz, soul, blues and folk as mere stepping stones, yet putting her full weight on each she goes by.

Ironically, her penchant for skipping around stylistically is probably also what held her back from mainstream stardom--in the U.S., that is. Simone (born Eunice Waymon) had great commercial success in the U.K. during her lifetime. She’s probably known best to a younger generation through artists like Feist and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) covering her songs, which is fitting for a woman who spent much of her career reclaiming other artists’ songs.

On this 51-track, three-disc (plus DVD) retrospective, the “High Priestess of Soul” tackles show tunes (“Feeling Good,” “Ain’t Got No-I Got Life”), French pop (“Ne Me Quitte Pas”), Dylan (“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” “The Times They Are A-Changin,’” “Just Like a Woman”), the Beatles (“Here Comes the Sun”) and plenty more. To my ears, the only essential track missing is Simone’s take on the African-American spiritual “Sinnerman.”

Her fierce advocacy for civil rights was inseparable from many of her re-appropriated songs, but originals such as “Four Women” and “Mississippi Goddam”--a song she wrote after four girls were killed in an Alabama church bombing in 1963--boldly display Simone’s outrage. The live version of “Mississippi” on this compilation penetrates even more deeply since it was performed on April 7, 1968--just days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Those live tracks are some of the best inclusions in this retrospective. They reveal a performer whose aberrant voice and persona were so huge they often needed to be set free from the confines of the studio and loosed onto an open stage. A medley of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and “Today is a Killer,” complete with some of Simone’s improvised lyrics, waxes and wanes for a full 18 minutes.

Simone’s catalog is vast. She was known for releasing seven albums in a three-year span. In that same interview on the DVD, Simone said she was scared of not going fast enough to do everything she was supposed to do before she died, which she did in 2003. But after listening to this impressive compilation, I’d say she surely did everything. And then some.

Gentleman Auction House, Yea Big + Kid Static, Bookmobile - High Five

Gentleman Auction House can’t seem to catch a break in Columbus. In June, the last time the St. Louis band came through, only a tiny handful of folks came out to the High Five. Last Thursday more people showed up at the same venue, but this time the band was plagued by sound problems all night.

Lead singer Eric Enger attempted to lead the seven-piece through “ABCDEFGraveyard,” a stomper of a tune the band likes to start off with, but Enger’s mic was cutting in and out throughout the song, so they had to stop and let the sound guy come back up and sort things out while the house music played again. Talk about a vibe killer.

It didn’t get much better on “Call it Casual,” but once “We Used to Dream About Bridges” kicked in, the band shook off the sound issues and started playing with the intensity they’re known for. And probably a little anger, too.

Enger’s Conor Oberst-ish voice led the bouncing band through indie pop anthems that pound their way into you. Anyone who wasn’t at least tapping a foot to the beat must have been a robot. And with everyone in the band shouting along to the songs, whether they had a mic or not, the performance felt like one big sing-along.

Before Gentleman Auction House took the stage, Michael Jackson was blaring through the speakers, and it was actually a fitting intro. There’s a reason GAH likes to throw in “R&B” when describing itself--some songs are all about the groove. “I Sleep in a Bed of Scissor Arms” is some of the most danceable indie rock you’ll hear this year.

The insistent snare of “The Book of Matches” anchored the last song of the set as floor toms flew off the stage and everyone screamed out their aggression for a night that could have been so much more. “We won’t stay down long,” Enger sang, and I believed him.

Preceding Gentleman Auction House was Yea Big + Kid Static, a Chicago rap duo I was completely unfamiliar with but thoroughly entertained by. Kid Static was a black dude in jeans and a T-shirt, and Yea Big was a red-haired white guy in yellow running shorts, a headband and socks pulled up to the tops of his ankles. An unlikely pair, to say the least.

The duo, which relied on a Macbook for the beats, started the set by stretching. Not I-just-woke-up stretching. These guys made sure to hit every muscle group. It was odd and a little awkward, but obviously tongue-in-cheek, and it made the next song all the more impressive when the two busted out their rhymes while making the stage look like a trampoline. Dance routines in the middle of songs were common, and to intro another tune the pair literally ran around the room yelling. With energy like that, even bearded hipsters and indie kids were getting down.

The acoustics of the High Five suck (wall of windows: nice-looking, bad for sound), so it was hard to discern a lot of Yea Big + Kid Static’s words, but what I did hear I liked. Some of it had dark overtones, but most of it was really playful, especially one about Mega Man (the Nintendo character) and another called “Eatchyo Samwich”--probably my favorite of the night.

Bookmobile’s set suffered from the bouncy acoustics, too, and a bad mix. Columbus’s ever-present man on the scene Sean Gardner (MeltyMelty, Kyle Sowashes, Winter Makes Sailors) was hard to hear above the guitar, but I still enjoyed his tunes. And his goofy dancing. Gardner’s the type of singer who sounds good even (or maybe especially?) when he’s off-key and often reminds me of David Bazan in that way. I liked the spastic guitar with choppy leads, too. So despite the sound issues, Bookmobile made a good impression. With all Gardner has going on, I don’t know if he considers this band a side project or not. But I say don’t relegate it to the sidelines.

mp3: Gentleman Auction House - I Sleep in a Bed of Scissor Arms
mp3: Yea Big + Kid Static - Eatchyo Samwich