Hodge Podge

-- "We are beautiful, we are doomed." That's the title of one of Los Campesinos!' two albums released in 2008, and it's also a fitting description of the band's show with Titus Andronicus at the Wexner Center last Wednesday. Titus Andronicus has no qualms airing their grievances in a tortured, messy way, thrashing around the stage with the punk vigor and reckless abandon that can only come from New Jersey youth. And boy did they look straight outta study hall. Or, probably more accurately, detention. They're definitely too young to be singing "I don't think I've ever been so tired of life," but the fact that they don't realize that made the near-trainwreck all the more fascinating to hear and watch. Los Campesinos! cloaked similar sentiments in more playful melodies, equal parts beauty and doom. I loved the boy-girl vocals, the excessive use of xylophone, the spoken rants, the Welsh accents, and, above all, the exuberance. This is the first band to earn the explanation point at the end of its name.

-- Watching Times New Viking tackle tunes from the Velvet Underground on Saturday night at the Wexner Center was bizarrely entertaining. In one way, it's fitting for art kids like TNV to re-appropriate and pay tribute to art-rock forefathers like the Velvets. But it's also shocking to see TNV play a song for more than two minutes, much less to engage in a droney jam. It made for a (mostly) pretty fun hour, though. Full review in next week's Other Paper.

-- I admittedly wouldn't know about Other Lives if I hadn't received a PR e-mail blast about them. But they're playing a show tonight at the Basement, opening up for the Delta Spirit. It's mopey but pretty stuff, so fans of Hayden, Strand of Oaks and even Coldplay and Elbow should find something to enjoy.

-- Athens, Ohio boys Southeast Engine released one of my favorite albums of 2007, A Wheel Within a Wheel. I think I'm a sucker for alliterative biblical lyrics, but that aside, I also think it's (post?)modern Americana at its best. There's a new album, From the Forest to the Sea, out tomorrow. I'm reserving judgment on that one till I give it a few more listens--review coming Thursday in the Other Paper--but check out Southeast Engine's album release show this Friday at the Treehouse with the Kyle Sowashes, the Coke Dares and Frontier Ruckus.

Victorian's Midnight Cafe

Back in the day, when I used to play in a little acoustic duo, we'd play almost exclusively at Victorian's Midnight Cafe. I'm not sure how that started, and I'm still not completely sure why we kept it up. We never knew if there would be more than one mic, any mic stands or even any cables. More than once we showed up only to find out the owner double booked us. Once he even triple booked the place.

But, Victorian's is one of the comfiest spots in Columbus, like playing in an aging hippie's living room. And they always had cold bottles of Chimay. So hopefully the soon-to-be new owners (according to this post over at Cringe) will keep that laid-back vibe, but maybe not so laid-back that performers have to jerry-rig a mic stand out of found materials.

(ht: Donewaiting)

Music

Today, while listening to Califone's deliciously off-kilter Roots and Crowns, I realized how many albums I love but rarely listen to anymore. I attribute this mostly to an unquenchable desire to hear everything new that comes out, and I attribute that desire to my part-time music-writer gig and the fact that this blog exists.

I certainly never get around to all of the stuff I want to hear, of course, but the aforementioned realization also led me to admit how absurd it is to have 55 records in my Top Albums of 2008. There's no way I could have listened to each of those 55 albums as many times as they deserved. And, there also seems to be a not-so-subtle relationship between the albums in my top 20 and the albums I was paid to review, since I felt more of a duty to spend more time with those records. (That is, while it may seem obvious that I would listen to the records in my top 20 most, maybe it's more accurate to say that I like the records in my top 20 most because I had to listen to them many times.)

Granted, I'll probably never experience albums in the same way I did as a high school sponge, which is a little sad, but I can still make a conscious effort to avoid iPod overload and spend more time with fewer albums. I'd like to be more choosy, explore old albums I forgot about and discover several musical forefathers I keep managing to gloss over in my search for what's glossy.

Super Bowl recap

I still think Bruce Springsteen sucks.

Little Joy

Perfect Floridian vacation soundtrack

Super Desserts - Barefoot in the Disenchanted Forest

The Super Desserts’ new album is called Barefoot in the Disenchanted Forest, and it features song titles like “Still Unable to Speak...Claude Somehow Manages to Express His Opinion to a Pack of Wild Cougars, Who Are Surprisingly Supportive.” The CD also comes in a colorfully decorated 7-inch sleeve accompanied by a handmade, photocopied booklet full of collages, animals, people with animals’ heads and some hilarious liner notes.

All of this should tell you this ambitious, eccentric band has a predilection for the fantastical, along with lots of twee cuteness—hand claps, ukulele, banjo, glockenspiel, etc. Featuring Eve Searls (of Bird and Flower), Justin Riley (of Terribly Empty Pockets) and other local vets and newbies, the band is only made stronger by the full roster of capable musicians, rather than being weighed down. And while there’s a whole lot going on throughout the album, there are also moments of quiet, restrained beauty, like the guitar melody on “Steve Attends the Martian Funeral.…”

It’s not just a clever name. The Super Desserts are super sweet, but not like those nasty orange peanut-shaped candies that leave you feeling sick to your stomach. More like awesome fair food that leaves you fat and happy.

Catch the Super Desserts at the Treehouse Feb. 7 with Two Cow Garage, Ghost Shirt and Tree of Fern.

mp3: Super Desserts - On the Way to the Hospital, Claude is Riding on the Back Wheel of a Backward Jeep While Clara and Her Half-Brother are Riding on the Mystical Motorbike with the Three-Legged Unicorn (aka "Funeral")

(Also at The Other Paper)

Donewating 6-yr anniversary show: Envelope, Two Cow Garage, Moon High, Adulture

(Late post of last week's show...)

I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur of the Columbus hip-hop scene. In fact, my knowledge pretty much ends with a passing familiarity of the Weightless Recordings roster and Wes Flexner’s entertaining ramblings on local music blog Donewaiting.com. So I can’t really compare Envelope’s performance for Donewaiting’s six-year anniversary show at Skully’s last weekend with other hometown rappers’ performances. But man does this guy put on a great show.

First off, it’s refreshing to see someone put so much time and energy into an actual stage show, as opposed to just getting up there, staring at the ground and going through the motions. Envelope (aka Tony Collinger) billed the night as “Envelope presents The Corner Store,” and he meant that quite literally. The guy constructed a huge set (mostly out of cardboard, I think) for the stage--what looked like a corner store stocked with cereal, ranch dressing, Magnum condoms, chips, etc. It made for a long set changeover, but worth the wait.

Collinger comes off like a lovable goofball bounding around the stage--a far cry from ultra-macho, egomaniacal emcees obsessed with proclaiming their lyrical superiority and sexual prowess. He’s humble, yet highly entertaining, with a self-deprecating sense of humor. (On one track from 2008’s Blueprint-produced Shark Bolt, he says, “I’ll even admit that I’m annoyed when I hear too much of my own voice.”)

It was definitely a sloppy show. Collinger has a great flow but can’t sing for his life; luckily he usually asked the crowd to help out with the sing-along refrains (e.g. “I’m not poor, I’m just broke, broke as hell”). He also screwed up one of my favorite lines from “Oh My My My...,” a complaint about the letdowns of science: “They got wisdom like the Masons lack secrets.” But he made up for it with some other choice nuggets: “American Apparel’s owned by a sexual predator”; “Lost my swagger so I started jogging/ Beer gut, not so awesome”; “If we’re so smart, and nothing is left unexplored/ Then why’s it 2009 and I don’t have my hoverboard?”

He’s also more acutely perceptive than he gives himself credit for. “Day Dream Nation” does a pretty good job of diagnosing society’s ills and skewering the culprits--a group from which he doesn’t exclude himself.

And while an Envelope album is all about the smirky, everyman lyrics, an Envelope show is more about the experience. Just a playful, talented dude dropping rhymes, shouting out to his friends (like onstage deejay Detox) and acting out tongue-in-cheek skits with other friends (like The Catalyst). A fellow TOP critic described Envelope’s last album as quintessentially “Columbus,” and that goes for the Whetstone grad himself, too. Collinger unapologetically embraces this city, and we’d be right to return the favor.

Two Cow Garage gave one of its typical gerbil-on-a-speedball performances, with all the gusto and grit we’ve come to expect from the band, along with a near-overdose of catchy choruses. I’ve been doling out ego boosters to these guys a lot recently, so I won’t go on and on, but I have no qualms calling Two Cow the best live rock band in Columbus. Oh, and the drummer smashed half of his drum set on the last song.

I didn’t stay for laptop duo Adulture’s closing set, but the young’uns played some cool stuff in between acts, doing impressive live edits of Portishead and more. Moon High, a newish folk-inspired act I’ve been enjoying, opened the show with one of the most upbeat songs I’ve heard from the usually super-placid band. I’m excited to hear more of that. Musically, the rest of the set was pretty solid, too, but I tend to think atmosphere is more crucial than usual when watching Moon High perform, and Skully’s garish surroundings seemed to clash with the band’s aesthetic (foot-switchable globe lights, banjo plucking, tranquil songwriting). I’d rather experience the songs at a place like the Treehouse (where the band performed this past Friday with the Couch Forts) than at what someone recently described to me as “Columbus’s version of L.A.”

(Also at The Other Paper)