winner will be announced/contacted shortly

The brother and sister duo of Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger officially came together as the experimental Indie-pop project, Fiery Furnaces back in 2000.  Since then, they have consistently proven themselves to be one of the most adventurous and prolific groups in contemporary music.  The duo is credited with 9 releases throughout their shifts between 3 of the most respected independent record labels in the business (Rough Trade, Fat Possum, & Thrill Jockey).  With Eleanor taking on the majority of the vocal duties (both live and in studio) and Matthew handling most of the instrumentation, the brother and sister team has created everything from concept albums to incredibly inventive re-workings/re-editings of previous material, a “silent album” and even their “Democ-Rock” series, which attempts to place the fate of the music -both in content and approach- into the hands of their fans/audience.  It’s not rare to find Eleanor singing pop-like melodies over a mutated fabric of bubbling and squawking sonic confusion ala-Captain Beefheart, with glimpses of Brazillian psych legends Os Mutantes, shambolic free-jazz drum assaults, or synthed-out bleeps and blown-out bass lines forcing their way up through the film of buzzing Marquee Moon-esque guitar work.  It’s often been difficult to describe their sound for many, but the word “difficult” itself has been used on more than one occasion.  Their live performances had a tendency for becoming even more “experimental”, blending songs together or simply fragmenting and reconstructing them into new creations altogether.

Matthew dropped two simultaneous solo records in 2006, but Eleanor didn’t bother to take that same plunge into the realm of solo artist until 2011‘s 10-song effort, Last Summer.  Overall, Last Summer was received with incredibly positive reviews, even landing on multiple best of the year lists.  With her vocal cadence often coming through like a cross between Jonie Mitchell and an On Golden Pond-era Katherine Hepburn injected into the bone of verse-chorus-verse structure, it would be almost understandable for one to attempt to classify the release as a straight ahead indie-pop effort, but the stark shifts in tone, subtly off-kilter rhythms, and varied influences overlap in such manners that they often become something almost undefinable.  It’s something that is decidedly and uniquely Friedberger.

Guitar in hand, Eleanor is currently touring in support of Last Summer and our friends at the legendary Seattle venue, The Crocodile have offered us a pair of tickets to kick down to one of youz guyz, so as you can go to and enjoy the show real nice like.

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THE CONTEST / GIVEAWAY:

*One winner will receive a a pair of tickets to see Eleanor Friedberger perform live @ The Crocodile in Seattle on Thursday February 9, 2012

HOW TO ENTER:

This contest will revolve around the subject matter in Eleanor’s latest video for her song “HEAVEN”

#1)

The late great Curtis Mayfield once wrote a song titled, “(Don’t Worry) If There’s Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go” and he was right.  It’s getting to the point where you can’t even grift your own elderly relatives into purchasing faulty life-support equipment or organize an unsanctioned hobo thunderdome without being cursed with eternal damnation.

In Eleanor‘s video for “Heaven” (above) the songstress has committed a number of different acts that are considered unsavory enough to zap her ass straight to hell.  The concepts of “Right” and “Wrong” may be subjective, but your task is pretty straightforward: Tell us a pet-peeve that you have that, although it isn’t necessarily illegal or considered to be a “sin”, is something that you feel is cause for damnation.

Examples:

*People who feel that they are justified in leaving their running cars in a place that blocks through access on my street, just because they turn on their hazard lights, deserve to get their asses zapped straight to hell.

*Folks that dangerously cut through traffic with those little child carriers swinging from the back of their bikes deserved to have their asses zapped straight to hell

[note: they don't have to be traffic related]

#2)

Post your answer in the comment section below.

#3)

There is no part 3.  That’s all there is to the contest.  It’s pretty easy… but you should probably read the fine print.

The Fine Print:

All entries must be received by Tuesday February 7th at 11:59 pm to be eligible.

You can enter as many times as you want, but use a valid email so that we can contact you.
If you sign in w/Facebook, make sure your account excepts messages.
Winner will be chosen arbitrarily, based on our personal “favorite”, so try to be interesting.
If we are unable to contact the winner in a reasonable amount of time, a new winner will be chosen.

[If you have any intentions to post comments asking us to pick you, or asking when the winner will be announced... how about, just don't do it?  It's pretty fucking obnoxious and it won't help your chances.]

Aside from releasing 2 separate albums under the JOA moniker in 2011, his first novel, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self Defense, was published last September by Featherproof Books.  The 376-page work zips back and forth between a handful of people’s lives, many of which are family members in the fictional town of Stone Claw Grove, Michigan.  The characters deal with addiction and aging, struggle with responsibility, and give up on brighter dreams in an attempt to settle for whatever they already have currently.  Throughout it all, strippers strip, fights break out in bars, and singers cover all of the karaoke classics.

I recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Mr. Kinsella and to discover more about his venture into literature and his overall approach to the creation process.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much work and time it takes to create a novel.  How long did it take for you to write The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self Defense?  Were you working on it while working on music?  While touring?

It was kind of at the center of everything for me for about 2 and a half years.  I participated in the Captain Jazz reunion shows, so I could have money to hunker down and revise it without having to work for a while.  So, I had the first draft done by the time we started planning those.  And then the last year was very carefully scheduled so that I’d spend 3 weeks in solitude working very long days on the book and then have two or three weeks away from it while we went out on tour.

People seem to have a time of day when they work better, are you more of a Morning writer, or more of a Night writer?

I’m 100% a morning writer.  If I start writing by 8 or 8:30 at the latest, then I can keep it up well into the night.  But if, for any reason I can’t start until 9:15, then the whole day is blown for me and I can’t write more than half an hour.  I don’t know what it is, but I can’t do ANYTHING else before starting to write or I’m totally thrown off.

You’ve said that when you write a novel, you just write small scenes, and then tie them all together, which I think is noticeable in the book.  The book’s narrative is also in a scrambled timeline.  Did you write the sections in the order that they appear in the book, or did you do a lot of rearranging?

It was re-arranged over and over and over and over and over.  It’s not a particularly dynamic plot and there’s a lot of sprawling information, so basically the entire trick to hopefully keep people turning the page was all about what information gets revealed when, like a mystery.

All of the scenes are tied to the funeral of the characters’ grandmother.  Had you planned this, or did you come up with it as a means of tying together the different scenes you had written?

I don’t know.  I think that was decided pretty early on in the whole thing taking shape.  But I had characters emerging and a couple hundred pages written before I had anything like a shape.

Do you revise your writing a lot?

Yes.  No hyperbole grand enough.  Revising my writing = basically my entire life?  I don’t even know where the words come from before they are being revised.  I write first drafts as fast as possible, attempting to write faster than I can think.  Then I throw 98% of everything away and the process becomes mostly like sculpting.

I read that you completed your MFA in Creative Writing.  I’m curious, do you feel like that helped you at all in your writing?  What is the process for an MFA in Creative Writing?  Did you enjoy it?

It helped very much.  The process is a lot of getting pointed towards good stuff to read and talking about its mechanics.  I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but I’m not really one to enjoy things.  And enjoyment hardly seems like a relevant criteria to consider one’s education in terms of.

I also read in a Youtube comment that you were doing some teaching.  Do you enjoy that?

I’m an adjunct lecturer on Popular Culture for The City Colleges of Chicago.  I like the students and I like talking about ideas with them – keeps me sharp.  When I’m away from it, it feels meaningful at times and, when I’m in the middle of it, I’m occasionally cursing it.

The image of a karaoke machine in a strip club was such a strange one for me to try to put together in my mind, is that something you’d seen before?

No, but I’ve certainly thought a lot about the tensions between vulnerability / performance that karaoke and erotic dancing certainly have in common.  The connection is a bit ham-fisted, hardly even a connection as much as degrees of the same thing.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is when one character listens to a karaoke performance of Under Pressure, and develops a richer understanding of the song’s meaning after examining the lyrics more closely.  This was especially interesting, because I really like that song, but I had never paid close attention to the lyrics myself.  Has this happened to you personally?  Has karaoke ever put a song into a new context that changed how you felt about that song?

I don’t know.  There’s this way that karaoke happens in Japan that is a lot different than how we experience it here.  Here it is very rare to see anyone do it without some degree of ironic detachment.  But in my experience, in Japan it seems like people get together and sing each other songs to express to each other with complete sincerity how they are feeling and what they are thinking.  It’s not even coded, just a 1:1 ratio that they do completely shamelessly.  That’s a little hard for us as Americans to even imagine seeing as we mostly conduct all of our interpersonal relationships in codes.

Also, I’m dying to know: In the novel one of the characters is always eating something called a “marshmallow bar.”  What is a marshmallow bar?  I was imagining it’s like a Rice Krispy Treat, or something.

Yeah, I guess so.  There’s that whole realm of bars that are sorta candy bars and sorta granola bars.  I guess they’re somewhere in that continuum.

The book’s cover has a very used-book look to it: a faded yellow-ish color, spots, and water stains, and, on the corner of the first page, it looks like someone wrote the price in pencil, as used book stores often do.  I really appreciated this aesthetic, are you a used book enthusiast?

I don’t know.  I’m not an enthusiast in the sense that I pay attention to buying particular editions or collecting in any sense like that.  I read a lot and I make very little money, so it’s only practical.  In regards to my own book being designed to look like that, that was mostly inspired by wanting to acknowledge that the themes of my book were well-tread and inherited.

What is the coolest used bookstore you’ve ever been to? Have you ever been to Powell’s in Portland?

Yeah, Powells is great, usually the first place we drive to when we pull into Portland.  It’s funny that no one that works there would ever recognize me as just one more guy that walks around it once or twice a year, but every time I return I get excited because I recognize some employees and it makes me feel a little bit at home.  Myopic is the neighborhood used bookstore that i’ve frequented for years.

I’ve seen some mention of a second book you’ve been working on.  Can you spare some details?

I wrote the first draft years ago, before writing the Karaoke one.  I’ve been revising it for the last 6 months, but am missing this week’s deadlines badly, blah.  Bums me out.  I’m really close to being done and sending it out to try to find a publisher.  It’s much simpler – one narrator, one timeline.  It takes place in combination of a couple already defined fictional worlds.

I also saw that your band Joan of Arc performed a live score to a Charlie Chaplin film.  How did that go? Are you a big fan of Charlie Chaplin?

I am not particularly a fan of Chaplin, we (Joan of Arc) were just commissioned to score that specific film.  Of his films I have seen, that specific one is a bit underwhelming, but we played around with speeding it up and slowing it down and I think that made it a different and hopefully engaging thing.  I’m excited about what we ended up making, but the creative problem solving regarding the specifics of the situation had us considering canceling up until the day before it happened.  So it was very stressful, but forced us into a new way of playing which was ultimately good.

I read that you’ve done some film directing.  Are there any other non-music or non-writing projects in the works?

Joan of arc is existing these days in two parallel ways – #1 the backing band for my friend who has started writing songs for the first time in her mid-thirties and is amazing and #2 as the musical component of an experimental theater / performance art piece based on the poems of Charles Reznikoff.  So these are two very different approaches that keep us busy and engaged in two very different ways that inform each other.  But also, neither of these depend on us and our tastes to motivate how they should develop.  So it’s a good and interesting way to be a band for now.

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The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self Defense is avalailable now from Featherproof books.
[Click here for free "mini-book"/excerpt.]

You can also pick up the latest Joan of Arc record, Life Like from Polyvinyl records.

Also released in 2011, is Joan of Arc’s Oh Brother; essentially a 4-song/4-sided album, showcasing Kinsella‘s varied collaborations with such artists as Zac Hill (Hella, Death Grips, Marnie Stern) and Robert A. Lowe (Lichens, Singer, 90 Day Men).  Oh Brother is available through Joyful Noise.

Having grown up in Orange County, CA, Karl linked up with DJ Greyboy in San Diego and the duo began fusing together acid jazz grooves and beats.  By 1995, the project had acquired guitarist Elgin Park (aka Michael Andrews), organist/keyboardist Robert Walter, bassist Chris Stillwell, and drummer Zak Najor.  This marked the birth of the now-legendary Greyboy Allstars, as well as their classic album, West Coast Boogaloo (feat. Fred Wesley).

Always prolific and ever evolving, Karl thrived in several more projects, began fronting Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, and has continuously popped up and found homes with everybody and anybody in the jamband circuit over the years.  His resume is a mile long and, most recently, he’s performed with the likes of such acts as Slightly Stoopid and none other than PUBLIC ENEMY!  Every great festival that I’ve been to has included some incarnation of Karl Denson; whether it’s a late night, post-Phish Halloween show, KDTU set, or just the saxophonist jamming with a seemingly unlikely bluegrass band – he is up to his eyeballs in music!  Through it all, one of the most impressive things about this man is the balance that he maintains between heavy touring and being a father/husband.  He specifically structures his tours to maintain this balance and one can tell from being in his presence that he truly knows how to keep all of his passions equally in check.

Once I heard that Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe was going to be covering the Rolling Stones album, Sticky Fingers in it’s entirety, with additional guitar work by New Orleans slide-guitar extraordinaire, Anders Osborne , I knew that Seattle and the rest of the cities on this tour were in for a treat.  Not only did the band absolutely tear apart the Stones album with deep heart and soul, but the KDTU second set revealed the ever evolving nature of Karl’s own music.  The show was incredible and we even got the rare opportunity to ask Denson a few questions between sets.

-Joel Ott

JOEL OTT: So how’s the tour going?

KARL DENSON: We’re having a great time… It’s going really well, the crowds are loving it.  It’s a great record, you know, it’s fun to play.

JO: How did you choose Sticky Fingers? I mean the Stones have a lot of material…

KD: We were just kind of- we started with Aqualung.  We were gonna do Jethro Tull.  And then we thought, “you know what? A lotta people aren’t gonna know that record… like, really well” .  So, we said, “Ok, let’s go with the Stones” and then, we just started going through all their records and that (Sticky Fingers) had a bunch of tunes that I really liked… You know, “Sway”; I’ve always loved that track.  And then we’d already done ‘Can’t you hear me knocking,” you know, a year ago, and it just seemed like the right one.

JO: Well, it definitely works!

KD: We’re having fun

JO: Anders?  How did that all come about?

KD: We needed somebody to play slide… You know, we needed a slide guy and somebody who could sing, to share the vocal duty.  And he and I have been trying to do stuff together; we sat in on each other’s gigs a couple times in the last couple years, so this is like our first chance to really do something together, so… he was kind of a natural choice.

JO: Brian Jordan has been with the Tiny Universe for quite a while – what happened to him?

KD: He decided he wanted to do his own thing.  And you know, I think with our schedule being kind of broken, as it is-  You know, like I did a lot of this summer with Slightly Stoopid, so we kinda had some nice big breaks in the schedule… I think it gave him enough momentum on his own where he was like,”I think I should stick with my thing.“  So, he’s just doing his thing… and DJ Waynes was a natural choice; we’ve played with him a few times and I’ve always wanted to play with him.  You know, like he sits in and ALWAYS impressed, so it’s kind of a cool thing.

JO: You’ve mentioned before how, early on in Grey Boy Allstars, you’d put ideas out or people would put ideas out there (in the context of grey boy) and they either liked it or not, but it was like real straight and to the point -

KD: With the All Stars? Haha, yeah they’re the style council.

JO: So I was wondering how that’s affected your growth and development.

KD: You know what, it was a really good opportunity and still is; we still do things together.  It’s a great sounding board from the standpoint of… really, kind of fleshing out ideas AND knowing when it’s cool or not.   Sometimes there’s things that you do that might work for this band (but) they don’t work for the All Stars, or there are some things that are just like,”that’s a great idea, but not necessarily applicable to my audience.“  So, that’s the cool thing about having those guys around – they just refuse to play anything.

AMY SALVADENA (recording the interview): Brutally honest?

KD: They refuse to play anything they don’t like. They’ll actually, you can force them to do it, but they’ll realize – this isn’t going to work *laughs*.

JO: You were talking about Jam Cruise and how it gets better and better every year, but you don’t want to have any expectations (“I don’t want to say it’s gonna be better next year, but the way it’s been going…”,) so I was wondering about expectations.  I try not to have expectations myself, because I feel like it sets you up for disappointment, or whatever, and I think it’s a good way to go through life. So, I’m wondering; does that point of view apply at all to your music career or your life?

KD: You know, to a certain extent.  I’m not one to go into a situation and create… I don’t create situations I’m normally one to go in and see what it is and then, you know, try to make the best of it.  I do find that people that have lots of expectations tend to get disappointed and then bum everyone else out around them, so I think it’s a more healthy way to look at life and kind of keep it fresh.  You can have expectations, I think it’s just, you know, there’s that choice of whether or not to be happy.  Along with that, you know people that make a lot of expectations tend to allow themselves to be unhappy when their expectations are let down and I disagree with that philosophically.

JO: Jazz, I want to talk about jazz…when you started playing, it was early on… I mean, how do you feel like jazz was then, how is jazz now, and how does that relate to the whole jam band scene, which has sort of evolved into this big thing now…

KD: You know what, I’ve always been a jazz head, but I think there was a point where I realized that what I really liked about jazz was its connection to dance music… And so, I tend to stay on that path.

*loud laughing in background, we all laugh*

I think that’s led me away from jazz, traditional jazz to a certain extent, where I think that spirit of what it was when it started in New Orleans is maybe more applicable to hip hop right now, than it is to trad(itional) jazz.  You know, I liked John Coltrane as a kid, so I listened to a lot of avante garde jazz and I thought that’s what I wanted to do for a long time.  And so, as a result, it kept me open to a lot of things… and, so what jazz is; I really think it’s a spirit, not a style of music… And, you know, I look at cats like MMW (and) to me is like, I like what they do- I mean, in terms of being jazzy.  And I like what Roy Hargrove does… but, I don’t like the purest element that doesn’t allow for new thought.

JO: What about the connection with jambands?

KD: Well, I think the jamband scene is a scene that’s all about improvisation, which I think very closely connects it to the jazz scene.  I used to always say that I thought High Sierra (music festival) was one of the best jazz festivals of the year, because you would find that bands like MMW would be there, or Skerik would be there, and, you know, all these weird projects… Bela Fleck would be there, Jacob Fred Jazz Odysey would end up there, and it’s all this weird music.  And then, you have a bunch of blues artists and soul artists and bluegrass artists… Bluegrass – to me – is jazzy; it’s all about improvisation.  So, I think the jamband scene -for me- is a natural place to be, in terms of playing jazz music.

JO: Jamcruise.  Convince us.  I mean  -it sounds awesome- tell us why we should go.

KD: Well, I mean… you’re on a boat!

*we all laugh*

You’ve got all the bands you like on a boat.  You’re stuck on a boat with a bunch of bands and it’s pretty amazing and I think that one thing that Jamcruise has done that nobody else does to this extent, is we created the “jam room”.  The after hours jams that go on in the jam room are pretty epic, because you’ve got, you know, 20 bands on a boat, they’re stuck out there.  After everything’s done and it’s 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, everybody heads to the jam room, and everybody goes on stage and just plays – and it’s pretty insane.  So, I think it’s a really good party, and it’s on a boat!

Our interview was then cut short, because Karl had to return to the stage for a set of KDTU material.  One didn’t really know what to expect after such a powerful cover of the entire Sticky Fingers album.

Anyone familiar with The Stones release would naturally anticipate a stretched-out sax jam towards the end of the classic, “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and, though they ran through it really well, the jam didn’t stray too far from the original.  What really took me by surprise though, was the next track, “You Gotta Move,” which featured extended slide-guitar work by Anders Osborne over the rest of the band (we’re talking about a full horn section, keys, another guitar, and drums).  At some point, I remember turning to my friend and saying something like, “Wow, this DEFINITELY does not sound exactly like the album.”  Sure enough, upon checking later, the band had taken a two-minute blues tune and jammed the hell out of it with emotion and power, for a screaming seven minutes!  The other truly noteworthy jam, most unexpectedly, popped out of “Sister Morphine”, which is a really slow and mellow song, as the title would imply.  As soon as the lyrics were “out of the way,” the drums kicked into double-time and, all of a sudden, the room was in a funk-infused, trancey dance party that lasted around ten minutes longer than the album version.  We were getting a taste of exactly what solar system the Tiny Universe is jamming in these days.  Of course, they also nailed the classics: “Brown Sugar”, “Wild Horses” and “Dead Flowers”.

I’ve seen Karl many times and, although I’m not familiar enough with his material to really get into the names of the songs, I know that I can always count on a couple of things: the music always sounds fresh and I am always gonna dance my ass off.  This second set was no exception.  While they ran through some of their more composed material, they didn’t waste a lot of time before getting right back into that realm “Sister Morphine” had brought us to, and we had a full on dance party for the entire set.  There was a “synthy” feel that kept coming on in waves and it was something that struck me in particular about their current direction.  As far as I’m aware, this is definitely something new, in terms of their jamming style. The set thrived  with energy and gave each band member their own moment(s) to really shine.

If you have a chance, get up offa your thing and go see Karl D!  After the tour he played a few dates with Fred Wesley and the Greyboy Allstars, covering their original debut in its entirety to wrap up the year in Southern CA -including a stop in the Bay area for NYE- before heading out “on a boat” for Jamcruise 10.  The Sticky Fingers tour “with special guests” (including Anders Osborne) will continue with their East Coast leg launching at the beginning of February.  This is not to be missed folks!

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CLICK HERE for tour dates.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW:

SET ONE (Sticky Fingers)

SET TWO

Electronic music is not my genre of expertise, so it came as a surprise to me when I heard AO’s soothing and ambient tones on his solo release.  I had the good fortune of then, seeing him live at the Dropping Gems Showcase at Decibel Festival, where he was joined by friend and frequent collaborator, Zuri Biringer, whose lilting guitar riffs added a grounded sense of nature, invoking images of sky and water.  It’s impossible to listen to the Seattle native’s sound without being drawn to the beats.  However, while they ultimately drive the music forward, they aren’t the primary focus of the songs, which create a vivid mood through crooning vocals, guitar, and keyboard.  In combination with some incredible imagery that accompanied the performance, the set was nearly transcendent.

Not long after his show that night, I was able to sit down with Alex to discuss his development as a DJ and find out where he draws his inspiration from.  His ambient sound was a divergence from the sounds that I had heard from him previously and I had many questions.  Eloquently and in fascinating detail, he was able to give me answers to questions that I didn’t even know that I had.  To an electronic media newbie, like myself, I found him to be incredibly informative and insightful; even providing hints on where to start my own exploration of the vast genre.  In the end, he was even so helpful as to give a demonstration of how he creates his unique style.

The following is the transcript from that conversation.

PARVANEH: I guess my basic question would be, when did you get interested in electronic music and where did you see yourself going when you started?

DJAO: So, I don’t really know where to begin really.  I guess the first time that I ever heard an electronic music song that I thought, “Oh shit this is really incredible,” I heard- yeah, I guess it’s like the first track from the Beastie Boys album, Hello Nasty.  Yeah I heard it in like sixth grade.  We were sitting on a bus.  We were on a school trip and they had the CD and that was when that album came out, and I remember hating on it quite a bit.  -I’m sorry, I’m really OCD, I just need to make sure this is recording right.

[Checks on the recording]

Anyway so sixth grade on the bus?

So, sixth grade on the bus.  I remember I saw- I don’t know, it’s a long story, but I saw the Beastie Boys album cover and I was like, “I bet that sucks!”  and I was on this bus ride, and a friend of mine lent it to me.  I thought that them rapping was pretty cool, but the beat… everything about it was just so crazy to me.  It was like, “Wow, this is one of the hardest pieces of music I’ve ever heard”.  Up until then, I was just listening to 90s alternative.  I was really into Rage Against the Machine and stuff like that.  Then, through the Beastie Boys…  Their DJ is one of the best scratch DJs, his name is Mixmaster Mike and is one of the craziest musicians who uses a turntable, basically.  He’s really out there and really experimental and the crew that he’s from is really experimental.  They’ve done a lot of work.  They’ve released albums around turntables, using them to produce sound that I don’t think anyone’s really matched…  The whole turntable thing really died out.  That’s the way I really came to it, ’cause I really started DJing sophomore year of high school.  I wasn’t even DJing for people.  I was just, literally, in my room with the turntables just scratching for like ,two years probably…  Just scratching, listening to really, really weird beats made by other DJs and scratching with no purpose and no plan whatsoever.

Then I started DJing high school parties and dances and stuff, but I was still basically listening to all hip hop.  So, then I started DJing out.  Playing shows and stuff, just doing dances for friends at their houses and fundraisers.  You know, high schools.  Then, I went to college and I was still pretty much just listening to hip hop all the time and DJing and all that, and my style of DJing just started to get weirder -like the chopped and screwed stuff that I do now when I DJ, as opposed to my live show- started freshman and sophomore year.  I mean, it started in High School, but that’s when it really started to flourish.

And then, it was my junior year, when I studied abroad in London, where I really got exposed to-  Well, I was kind of eclectic, but when I moved to a different city where no one listened to hip hop, or most of my friends didn’t listen to hip hop, I suddenly learned about just so many different kinds of music and started to go out and see it live, which had a lot to do with me starting to catch on.  Especially when, around that time, that was…  that was 2007-2008…  That wasn’t when dubstep first started, but it was right when it was blowing up in-  Before it had blown up in America, but when it was becoming really developed and popular and a lot of people were starting to accept it as cutting edge and interesting.  And a lot of my favorite artists are dubstep artist who are from that era and who I saw live.  Like Benga,who I saw live before his album came out.  I only knew him through the internet.  I didn’t come to London knowing anything and, sitting in my room in London on the internet and realizing that all these super cutting edge dudes, who are so interesting and fascinating to me, are all in the city I was in, I was like, “Oh my god, I have to go to some of these shows”.  I remember, when I went to see Benga -I couldn’t find anybody to go with me- and, I remember I was just lying in bed that night and I was like, “Well, what am I gonna do tonight?  Am I just going to smoke and pass out, or am I going to go to this show by myself?“  And I went and, first of all, I met him and then, that is where I met my British girlfriend, totally randomly.

So it worked out well.

Turned out to be a good choice.  But I came back and my senior year just completely changed the music I DJed.  I started listening to electro, started listening to way more dubstep, and started listening to futurebeat.  Which is I guess is where you’d put me now, sort of.  But there’s a lot of words for it, like IDM.

What would that stand for?

That stands for “Intelligent Dance Music.”  It’s for like, experimental 90 beats per minute roughly.  It’s a pretty nebulous term.  It has a lot of connotations with music that came out in the mid-late 90s, or early 2000s.

I know when I saw you at the Baltic Room last fall, it definitely sounded like-  I mean, I’m sure it also had to do with the theme of the night, but it sounded much more dubstep-style.  A lot of heavy beats, but definitely pretty scratchy, do you feel like you were influenced by glitch at all, either?

You know, I think I was more influenced more by J Dilla than I was by any hard IDM or hard glitch, and I have friends who are really into glitch, like Calvin from Ghost Feet…  We did a Portland show recently and he drove me down from Olympia and he said, “You should check out this hard minimum glitch that I got from France.”  He said, “This stuff is so computer error,” and I was like, I like this stuff, but I don’t.  I don’t seek it out.  It definitely influences my music but it’s not like…

Not one of your main influences…

Not one of my main influences.  I think mainly it influences me through other artists that inspire me.  But that particular show was a DJ set, right?

Yeah

So yeah, I remember that set, that was really fun.  That was a lot of hip hop and chillwave and future beat and there was definitely some really crazy dubstep in there too.

*laughing* Yeah.

Yeah, the guy who booked me, Ill Cosby, is a future bass DJ and so, I pulled out more of my upper tempo- you know, strange, really mindblowingly arranged dance tunes for that one, more than I normally do.

I think…  I want to go back to that, too, but for your current stuff -like your Ep and the stuff you played at Decibel Festival- is much more low key, kind of with Zuri playing guitar and the singing aspect of it…  I’d been keeping up with your pieces coming out on the Dropping Gems compilations and, when your EP came out, I thought, “Wow, where did this come from?“  It sounded like a completely different style.  Was this something you were building up to, or was it something you didn’t really have the opportunity to do with the Dropping Gems Collective, or….?

Well all of that music is definitely like Dropping Gems music-

Really?

Yeah, because I make a lot of different kinds of music, but I have my more up-tempo stuff coming out on Car Crash Set in the middle of November, and I also have just straight dance music, like just regular dance music…  I guess it’s not regular, but to me it is, I just sit down and I think, “I’m gonna make a Baltimore club tune” and it just comes out however it comes out.  But, like the first song on the EP, “Underbrush,” when I sat down to make that, I thought, “I’m gonna make a dubstep tune” and that’s what came out…  So, I don’t always know. *laughter*  But, in my head, I classify it one way, but people…  But, that material is mostly over a year old.  Like “Green Lake” was a song I made right when I got a computer.  Like, I was in Seattle a while without a computer.

I guess I didn’t finish explaining…  When I graduated from college, I started working at a production company and started using the studio there and that’s how I actually started making beats.  I mean, I made beats in high school in the digital media lab on GarageBand and so, then using Logic -which is the professional version of GarageBand- which was at the studio I was working at, was not difficult.  And I still have tons of material from that time that hasn’t been released and I don’t know if it will ever be released and what I’ll do with it.  It doesn’t really matter, but all that stuff is really different.  But, I moved back to Seattle and, a couple months later, I got a computer; it was that summer.  Summer of 2010.  So, a little over a year ago.

So do you feel like you identify with some of the kinds of music that you’ve put out any more than others?  Like, do you feel like the stuff that came out on your EP was maybe stuff that expressed more of an individual style, or…?

Well, it’s hard to say with that, specifically.  I mean, all of that is really, really personal stuff, but, like I said, it’s pretty much a good record of the last year.  “Green Lake,” I made it last summer.  I made “Taigamoss”…  I made it last fall or winter.  “Underbrush” I’ve literally been working on for a year, at least.  “Moon Sun Ravine” just started as a beat with those voices, and that shit is really old too.  “Through The Field” is relatively recent, but couldn’t be any newer than the Spring.  The only thing that really I made this summer would be the second half of “Moon Sun Ravine” with Zuri playing the guitar, which I just made while I was living on Capitol Hill and I just called Zuri and said, “Man can you come over and play?  Bring your guitar I need to finish this goddamn EP.”

So how did the partnership…?

Yeah, the collaboration, the collaborative partnership-

…the collaboration with Zuri come about?

We’ve just been friends for a long time- Man, when was the first time we jammed?  I don’t even know… the first thing that comes to mind is a song called “Forest,” which I played live at the Decibel show…  No, there’s another song, it’s called “Pacific City”…  Me and Zuri went down to Portland.  I think Zuri actually just came down to kick it, just the two of us went down to kick it with the Dropping Gems people.  This is like when I was first getting to know all of them.  And we just hung out and, at one point, we went to the Oregon coast and we went to this place called Pacific City, which was really, really, really incredible.  But yeah, at a certain point, he came over to the house and I had just put together-  Well, I think I might have actually, just done it all at once…  I just played some pads, played some noises, I had a couple different sounds, just a couple different chords on top of each other, or maybe just one chord, and I said, “Hey Zuri, just play some guitar over this” and a week later, I just went in and just chopped up what he had played and put it into a sampler and just played it.  And, because I don’t know how to play piano and I don’t know how to play guitar and, because like of all these things… collaborating with people who are really talented like Zuri, who is, first of all, unbelievably talented, but he’s also got exactly the same (well not exactly the same) but in the exact same continuum that I am, in terms of taste and definitely in terms of melodic sensibility, is great.

Of course.

And, during the Decibel show, he was really blowing me away.  He recorded that set -or, someone did- and I don’t know where it is.  I meant to record it, but was too flustered in the process of getting everything set up.  It just turned out to be just a really happy accident.  It wasn’t really an accident, but really an organic thing that I didn’t have to plan at all.  He would just come in and play over the things I made, I’d chop it up in the sampler and it would add so much.  We did a couple more songs that way and it developed into a thing that was just really, really fruitful from a production standpoint, and I realized, if we can do this in the studio, this would be perfect live, too.  He came through and played at the Electric Tea Garden and it was amazing.  It really helped my anxieties, ’cause there’s a general sense of anxiety when you’re playing music like this that is generally done in a studio ahead of time.  When you’re not like, just pressing play on an Ipod, which I have literally seen people do before…

Right *laughing*

So, having it be done as much live as possible is really important thing for me and I’m not anywhere near where I want to be in terms of that.  Like, I just do what I can at the moment and, as I get to be a better musician, I’ll add more.

Well, I think the stuff you’ve done with Zuri always sounds really natural.  I think, a lot of times, when people have another instrument come in, it can sound weird, but I was actually playing your EP with my boyfriend -this is kind of an aside- but he said, “God, this would be really great with some guitar over it,” and then all the sudden Zuri comes in and he was like, “oh! Perfect!”  So, I think it feels really natural and makes a lot of sense.  And, I guess I have a lot of questions, too, about how you put your music together on a technical level.  I mean, I have NO knowledge about the process of making electronic music; like what programs you use or how you put it together, but I guess I’ll save those for later when you show me how it works.

Having seen your previous show and having heard the stuff that’s been coming out on compilation CDs, I think I heard a much more obviously complex kind of a sound from you, like you were saying about the show that I saw; that you were really kind of throwing everything out there.  And it seems like a lot of your recordings have been showcasing a lot of different skills that you have technically as a DJ.  When you came out with your EP, or your stuff that you’ve been working on longer term, the sound seemed to be a lot simpler on the surface.  Though, seeing you live, I feel like I could tell the complexities in the beats, which kind of moved around a little bit, subtly changing tempos.  Why did you make that change in your sound?

Well, it wasn’t that much of a change for me, really, because that’s how I’ve always done it.  I just hadn’t released any of it, so no one really knew.  When DJing, I’m so eclectic and I’m drawn to so many different things…  The biggest distinction, though, is that I’m playing other peoples’ music and not, you know, not mine.  I’m not creating that stuff that I play.  Anyway, the thing about my live shows is that I don’t have a template or formula for making song, and I don’t have a formula for structuring songs in the middle of making them and, especially if I come back to something that I was working on… anything new that I do will be different than what I was originally doing.  It’ll be in the same vein, but… you can really tell on the fourth track of the EP, “Moon Sun Ravine,” there’s the part where the voice is and then, there’s the part with the guitar.  And they were both made months apart from each other.  And so, you can just tell.  And, for some people, the switch may be too much.  I know I had long conversations with people, in Dropping Gems specifically, who just said,”the guitar is too much, it’s too jarring.”  I agonized about that for a little while, but eventually, I decided to keep it.  But, in any event, the reason why tempos change and beats change is because that’s just what happens when I play the songs.

Right, I wasn’t meaning that in a negative way.  I really like that, actually.

Yeah.  No, I mean, I have plenty of thoughts about what to say like, “Well, you know, life is always changing.”

*Laughter*

But seriously, life is never in a lock-step meter.  You know, every day could potentially be a revolutionary day.  Like, if something crazy happens and you have to upend your whole life… that’s kind of what this summer’s been like for me a little bit.  Things have finally settled down, but also there’s a lot of points on the EP and in my live set where there aren’t any drums at all.  It’s just ambient.  And then, drums come in and that’s kind of similar to the patterns of life, you know.  Activity and inactivity, or inspiration and depression, or whatever else you want to say.  So, the EP is also narrative, so it really has a specific narrative…  It’s like a trip, like a walk in the woods, you know?  And there’s stops and starts to that experience, too.  There’s parts where you’re walking down a hill and you might trip, or other times where things are just mundane and you’re trying to stay in line.

So, just to clarify, the narrative is the movement of someone through….?

Well, it’s just natural environments, forests, specifically.  Obviously, it’s not a specific place, it’s more fantasy-based than that.

I think you can definitely feel that in the EP.   Obviously, the names of the songs tend to imply that naturalness.  I guess that, to me as a listener, hearing some of your stuff that’s more rhythm-heavy and complex, compared to the ambient sounds that you have on the EP, it definitely seems to be much more reminiscent of nature as opposed to mechanics.

Yeah, definitely.  I mean, that’s the thing about… I love electronic music…  I was thinking about this the other day.  It’s probably the genre of music where the most exciting things are happening, just in general.  But, you know, there’s a significant history to electronic music and a lot of the pioneers…  I’m not like a hard electronic music nerd.  Especially with pioneer stuff.  I mean, I might get myself in trouble for saying this, but… I don’t like rigid, harsh, computer sounds.  I just don’t.  That’s what a lot of people make and that’s actually what’s popular, essentially.  Mid-range dubstep that has a lot of spikey computer sounds and huge over-compressed kicks and snares, it sounds like robots screaming and stuff.  There’s definitely a nice, enjoyable side to that music, but it seems like there’s way more bad than good and there’s way more inorganic electronic music.

Do they do that to put an emphasis on skill?

Well, not so much that, it’s just an aesthetic.  It’s a harsh aesthetic, and it’s an aesthetic that lacks a lot of mechanic rhythm.  It honestly, just has a lot to do with people partying.

It’s different for me, because I use a computer as my main instrument, but I don’t want to express robotic ideas or cold, synthetic ideas, or rigid ideas.

One of the cool things, I think, about the EP is that, because of the ambient sounds and getting away from the more mechanical aspects of electronic music, where the beat isn’t the emphasis, but has a large effect on the feeling of the music, it seems to have an appeal to more people who are outside of the electronic music world.  Were you intentionally trying to reach outside of that scene?

Well, not really.  It’s something I want, but it’s not something I’m explicitly aiming for in my head when I am making the music.  Part of it’s just that I have pretty eclectic taste and I like seeing a lot of different things live, you know.  I actually went to my first death metal show on Friday and it was a really extreme scene, but it’s really awesome, too.  I just got booked for a show in Portland and I’m playing right before the headliner and it’s just an indie band.  No one else on the bill is electronic and to me that makes perfect sense.  I don’t want to appeal to just one crowd and… there’s people I know I won’t appeal to, but…  I mean, I would love to appeal to everyone.  I guess I’m kind of insecure that way, you know, I’d love if everyone liked me.

*Laughter*

But, I don’t think that I want one scene or audience versus another.  And I like to make people feel comfortable and to communicate positive information and feelings, especially in a live setting where people are congregated together.  It’s nice to be able to communicate that individually to people through their headphones or whatever, but specifically when I’m physically there performing and creating sounds where there are a lot of people congregated to hear it, I really, really want what I’m transmitting to be positive.  I mean, I have a lot of music and I play these things that communicate a negative state of mind, but I try to do it in a way that’s enjoyable or at least uplifting.

There are a lot of artists, in my genre specifically, who are about being as harsh and nasty as possible and people go to those shows and are like “Yeah play the crazy shit!” and I totally respect that and sometimes I feel like that.  Like I said, I went to this metal show and it was awesome, but it was definitely some of the heaviest and most brutal stuff I’ve seen live.

Well, that kind of leads into what I think is going to be one of my final questions.  For you, what do you think are the advantages to playing a live show vs. a studio recording and vice versa?

Well, live shows are totally different, because (with) in studio recordings, I’m spending hours and hours and hours trying to find the right sounds and put them together correctly and getting them all mixed and balanced correctly, and to get the thing I’m looking for, which I only have the vaguest idea about and don’t really know it until I find it.  It just takes forever and it’s emotionally kind of harrowing and it’s just a mess and it takes a while.  And then, once I’ve found it, I’ve found it and it’s like a happy accident and I can enjoy it.  And in a live performance, it’s just about communicating that hard work to people in the most accessible way possible.  The most important work happens in the studio and the live show is like a celebration of what I’ve managed to find.  And I get to do some of it live, so it’s interesting to watch, but mostly it’s like, “Look what I found, guys!”

I know you mentioned this earlier and you didn’t really have a chance to talk about this, but you brought up that there were certain people who (you) felt like witnessing their live shows was really influential to you and (I was wondering) if you’d like to talk about it and how it influenced you….

Well yeah, James Blake is the pinnacle to me, as far as this section of electronic music goes, and he is a polarizing figure, I guess.  But to me, he’s the only person who has taken, well… I mean, I read an interview with him once and people asked him, “What’s your live show going to be like?” ’cause he was still developing it, and he said, “Well I just want it to be like Mount Kimbie’s philosophy on it.”  They’re another British group and they’re similar, but they don’t take it quite as far as James Blake, which is for him to basically play every note live.  Which is… it’s electronic music.  It’s made over multi-track on a computer -he makes it himself in his bedroom- but when he tours, he has a guy playing the drums and a guy playing the guitar and using a sampler, and he’s singing and playing the keyboards, and every sound that you hear on the record (and it may be slightly different) is being made live and being produced live and, to me, that’s the ideal.

So, do you see yourself moving in that direction in the future?

I have so many plateaus I have to reach before I can do that.  I have to learn to play the piano, I have to learn how to arrange for a band and I have to find…  I think Zuri would be a perfect person to tour with, which is why I do, but I’d have to figure out where I fit in and how I could have control over the sounds that I want to have control over.

Flying Lotus is another person who tours with a drummer and Thundercat is a bass player from LA who’s like, amazing.  He’s at a computer consul doing stuff and controlling the sounds and letting the band members go wild, which is kind of what I do, but way, way, way less talent and control in my situation.

Mount Kimbie are another good example, but they run a lot of stuff off samplers.  They play guitar live and they play drum pads live and stuff, and they have a snare that they hit every once in a while, so they’re another good example of that.

Shlohmo’s newest album is really organic and he uses loops, which is another option potentially, but I like playing with other people.  It’s basically, translating what my really personal ideas are and having control over them and then expanding that to include other people.  It’s a tremendous challenge…

Also Brown Bear, who is in Dropping Gems, has a project where he plays with a full band.   And Toro y Moi, one of my favorite beatmakers, had one of the best albums in 2010, and now he plays with a band and his music is different, because he plays with a band, and it’s amazing, but it’s just not what I would have wanted him to do, just because I love that one album so much… but, it also reminds me that it’s just not something that I think I’d be able to do to full satisfaction for a few years.

Thanks so much for talking to me about this.  I think we should wrap up this section of the interview and head over to see how you make your music.

Sounds good.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

After the interview, Alex let me come check out his studio, where he demonstrated how he creates a track from scratch.  It was a really great way to end the day and to round out some of my newfound knowledge of the electronic music artform.

[Unfortunately, the flip cam recording the footage doesn't capture the bass very well.]

LINKS:

Find out more about DJAO from the following links…

DJAO on Facebook
DJAO on SOUNDCLOUD
DJAO Dropping Gems Profile

His EP, Wuhn, can heard and/or purchased by “name your price” through here: http://droppinggems.bandcamp.com/album/wuhn

His more recent release is an installment of the No Northwest series put out by the Car Crash Set Label.  The series is an effort to spotlight Northwest producers and is a split EP, which he shares with HxdB, a Vancouver producer.  Two of the tracks are from DJAO; one being a solo piece called, “Just For Today” and the other, “Meditation,” being a collaboration with Yuk.  It is his first “for-money,” wide-release EP and is available for purchase at the following links:
BeatPort
AMAZON
Boomkat

Photo Credit:

Header image taken by Parvaneh Angus.

All other images are provided courtesy of Lara Schneider.

In the world of electronic music, Kieran Hebden (aka: Four Tet) is one of the good ones.  Timeless, incredibly consistent, and impervious to trends, it’s always worth looking into anything new that is released with the Four Tet name stamped onto it.  Highly respected as an innovator in his field since the late 1990s, albums like 2001‘s PAUSE -his breakthrough sophomore release under the Four Tet moniker- showcased Hedben‘s continued reimagining of the genre through the incorporation of acoustic instrumentation and such unorthodox samples as clicking typewriter keys.  It also resulted in the media pinning Hebden as the posterboy for another catchphrase movement that was being referred to as “Folktronica.”  A decade later, he is still the one to watch.  Even when the musician/producer isn’t releasing his own solo material or working with Fridge (his pre-Four Tet post-rock outfit) he’s remixing music by everyone from Aphex Twin, Madvillain, and Battles to Beth Orton, Explosions in the Sky, and Black Sabbath, or collaborating with the likes of Burial and Thom Yorke.

His latest work, “MOMA” [posted below] is an exclusive track created for an upcoming Japan benefit compilation curated by Blonde Redhead‘s Kazu Makino.

Titled, We Are the Works In Progress, the album was not only compiled in benefit of Makino‘s homeland of Japan, but it features one of the most impressive lists of talents that I ever remember seeing on any compilation; benefit or otherwise.  Along with Four Tet’s lead off track, other compilation-exclusive tracks have been donated by artists like Deerhunter, John Maus, and Nosaj Thing.  There’s even an appearance by experimental minimalist composer/legend Terry Riley, who offers up an exclusive complete reworking of one of his older 1970s tracks.  Many Westerners may have already forgotten about the horrendous tragedies that struck Japan earlier in the year, but there is still an endless amount of post-tsunami aid that needs to be given to the country and purchasing an incredible album that you should probably be picking up anyway is a great way to do it.  The fact that all profits will be going directly to Japan relief is only a tremendous bonus.

The album is 14 tracks deep and will be released in both digital and double vinyl formats January 10th 2012.

Pre-order the vinyl through THIS LINK.

Here are the complete details (via the press release):

WE ARE THE WORKS IN PROGRESS is a 14-song benefit album to support Japan and it’s ongoing efforts to heal post-tsunami. Born in Kyoto Japan, Kazu Makino wanted to help her homeland and turned to her friends and colleagues to ask that they donate tracks for the album. The response was unbelievable, and Kazu has collected an amazingly cohesive group of songs.

The album is the first release on the Asa Wa Kuru label, which Blonde Redhead created together for this album. It is Japanese for “Morning Will Come”.

Proceeds from the album will initially go to Japan Society and Architecture For Humanity, and more will be added. It’s important to Kazu to add additional charities as the situation keeps developing and worsening, and people’s needs keep changing. Her hope is that they can work with agencies that also help changing the way we live and think and help us become less reliant on nuclear power.

Kazu writes: This album contains exclusive material by artists that I admire. It took a while to make it this way, but it was worth the wait. We wanted it to be something special – something you don’t normally put on and album, and therefore many of these tracks are works in progress….hence the name. They are ideas that we became very attached to…versions of music that aren’t right for release, but ones that we love. Unfinished things often carry more energy….the possibility of it eventually becoming something great is infinite without having to be quite yet. I’ve noticed that each songs relates to one another. Like my friend Scott Mou said, “it sounds like each song is passing a baton to the next one”. I feel the same way.

TRACK LISTING

1. MOMA – FOUR TET exclusive

2. NO FACE – KARIN DREIJER ANDERSSON Fever Ray/The Knife, exclusive

3. G SONG – TERRY RILEY exclusive reworking of a song from the 70s by Terry himself, including new vocals

4. NIGHTCRAWLER – NOSAJ THING exclusive

5. BERCEUSE – JOHN ROBERTS exclusive

6. PENNY SPARKLE – BLONDE REDHEAD Drew Brown exclusive remix of album track

7. BIRD ON A WIRE – PANTHA DU PRINCE exclusive

8. IN HERE THE WORLD BEGINS – BROADCAST re-release of a tour vinyl-only track

9. DRIP – LIARS/BLONDE REDHEAD previously released track remixed by Blonde Redhead

10. CURVE – DEERHUNTER exclusive

11. STALAGMITE – STALACTITE Susumu Mukai of Zongamin + Drew Brown, exclusive

12. CASTLES IN THE GRAVE – JOHN MAUS exclusive

13. BAMBOO HOUSE – DAVID SYLVIAN/RYUICHI SAKAMOTO previously released

14. SONG SEVEN - INTERPOL previously released b-side

BLITZEN TRAPPER
DAWES
Neptune Theatre
Seattle, Wa
11.11.11

Last month we posted a brief write-up, along with a ticket giveaway for The Belle Brigade, Dawes, and Blitzen Trapper show at the Neptune here in Seattle.  The contest was super last minute and even more last minute was my decision to pop on over to the show and photograph it.  My credentials came through that evening and I decided that, if I had a photo pass, it would probably be worth swinging down there for it.  With a baby and a bunch of other shit going on, responsibility-wise, it’s not as easy to simply fly out the door on a moments notice anymore.

Blitzen Trapper was the obvious draw for me.  I have their album, FURR and the Black River Killer EP and am familiar with the Wild Mountain Nation record that was released prior to those, but I never really listened to last year’s Destroyer of the Void or heard anything off of their newest release, American Goldwing, which came out in September.  I remembered them being a fairly solid live act, but I hadn’t seen them since they played a free outdoor show by the Space Needle back in July of ’09.  I expected to be guestlisted for last year’s show with Wye Oak at Seattle’s Showbox during City Arts Fest, but when it turned out that I wasn’t, I said “Fuck it!” and rolled up to the see fellow SUBPOP label-mates, The Vaselines again for their overlapping festival stop at Neumos; a decision that I didn’t regret.  The Blitzen Trapper fans that I know didn’t seem too impressed with Destroyer and even BT frontman, Eric Earley who “cobbled together“ the album referred to it as “a patchwork of songs from (his) past and present which hung together like a house of cards.” American Goldwing, on the other hand, was created out of inspiration and, for all intents and purposes, was finished before the tour for Destroyer of the Void ever began.  While the group promoted the latter in front of the largest audiences of their careers (festivals, TV appearances, etc.), Earley concedes that, throughout that entire time, he knew “that this new record (he’d) recorded was the real record, the Blitzen Trapper record to come.“  Of course, that never did anything to prevent fans from defending Destroyer to death in the comment sections under any review that was less than high praise.

Even more vocal have been DAWES fans in the comment sections under reviews regarding their opening slot at this recent Seattle show.  The event itself was advertised as part of a “co-headlining” tour for DAWES and Blitzen Trapper, with the Belle Brigade operating as their opener.  I was mostly unfamiliar with The Belle Brigade, aside from random advertisements for the duo that had previously graced this site, a random late night appearance that I caught, and a YouTube video of the brother and sister team sitting in a bathtub while performing an acoustic rendition of their biggest hit, “Losers.”  I missed their set entirely, but the reviews have been generally favorable.  When I arrived, DAWES had already started playing.  I worked my way down towards the front and a lady touched me on the shoulder, in an effort to direct me as to where I should be standing to get a good photograph.  No, she didn’t work there or anything; she was just some random woman with her husband, but I guess that she just figured that we were all good friends at the show that night and that she was being helpful.  [No thanks, I think that I should be able to figure this one out for myself.]

It’s not surprising to discover that DAWES had been part of the touring Dave Matthews Band Caravan festival this year, because the crowd looked like they followed them directly from a DMB show… or maybe a Jack Johnson / Ben Harper performance or, dare I suggest it, a Jason Mraz gig.  I snapped off a couple of shots from where I was standing and then moved to the other side of the crowd, which found me surrounded by young, early-twenties college kids who seemed to know all of the lyrics.  Frontman, Taylor Goldsmith has just enough scruff to be the guy with the guitar at the party -looking rugged but not ragged- and the set, which had an equivalent vibe, simply fell flat for me.  They’ve been described as having that “Laurel Canyon” folk sound, which makes sense, because they actually did record their debut album, North Hills, in Laurel Canyon.  [Zappa lived there too, but that's, obviously, not the sound that they're being compared to.]  That album spawned the track “When My Time Comes” which you may have heard soundtracking the History Channel’s recent Pawn Stars/American Pickers promo.  It’s a well enough written song which, if you only heard that track alone, could place Dawes on the fence between, “Hey, I bet these guys probably have a solid collection of nicely constructed folk tunes” and “This is some contrived, emotionless Hollywood singer songwriter jive turkey bullshit.”  The fact that the official video was a tribute to Cool Hand Luke was encouraging and had me hoping that they were a little more Neil Young and less VH1.  Unfortunately, their other big song, “Time Spent in Los Angeles” seemed to suggest that they were, in fact, very much of the Video Hits folk variety and that they wouldn’t likely be venturing too deep into any John Prine or Heartworn Highways territories.  Their set had the energy of an award show performance and the solos were as clean and uninteresting as could be expected.  The show ended just as their fanbase must have hoped, with both of the aforementioned hits played back to back.  In other words, without any surprises.

On paper it would almost make sense to mash Blitzen Trapper and Dawes onto the same bill.  Now that BT recently switched their management to Big Hassle (same as Dawes) I can see someone thinking, “Hey, these are our two folky rock outfits and, if we put them together, this would be a match made in heaven. Plus, they could fill out the bill for each other, depending on what town they’re in.”  In Seattle, Portland-based Blitzen Trapper was the headliner.  In other city’s I’m sure this was switched up.  Dawes plays Dave Mathews festivals and BT plays festivals like Pitchfork.  They could both converge at something like Sasquatch!, but tonight it would be at the Neptune Theatre in the University District.

Since the last time that I saw them, Blitzen Trapper has lost keyboardist, Drew Laughery, effectively making them a quintet.  Adjusting to this, they began the set with a Nord set up in front of Eric Earley for the first couple of songs.  If you haven’t seen the group before, it’s important to note that some of the members will move around between instruments during their sets.  Earley plays both acoustic and electric guitars, the keys, and occasionally breaks out the harmonica “bridle” around the neck.  Erik Menteer will pause his lead guitar duties to man another Nord, or even to smash the shit out of a tambourine.  Marty Marquis might be on keys, then shift to guitar, or even melodica.  Brian Adrian Koch, even took a moment to man the melodica at this show, between his drumming and vocal duties and, at one point, I even noticed that bassist, Michael VanPelt had some sort of whistle-like contraption jammed in his mouth like a pacifier while he played.  Drew’s absence didn’t seem to affect them too much and they have adapted seamlessly.

Whether their entire set was really that good or simply appeared tobe great in contrast to the band before them, BT had a ton of energy and it came through incredibly natural and didn’t feel forced at all.  They began with “Sleepy Time in the Western World,” the lead off track from FURR and then went immediately into “Astronaut” from American Goldwing, before following it up with the album’s title track.  The set consisted of a healthy chunk from the new release and, as someone who was previously unfamiliar with any of that material, they were able to retain my attention completely.  The new tracks merged in with the older material effortlessly, but still managed to lead the performance into new and interesting directions.  There were a handful of cuts from Furr, a couple of tracks from Wild Mountain Nation, and even one (technically, 2) song(s) from the Black River Killer EP.  There was only one from Destroyer of the Void.

The set breathed up and down and expanded outward, but the shifts didn’t necessarily come strictly from song to song, but rather moment to moment, as well.  Every thing meshed and transitioned well from one tune to the next and the guys really steamrolled through once they got rolling; accelerating, slowing down, dropping through loops, and zipping up and around the walls like a TYCO Niteglow electric slot car race-track.  I spent the majority of the show in front of Menteer, watching him viciously chop away at his guitar and drain the life-force from his keyboard, while Koch pummeled away at the drumkit behind him.  During a few select moments, the typically more composed, Earley haphazardly flung himself across the stage, showcasing his ability to strangle out shrieking guitar solos of his own.  They encored with “Fire and Fast Bullets” before dropping into an immediately recognizable Zeppelin riff and ending the night with “Good Times, Bad Times.”

I had planned my coverage for this show -if any- to be a photo set, at best.  I generally keep to myself at shows, but I wound up talking to a young intern who was shooting for the Seattle Weekly that night and, while editing through my photos, I decided to bounce around and see if I could find whatever images other photographers at the show came away with.  Whether it was the Weekly, The Seattle P.I./Blogcritics.org, or the website Sound on the Sound, I began to recognize a pattern, as well as a mind boggling anomaly, throughout: for the most part, I actually agreed with them.  It was pretty clear to everyone that Dawes fell flat on the stage, while Blitzen Trapper put on an engaging and high energy show for their greatly deserved headlining spot.  Another defining thread between the reviews were the comments by Dawes supporters under them, which ranged from overly defensive statements to responses as simple and minimal as “Wrong.”  One person even inaccurately claimed, “Jeez – That’s the first review from this tour that had anything bad to say about Dawes.“  Perhaps, but it definitely wasn’t the last and I couldn’t find another one regarding this particular show that felt any different.  However, as stated before, the Belle Brigade set that I missed, was met with fairly positive responses, prompting some to insist that they outdid the supposed “co-headliner.”

It’s true that there shouldn’t be any real need to compare Blitzen Trapper and Dawes or to pit them against each other, but when you advertise something as weird as a “co-headlining tour” and the sets are so lopsided, it’s hard not to imagine how off it would have seemed if their performance orders had been switched.  Another thing that I began to notice was that Dawes‘ latest release,  Nothing Is Wrong was continuing to gain some hype and being suggested as one of the best albums of 2011 (Paste, Rolling Stone, a guy I know, etc).  I found a video of the song “A Little Bit of Everything” from the album, which Dawes played right before their other 2 hits that ended their set.  In this version, Taylor Goldsmith was performing solo acoustic on a radio show and it was still being referred to as a “new song.” The fucked up thing about it was that it actually sounded fairly credible and a hell of a lot better than when I saw it live.  The vocal delivery was direct and understated, as was his delicate guitar work.  There was an emotional quality to it that I hadn’t experienced at the show and his intention and ability to create a story with his lyrics were commendable enough.  I still wasn’t in love, but I understood the appeal a bit more and it showcased some promise for Goldsmith as a songwriter/lyricist.  From there I found a video of him performing the song with nothing but piano accompaniment.  It was generally the same version, except that it was slightly worse.  Whereas the lyrics had floated over gentle plucking of the strings prior, the piano was now making it less subtle by emphasizing the cadence in the verses, and the guitar work, which was the highlight of the last version, had devolved into nothing but a strum.  Finally, I found a recent live video that demonstrated the “evolution” of the track and it mirrored what I had experienced in Seattle.  The song begins with the frontman mussing up the back of his hair, while the piano, drums, and bass come in.  By now he has abandoned the acoustic, altogether, in favor of an electric guitar that’s simply hanging around his neck without him even playing it.  There’s a smirk on his face, because he knows that people know the lyrics now, so he begins to perform the track to the audience, making it more about the idea that they’re playing it, than about what they’re actually playing.  Everything that made the original sound authentic was gone; the drums have little military-style snare hits here and there and Taylor is accentuating the lyrics, both with his vocal delivery and by pantomiming stupid shit along to them.  The cheesiest parts of the lyrics, which were just barely overlooked in the stripped down version, are now said much louder, “It’s the death of my first dog!“  “So, pile on those mash potatoes and an extra chicken wing!“  He bellows these to the audience, but with more of a matter-of-fact talking voice, as if to say “How about that guys?“  He’s attempting to overtly turn it into more of a “story” and failing.  Sure, Neil Diamond can pull that shit off, but this guy can’t.  He’s no  Ol’ Blue Eyes-style crooner.  He’s more of an Adam Duritz type and, when showing the video to my girlfriend Kim, she thought that it reminded her of the yelped out songs by an even more emotionally inauthentic Adam: Sandler.  It didn’t help that the song that I saw them perform right before it, “Coming Back To A Man,” has an almost identical cadence to its verses, causing it to feel even more stale.

Blitzen Trapper, on the other hand, are at their best when they allow shit to get weird.  While their critics and/or Dawes fans might complain that they are unfocused, I’ve witnessed the Portland crew’s penchant of drifting into otherwise conflicting musical territories pay off handsomely and this night was no exception.  With a set sprinkled so heavily with new material, they sounded surprisingly cohesive,  while managing to make even the older work sound like it was advancing forward.  Their abilities as musicians and as a collective skilled at venturing out into heavier moments of distortion and experimentation actually work as a benefit, allowing them breathe and come to life, like they were summoning a mammoth hoof-swinging beast from the underworld.  Earley starts by crafting a foundation of solid tracks and, from there, the rest of the band can fill in the sound or help give it legs to move around.  For example, take the title track from “American Goldwing.”  It’s a good song, but it’s Marty Marquis‘ work on the keys and the little guitar riffs by Erik Menteer that contribute those perfect little accents to make it feel like a truly well-rounded effort.  Everyone in BT is extremely talented and, when it works, they operate as a unit to create beautiful tightly woven blankets of sound.

With Dawes, Goldsmith is actually weakening his own music by not recognizing where it’s strengths lie.  Trying to gain credibility for rootsy Americana while embracing more and more polished approaches to production is not serving him well artistically, even if it is doing wonders for his pocketbook.  He’d be better off playing some of that shit acoustic and not trying to work in weak arrangements with his younger brother and two other dudes, because the extra bodies actually seem to equal less life.  It’s clear that he prides himself on becoming a great singer/songwriter, but even in that respect, he’s not quite there.  It’s a tricky game, trying to tell a story about (often fictional) characters, while infusion them with powerful emotion.  Blitzen Trapper craft those type of story-based tracks, as well, and, to be honest, neither of these groups are writing “Sam Stone” or “Pancho and Lefty” quite yet.  Most artists will never ever find a lyrical voice that is as incomparable, unique, subtle, and powerful as Prine Van Zandt or contemporaries like a David Berman or Bill Callahan; it’s an incredibly rare gift to have such poetry spill out of your head and a skill that develops over time.  But that’s not really the point with BT, because the lyrical content is only one aspect to their song development, not the entire selling point.  One group is a full-on band and the other is just one guy, hoping to push a Jackson Browne vibe with a supporting cast that interact and feel more like studio musicians, even though he’s related to one of them.  The irony is that, although BT are experimenting with areas that seem like they would conflict with the Americana aspects of their sound, they actually sound a hell of a lot more organic then their co-headliners that are trying to confine themselves to that bubble.  When Earley‘s outfit launches into the space-rock or psych moments, it evokes those visuals that I’ve always imagined of the members of The Traveling Wilburys spun out on acid trips.  I’m not saying that Dawes doesn’t have a Dylanesque vibe of their own, but it’s Jakob and the Wallflowers.  They just don’t come to life off of the page for me, but that’s not saying that they won’t be successful, because I believe that they will be.

I believe that Dawes will continue to grow but, whether they become mainstream VH1 successful or simply gain some devoted fanbase that shitty bands like O.A.R. have managed to generate and maintain, I couldn’t say.  It depends on what you want out of life and your career.  Remember, The Black Eyed Peas‘ first 2 albums looked promising, with cameos by De La Soul and Mos Def, before they recruited a former Kids Incorporated/Wild Orchid songstress to piss herself live on television.  Blitzen Trapper will probably never get huge.  Most likely, the best that they could hope for would be to gradually gain a Wilco-like following in size and fervor.  Even then, I don’t see Eric Earley becoming inflicted with an actual rock-star complex.  But, for whatever my opinion’s worth, I’m actually interested in seeing what the quintet can pull off next and in delving into to American Goldwing to give it a chance.  Even if the recorded material doesn’t draw me in, I know that they are still an act that’s worth making a trip to see live.  As for Dawes?  I’m not really interested in following their careers, but for those of you who have the desire to pick up and seduce young, idealistic, upper middle-class liberal arts co-eds, you might want to start bumping their jams in your Subaru on the way to the frisbee golf course.  And, in the case that those references are outdated and are coming about a decade too late, Nothing is Wrong should still make an equally sufficient stocking stuffer for any of the soccer mom’s that those young women have turned into.

Blitzen Trapper Setlist:

Sleepytime In The Western World
Astronaut
American Goldwing
God And Suicide
My Hometown
Furr
Might Find It Cheap
Love & Hate
Fletcher
Love The Way You Walk Away
Black River Killer
Girl In A Coat
Miss Spiritual Tramp
Big Black Bird
Street Fightin’ Sun
Wild Mountain Nation

-Encore-

Fire And Fast Bullets
Good Times, Bad Times (Led Zeppelin cover)

BUILT TO SPILL

City Arts Fest 2011

The Moore Theatre

Seattle, Wa

10.21.11

I first heard Built to Spill from across the hall in the dorms.  When I lived in the dorms, I tried to keep myself off the radar.  The natural manner that my floor mates had with group dynamics made it clear that they were the fittest Darwinian specimens and that I was going extinct.  It came to a point where I, more or less, waited until I was confident that the halls were clear, before coming and going (a habit that has, unfortunately, penetrated into apartment life as well).  In the dorms, I became very skilled at dodging social interaction with the  people that I lived around.  However, some things are inescapable: things that become the air you breathe in such close quarters.  You can’t burn enough sage to satisfy the evil spirit that is the pervasive smell of Easy-Mac.  There is nothing that you can do to soften the rumble caused by charging stampedes of post-shower man-boys.  And certainly, you cannot close enough doors to dampen the constant noise of dormish this-and-thats.  Built to Spill was part of the “this and that”.

Up until recently, BTS was a sound I tried to filter out.  The guy across the hall from me—a gold medalist (to my silver) in the Awkward Olympics—had Built to Spill on repeat the entire year.  As their sound waves found their way through the tiny cracks in my particleboard door, Built to Spill became the backdrop of my dorm experience.  All that to say, I was truthfully, very excited to get the chance to see them perform at the Moore Theatre during this year’s City Arts Fest.  “Yeah great!  I’ve always wondered what they would sound like without a concrete wall between them and me.”

With my ear to my apartment door, I waited until the last rattlings of passersby had settled and then, made my way to the show.  I arrived at the theater to see five middle-aged guys on stage, all wearing loose fitting t-shirts, and either cargo pants or relaxed jeans.  I could have easily mistaken them for the road crew, if it weren’t for the ecstatic sounds radiating from everywhere in the room except for the stage.  The band enters casually and with a remarkable ease.  Built to Spill brought their living room with them, and now you are standing in it.

“Who are you, who come to me to perform in loafers?” I wonder, as they begin their set.  Before this night, I had felt strongly that shows stripped of showmanship had no place in the world.  With the soft-but-fierce competition in media, every band makes arguments and bids for your attention.  Built to Spill offers neither bells nor whistles with their set.  I am a little amazed that they have a following at all—let alone one that easily fills the Moore to capacity.  What Built to Spill gives up with showmanship, they have to make up in musicality and meaning—and that’s what people are here for.  People are clearly not at this show for a spectacle.  There is none to be had.  To quote Keanu Reeves in the blockbuster hit, Speed, “We’re just (2,436) cool dudes, hanging out.”

I begin to re-evaluate my prejudices against showless performances and start focusing on what everyone else in the room cares about: the music.  The sounds are truly elating, as they’re coaxed out of a bramble of pedals, switches and amplifiers.  The ambience of their three-guitar lineup is balanced against the very melodic, occasionally baroque-like movements in their songs—it’s an odd half-breed of shoegaze and jam band.  Even though I have very little interest in either shoegaze or jam band, the way that Built to Spill rides the line is emotive and serene.

I lost myself for a moment in the sad fanfares of Traces.  In case you didn’t know, it’s been proven that infants recognize and respond to music that their mother listened to while pregnant with them.  Subsequently, it’s been hypothesized that preference follows familiarity.  This is all to say, I feel a lot of familiarity with this song; not as if my mom, while pregnant with me, somehow listened to this song 20 years before it was recorded, but like I was indirectly informed of these sounds.  It’s possible that I may have had the seed of Built to Spill planted in my head by the rogue waves that wafted into my dorm room from across the hall.  Even more likely though, in this song, and in Built to Spill’s music in general, I hear so much of what we have come to think of as “the Northwest sound“.

The way in which frontman Doug Martsch bends his strings into a buzz of controlled chaos recalls to my mind the worbly guitars of Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica.  I listened to Modest Mouse long before BTS, but I am beginning to suspect the actual direction of the comparison: Modest Mouse sounds like Built to Spill, not visa versa.  Despite the two-year discrepancy between the formation of Built to Spill and Modest Mouse, the influence that the prior had on the latter is blaringly apparent.  Deathcab for Cutie also got swept up in the same current of contemporaries.  I can hear something like a seminal Deathcab in Built to Spill’s sprawling melodies, and even in Martsch’s voice.  There’s a fake movie I play in my head in which Ben Gibbard puts on a Built to Spill record and spends hours experimenting with just what shape he has to warp his mouth in order to make his vowels sound exactly like those of Doug Martsch.  By way of familiarity, I am becoming more and more aware that the Boise group isn’t something to shut out, as I have in days past.

By the end of the set, though, I feel a little bit like I’m back in the dorms.  Surrounded by a multitude of people who all have an intimate understanding of what’s going on, I feel lost.  Having been formally introduced to the band only recently, I don’t have any personal significance ascribed to these songs.  To these people, each song is a meaningful, personal experience that I haven’t shared.  Every song is like an encore.  Between the finish of one song and the start of the next, I am surrounded by spontaneous uniform chanting from the crowd.  It’s as if there was a program handed out at the door instructing show-goers what to drone in unison and when.  The faces of the front-rowers are elated.  I can see some not-well-concealed guy backstage who is not at all concerned with impressing his girlfriend by showing any level of dignity.  And he’s not the only one, nor is it just guys backstage.  The room is indignant and ecstatic.  The spectacle that Built to Spill isn’t creating on stage is made up for the fervor of the fans.  My appreciation for the band is far too cold and calculated—lacking all the warmth of meaningful experience—to participate.  So, as in the dorms, I’m on the outside looking in.  Bu,t unlike the dorms, it looks great.  And it doesn’t smell like Easy-Mac.

CRYSTAL CASTLES

City Arts Fest 2011

The Showbox SODO

Seattle, Wa

10.20.11

Walking into the never-ending cavern that was October‘s Crystal Castles show at the Showbox Sodo, I knew that I was a part of something outside of the realms of modern reality; something primitive and thoroughly futuristic all at once.  Everything about the experience seemed to be an oxymoron.  From the 19-year-old girls dressed like candy ravers circa-1993 to the frat dudes doing shots of Jäger in the bar, while the Crypts played their dark, thoughtful nightmare grooves, I seemed to have walked into a witches’ coven where half of the attendees were expecting a party instead of a séance.  But in fact, the mood of such a concert did land somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum. The music of Crystal Castles is smart and calculating and deeply rooted in the occult, while also appealing to the dance and party crowd, and/or those fans who revel in the collision of both dance and darkness.

Entering the stage with a sly presence, the duo wasted no time beginning with Alice Glass’ signature yelling and jumping at a hyper-momentum, set against a heavy and snail-slow techno groove, controlled by dj mastermind, Ethan Kath.  Their dynamic recalls a dancehall linguistic and a touch of The Knife with a White Magic tempo (another spooky, but more instrumental Brooklyn duo).  Crystal Castles are definitely Urban- tough (by way of Toronto), yet have an earthy fluidity.  Their set at City Art’s Fest was rooted in 90s tone with a futuristic vibration – echoeing up into rafters of a very noisy nothing, calling upon a feeling of primitive urge and uncontrollable movements…  Blood curdling drone to a backdrop of heavy rock beat that continually took the forefront and made the droning seem all that much spookier and omnipresent, as it alternated in and out of the vocal spotlight.  Three or four songs were filled with a shrieking chant that cut through the encompassing pulse, while the rest struggled with the balance between clear vocals and noise.

Much of the singing and howling that I enjoy so much in the recorded songs, was completely lost in a live setting.  I blame this solely on the venue.  I’ve only been to the Showbox Sodo three times, but every experience has the same outcome: the vocals are drowned out, the bass and feedback dominate the soundscape, and all of the details of melody and harmony drift upwards and get lost in the utter lack of acoustics in that mammoth building.  I understand that this band is on the rise and that they needed a larger venue to accommodate the demand from fans, but nobody -and I mean no decent musical act that I have seen or heard of- has ever sounded good at the Showbox Sodo!  It’s funny, because the original Showbox is, hands down, my favorite place to see live music in Seattle and the differences in atmosphere and sound quality between the two locations are so vast that I will continually pass on great bands and lineups simply because they are scheduled at the Sodo establishment.  To the credit of Crystal Castles, the energy that they projected was infectious and, even when the voices were inaudible, the crowd could sense the intent and level of enthusiasm in their performance.  Alice Glass has a stage presence like no other and, she alone, almost made up in her physicality what was lacking in the vocal and harmonic elements.

At rare moments they sounded just like the albums.  Steady, yet erratic.  Pulsating, yet spasmodic and random.  Bursts of light and jubilation, with equal parts doom and aggressive darkness.  Despite the muddled sound, the artists’ message came across and got the whole audience riled up, without a still pair of hips or feet in the building.  This tiny lady was a tinker-hellion onstage, straddling the crowd on her knees as they held her up, so that she could continue her yowling out into the madness of fan response.  These sneaky spell-casters are creating a new antithesis of disco; almost hardcore rock in a danceable format, but with something else all its own.  Dark and unreachable, they create appeal and intrigue with an aura of mystery; giving the listener just enough to grasp and keep the interest by hiding slightly in the shadows, both musically and physically.

All in all, Crystal Castles put on a great spectacle of a show, even in the poor setting and the intense silver strobe lights that threatened to either induce a seizure, or put half of the audience to sleep with its pulsing lull.  Fortunately CC’s dancey, droney brand of full-force electro-gloom kept everyone jumping along and deliriously /mysteriously happy.

I have no problem admitting that I am a fan of Ace of Base’s hits or Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby.” I do not appreciate them in some kind of ironic way, either.  They are good songs with catchy hooks and skilled song craft, and so is “Kokomo,” but I know there’s a difference.  I know that I shouldn’t like it.  “Kokomo,” written by Mike “Douchebag” Love, Terry “Doris Day’s son” Melcher, Scott “Mamas ‘n’ Papas” McKenzie and “Papa” John “Incest” Philips, is a sax-and-steel drum accented chart topper about some douchey resort in the Florida Keys that Mike Love liked to frequent.  The song came from a Tom Cruise movie that I have never seen.  Mike Love sang lead.  At the request of Disney, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine redubbed vocals that were originally sung by Terry Melcher.  The Beach Boy who had no involvement in this #1 single was Brian Wilson.

“Kokomo” is the antithesis of all that is supposed to be holy about “America’s Band.”  According to legend, the Beach Boys never released any “good” music before or after Pet Sounds, and they certainly never released any good music without Brian in the driver’s seat.  Those who venture into pre-Pet Sounds territory, on the other hand, discover classics like Surfer Girl and The Beach Boys Today!  Those who venture into post-Pet Sounds territory discover winners like Holland that Brian had very little to do with.  If the Byrds, Pink Floyd, and Depeche Mode can produce smash hits without their key songwriters, why couldn’t the Beach Boys?

As it turns out, with Brian’s two brothers (Carl and Dennis), cousin (Love), and aspiring dentist friend Al Jardine, the Beach Boys could too.  Mike Love may have been a tool who wasn’t as talented as Brian, but then again, John Lennon was a tool who wasn’t as talented as Paul.  And “Kokomo” is certainly a better song than “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”

The unreleased SMiLE album is the holy grail for “Kokomo”-hating Beach Boys fans.  According to legend, Brian’s brilliant Pet Sounds follow-up, described as a “teenage symphony to God,” would have eclipsed Sgt. Pepper.  After the project was canceled, the Beach Boys released the more simplified Smiley Smile in it’s place.  Later Beach Boys albums would also include a few cuts from what would have become -the still fragmented- SMiLE.  In 2004, Brian finally finished a version of SMiLE with his touring band and released the CD to critical acclaim.  But there’s just something about hearing SMiLE in late-60s medium fidelity with Carl singing the crucial middle harmonies.

The SMiLE Sessions, finally released this month by Capitol, includes the closest thing to a finished Beach Boys SMiLE possible without overdubbing anything new.  The only problem is . . . the album was not finished, and the unfinished SMiLE, put together from studio scraps, is not as good as either Smiley Smile or the Brian‘s 2004 version.

Sonically, The Smile Sessions is the best that it can be.  Although Brian is one of my favorite record producers, there are things about his 60s production style that I do not care for.  Brian’s love of lush, stacked arrangements was not compatible with 60s recording technology.  Since he had only four, or -later- eight tracks to work with, he bounced four or eight tracks down to one track relentlessly.  In those days, each bounce meant a notable loss in fidelity, particularly in the high frequencies.  The snare drum in “Heroes And Villains” is a perfect example of what happens to sound with generations of destructive analogue bouncing.  For this reason, I find that, in spite of the rapidly improving recording technology, the first production credited to Wilson, 1963’s Surfer Girl, with its more spare arrangements and lack of studio trickery, actually sounds considerably better than the album Brian was working on four years later.

In spite of its moments of beauty and genius, SMiLE was a project as self-indulgent as they come.  Brian’s collaborator, Van Dyke Parks (who, incidentally, played accordion on “Kokomo”), known for his own terrible album Song Cycle, does not help.  Much of SMiLE is half-baked, over-effected short-attention span music a la A Wizard, A True Star.  “Good Vibrations,” successfully fused “modules” recorded in three separate studios together into one song, but even on the similarly constructed hit “Heroes And Villains,” none of the edits on SMiLE are as seamless and well-executed as those.  “A musical journey from Plymouth Rock west to Hawaii, complete with a suite devoted to the elements, a song about physical fitness, and a minor key cover of ‘You Are My Sunshine’” doesn’t seem like such a good idea once the pot wears off, or once the rest of the band, who still has to tour while the main songwriter stays home in LA, gets back and listens to it.  The Who wisely gave up on Pete Townshend’s similar Lifehouse project, releasing the ubiquitous Who’s Next instead.  The Beach Boys did the same with Smiley Smile, a record that I enjoy more than either Who’s Next or SMiLE.

Some of SMiLE’s best tracks, like “Cabin Essence” and “Surf’s Up” did not make it onto Smiley Smile, but that is understandable.  Prior to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys had been releasing three or four records per year.  Almost a year had passed since Pet Sounds and the record company wanted a product.  If some of the best songs needed more time and energy to develop, or if they would sound out of place on the minimalist home-recorded Smiley Smile, there would always be a future record or two.  Some of the other SMiLE songs ended up sounding better on Smiley Smile.  “Vegetables,” which is fairly unmemorable in the heavily produced version on SMiLE, is brilliant in its creepy just-bass-and-vocals arrangement on Smiley Smile.  “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” which is abrasive and silly on Smile, is beautiful and hypnotic as reinterpreted in Smiley Smile’s stripped-down, slowed-down “Fall Breaks And Back To Winter.” “Our Prayer” and “Cabin Essence” made it onto 1969’s 20/20, and a superior version of “Surf’s Up,” based on the original studio tapes, augmented by Carl “The Man With The Pipes” Wilson’s lead vocal, a Moog, and 70s fidelity, appeared on the 1971 album Surf’s Up, one of the band’s best works.

Anyone who wants to sit through a record that’s good from start to finish will be better served by Smiley Smile, Surf’s Up, the 2004 Smile, or many other albums related to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys than by The Smile Sessions.  But, in some ways, The Smile Sessions does, in fact, deliver the goods.  It is nice hearing the familiar songs with Beach Boys harmonies and this version of the album does sound better than the Pro Tools-edited bootlegs that I came across years ago.  But the end of the first disc and the entirety of the second disc, while not intended for casual listening, are fascinating for anyone who is interested in hearing how one of the greatest minds in pop music works his magic in the studio.  Brian’s “Surf’s Up” demos and instrumental sections of portions of “Heroes And Villains” are audio gold, and not only to fans like me who even bother to own the Party!/Stacks of Tracks two-fer CD.

SIDE NOTE:

The aforementioned Party!, released in 1965, contains twelve mediocre performances of acoustic songs, mostly covers, with corny banter in between and overdubbed “party” noise.  On first listen, the album comes across as a total cash-in for the Christmas season and fans who would buy anything.  It was precisely that.  On the other hand, the passing decades have declared it the precursor to the MTV Unplugged craze, well ahead of its time.  Brian’s latest single at the time, “The Little Girl I Once Knew” was a flop.  Disc jockeys despised the song because it contained the avant garde sound of silence before the chorus.  Party!, on the other hand, generated a #2 hit, the Beach Boys’ famous cover of The Regents’ “Barbara Ann.” As a matter of fact, Party! originally outsold Pet Sounds.

Brian clearly wanted to make big, serious records, but the public wanted to “party!”  Still, the modular, ambitious “Good Vibrations” became the band’s second #1 single.  The Beach Boys dropped the SMiLE project.  In place of the proud “Produced by Brian Wilson” label on its sleeve, Smiley Smile contained the phrase “Produced by The Beach Boys.”  Aside from a couple of bizarre and interesting records in the late 70s, America’s band were never Brian’s band again.  Twenty-one years passed.  Dennis had drowned.  The band had tried even its hand at Culture Club-esque synth pop on their Steve Levine-produced eponymous 1985 album.  Then, it was 1987.  The Beach Boys released their first #1 hit in 21 years.  The song was “Kokomo.”

ROBYN

City Arts Fest 2011

The Paramount Theatre

Seattle, Wa

10.20.11

Seeing Robyn at this year’s City Arts Fest was my first big pop concert.  I’m happy to have fulfilled this rite-of-passage;  never mind the fact I’m almost 30.  Actually, being almost 30 does relate to this story, because, as I age, the less tolerance I have for staying out late, fumbling through crowds, STANDING, and the general pack-in-as-much-as-you-can-handle model of music festivals.  EXHAUSTION =FUN?   But to see Robyn meant participating in this chaos-fest, so I bucked up, slammed a 24 oz Red Bull, packed a Snickers Charged, and practiced standing around and pushing through crowds a few weeks before the event.  Here is how it all went down:

I brought my friend Luke with me to take pictures, because my camera is old and I don’t understand hand-held technology.  First, Luke and I went to a multi-purpose events space known as FRED Wild Life Refuge to check in and get our press passes.  FRED is in a cool-looking, mid-century building that is officially described as  a “collaborative arts center.”  But I would like to call it an “all-purpose room-o-rama,” which just means that it is big and confusing.  What the fuck is an all-purpose events space supposed to be, anyway?  Or a collaborative arts center?  I’ve been inside and I still don’t know.  There are designer colors on the wall and lots of different “event areas”.  It does look really cool inside, though.

The confusing FRED provided me with the most confusing press check-in that I’ve ever experienced.  [Oh wait, I have never press “checked-in” for something.  I’ve only ever snuck around whatever event I was reviewing, feeling secretly superior, even though I paid to get in.  "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??" I would silently scream at fellow spectators.  If only.]  There was some fiasco about what press passes Luke and I were supposed to get, what we should get, and what we would actually receive.  We ended up getting separate passes and only one was a pass for the Robyn show.  “Ummm, what?”  Rather than me braving the pop fiends alone, trying to take pictures of Robyn that didn’t look like Rothko paintings, Luke and I decided to be “punk” and sneak us both in with the non-Robyn pass that they gave us.   So, music festivals are shit-storms of chaos for press and public alike.  Oh yeah, I had already figured that would be the case.  The anxiety of the check-in was further perplexed by the fact that, after we left the check-in desk, we were kind of naturally corralled into a low-lit maze/room/foyer that housed one of the festivals rotating art shows.  This would have been cool except that we were already hecka flustered and confused and now, here we were, trying to figure out where the art was supposed to be (re:”maze”), who were art people doing art things (yikes!), who were art people just there to look at art things (get out of my way!) and who were the other dumbstruck onlookers pretending to know what to do (I know you!).   Also, there was Vitamin Water shit everywhere, which is never a good sign.  Once we found the room protrusion that acted as the gallery, we had a look around as fast as we could.  Some of the art was interesting, but vibe-wise, it was all either serious and made you feel bad or was funny and made you feel bad.  To further concentrate the aura around us, during this entire experience there was no background music and a total lack of a chattery white-noise buzz.  We had to get out of there.  So Luke and I left feeling confused, worried, and totally awkward as fuck.   But anyway, ENUF COMPLAING!!  (Not really)  ONTO THE ACTION!  (Sorta)  IT’S ALL UP HILL FROM HERE!

Because the art experience made us feel like our souls were all deconstructed and heavy, we decided we needed to rebuild our souls with alcohol.  After a few drinks and a peek at the World Series at a neighborhood bar, we felt ready to slam another Red Bull and head out.  We wandered down to the Paramount Theatre around 8:15.  The Paramount is old and fancy and is a hella classy place to see a pop diva, so things were looking up for us.  Before we approached the entrance, Luke and I did some jumping jacks and a secret handshake to increase the chances of us both getting in.  It was a little scary, but we were able to breeze right in, just by flashing the door person the weird little fabric patches that served as our passes.  Our poor ticket taker seemed blitzed and confused; they had probably just talked to 500 people in a row.  It also seems like all door people see the satin square of a press pass sticker and their eyes glaze over with approval.  Either that, or they don’t give a fuck.  If they do, they are little jerks.

When we got inside, the Portland-based dance-duo, YACHT was booming throughout the whole theater.  We went in for a quick sonic dip and caught the end of their set.  The main YACHT people, Jonah and Claire, wore grungy 90’s Euro-trash clothes and jumped around in unison.  Before the last two songs, they kept asking, “Does anyone have any questions?”  No one was stupid enough to scream out yes.

When we came back out, a ton of people were still wheeling about in the lobby/foyer/ fancy waiting-area place.  Here, we decided to engage one-on-one with fans to get the inside scoop about why they would pay shit tons of money to come here tonight.  Also, we wanted to take their pictures so you could see them.  This was a good decision because, in general, people were fucking stoked and this energy rubbed off on me and Luke.  One exception was the little hipster couple that were all slouchy and angsty and told us “Um, yeah, we are actually, like… here to see YACHT….”  REALLY?? Paying $40 to see a Portland band in Seattle is stupid, I said to them.  Not really.  But I think you and I can agree that they were stupid bummers.  Luckily, they were the only people in the whole world who felt like that.  Everyone else talked about Robyn like she was the musical version of a crisis hotline, saving them and inspiring them.  People fucking LOVED to talk about Robyn and how she is “AWESOME” and “AMAZING.”  They were dying to tell you about how HARD SHE WORKS and HOW LONG SHE has been working , how it’s SO TOTALLY NOT about the money, and that she is a dancing MACHINE.  Seriously though, Robyn’s fans really want to see Robyn get her propers.  And they should, because we are dealing with a magic Swedish pixie, tough-as-nails bird lady, who has all the cred of a class act super star, yet also seems to be perpetually skirting the actual achievement of that status.  This strange paradox of existence just further adds to her deep cred.  She is an indie diva.  That sounds terrible, but there really isn’t a better term that I can come up with right now to describe her.

One might wonder, “Why isn’t Robyn as famous as all of the other pop divas that we know and love/hate?“  The most probable answer to that is that she is not insane.  This may be because she has better genes (Swedish) or it may just be something that she tries really hard at maintaining.  Part of that effort seems to have included removing her self from the mainstream pop music machine.  You may or may not remember her first single, “Show Me Love” (it is really bad), which was put out in the 90′s when she was only like 15 or 16.  I imagine that dealing with being packaged and promoted in a particular popular musical model, while trying to grow up, was nightmarish.  (It was actually, probably, OK and really fun.)  But, after some time and some albums that had either luke-warm receptions or non-international releases, a change was a-coming for Robyn.  In 2004, the pop-star and her label severed ties, as she moved towards a more electro-dance pop vibe.  From there, she started to independently release her work on the label that she created called Konichiwa Records.  You can read all about it on her Wikipedia page and she talks about it in interviews a lot.  The complexities of international music distribution are boring and complicated and I’m not going to go into it here;  just know that this was a turning point in her career and, from this point on, Robyn started to kick major pop-ass, getting weirder and weirder.  Being cut loose from the creative confines of a major label freed her to write harder dance music, as showcased by her prolific Body Talk albums.  Doing what she loved, without some asshole dude trying to dumb it down, probably also contributes to the artist maintaining her sanity.  You can YouTube a few of her videos and see that she is a young woman who is eager to talk about the work, how hard the process has been, how rewarding, and also, how she likes to be tough.  In the video interviews that I’ve seen, she mostly refrains from that awful diva filler about how “it’s all for the fans, and I love my fans and I live for my fans blah blah blah BLARG!!!”  She simply tries really hard to make the catchy-as-fuck, sometimes-serious, music that she wants to make and, so far, she is succeeding at it.  In summation, she’s fucking cool, but don’t take my word for it; here is what some of the fans had to say:

This Canadian couple were the first fans we talked to.  Meghan started off by asking if I had ever seen Robyn before.  When I said “no” her eyes lit up like she was gonna say “OH MY SHIT! GET READY TO SEE GOD, GIRL” but actually what she said was, “She is like nothing else.  Holy shit.  She is worth traveling halfway across Canada to see. Every one sings along. It’s incredible.  I would pay 3 times the money I paid to she her.”

They travelled from Calgary.  I don’t know where that is, but is sounds FAR.  It seemed like a lot of people traveled to see her.

Lori and Daryl did not travel but they did have some cool shit to say about Robyn…

Lori:  “Dancing on my own is my anthem. I sang it at Pride Idol (last summer at Seattle Gay Pride) and people loved it.”

David and Rodrigo were on a date (maybe).  David was excited:

“It’s Rodrigo’s 1st Robyn!  I came with to show him the ways, he’s in for a real fucking treat.”

I pressed David a little more, asking about why people love her live show so much.  He said, “People have a visceral reaction.  The theatrics don’t’ overweight the music and vice versa.  She dances her ass off in a jersey for 2 and half hours!  But then she’s incredibly real and sweet as hell.”

Kathryn and Kevin said that they had “Read great things about Robyn and had to check it out.”  Kevin added, “her sister really likes her.“  WORD O MOUTH, YO.

The Tall People below are named James, Wes, Dan, and Ken. Why were they here? “Robyn. Period,” said Wes. (In other words, “it’s like, Duh!”)  He added, “She is an energy ball.”  Dan and Ken didn’t want to say anything.

While searching for other nice-looking people to interview, we ran into YACHT at their merch booth.  We hadn’t planned on interviewing them, but they were probably the most approachable and smiley musicians that we’ve ever seen manning their own merch table.  They were serious about that “ask us anything!” shit that they keep talking about between songs.  I asked them what their feelings were about playing tonight with Robyn and they said, “HUGE.”  That was a better response than what I had imagined.  We left it at that.  Then we took this sweet picture together:

The “furgirls” Leah and Erika said that “Robyn is Amazing!” and that they were here because, “LOVE KILLS!”  (That is a song title, but it still doesn’t make any sense.)

We ran into three seriously classy ladies in red who had things to say like this:

Mary (on the left): “She is great because she never let go of the dance vibe.  And It’s not about making money.“  Emmi Lyn was in the middle.  She just nodded in agreement with her friends.  It was Aileen’s birthday and she said, “I heart Robyn!“  It’s her birthday!  She doesn’t need to do any ‘splainin’!

Then we saw some Olympia people who said that they were excited.  You be the judge:

After we micro-interviewed all of our new friends, Luke and I went up to the photo pit where shit got real.  The photo pit is this aisle that is fenced off right in front of all of the foaming-mouth superfans who squish up next to each other and happily break their ribs on the safety rail.  I felt their eyes seething hatred upon our privileged shoulders.  Luckily, we were only allowed to be up there for 3 songs.  After 10 minutes of awkward waiting, Robyn finally came onto the stage.  The theater was packed and the balcony section looked CRAZY!  A roiling field of elevated dancing fools.  It was awesome.

The first song was a weird slow intro/speaky thing that basically just let everyone get all giddy with anticipation.  Dark red lights slowly went up to reveal a bunch of keyboard and drum dudes in white lab onesies.  Robyn slowly slithered out (she is so blonde!  And serious!  And tiny!  And close!) and did some roboty spoken word stuff as the song started to build.  She had weird printed spandex leggings that may or may not have been a “steam punk” print  (gears and chains and stuff) and also a boxy shirt that looked like a paper bag with stars cut in it.  Not a jersey like I was hoping for, but good for how weird it was.  If anyone can pull off a paper bag smock, it is Robyn.  She was already dancing really hard, like stomping on the ground, twirling, marching, and constantly pulling off other cool dance moves; all within only about one minute of being up there.  She further broke the ice with some comedy relief by retrieving a banana that she started to eat aggressively.  Somehow, she did this without insinuating blowjobbiness and that, my friends, is a hard balance to strike.  She was just like, “Damn, I need to eat something.  Might as well make it entertaining!” Then she busted out a couple of remedial singles like “Dancehall Queen.”   I was kind of bummed that these were the songs she was singing while we were down in the pit,but maybe it was a good thing that she refrained from the jams for those first three songs.  Photographers (which I was posing as) are not supposed to lose their shit and/or move their bodies in any rhythmic way. Not pro. Thankfully, we soon had to leave the pit and I found a cozy pillar to lean on.  Here, I relaxed and enjoyed the spectacle and weirdness of being at a big pop show.  I also felt great about not be crammed into the armpit cracks of several sweaty strangers trying to “dance.”

One thing that I’m happy to note is that, although Robyn’s vocals were definitely treated, she was really singing and she was singing damn well.  No off-key quavering bullshit here.  No pop diva with a headset whose dance moves take priority over out-of-breath vocals.  When she launched into “Dancing On My Own”, everyone started (appropriately) dancing even harder.  Everyone was definitely also singing (Meghan from Calgary doesn’t’ lie!).  It felt very posi and healthy and fun.  She busted through AT LEAST a dozen more songs that everyone LOVED without any hint of fatigue.  It was kind of crazy.  When she did mutter things into the mic in her reassuring Swedish chirp, she sounded Zen-as-shit.  She wasn’t even breathing hard!  (Robyn might be a cyborg. I think she does have a song about being a robot.)

To get back to “Dancing On My Own,” this song has some weird power about it.  The general enthusiasm, sincerity and admission of vulnerability that everyone engages in when they rave about that song, can be intense and even awkward.  Saying that you love that song is a bit like saying “I am, from time to time, a pathetic loser.”  Yet, this sentiment is ultimately neutralized with the bold understatement that all of us losers can take care of ourselves in the midst of heartache.  She made fake make-out arms with herself at some point during the evening, the gesture being funny and empowering at the same time.   See what I mean??

I didn’t stay for the whole show, knowing that she would likely be on stage for a full hour-and-a-half.  (Ow! My bones!)  But I had seen enough to know that :

a) A Robyn show is special,

and…

b.) people would be leaving here tonight also feeling special.

Special like they just partook in a day-long cleansing ritual where they divulged all of their sins and shitty-behavior and, not only got forgiven, but were given practical, real-world tips about how to be a better person.  So yeah… I just inadvertently compared Robyn to both Jesus and Scientology, but I think that you get the point.  A Robyn concert seems to be just as much about dance music as it does about basking in the glow of fellow sensitive souls who aren’t afraid to be sincere.  Even the hipster kids were dancing with their hands out of their pockets.

-Jamey BVM

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Photography by LUKE CHMURA

(check out his Vimeo page HERE)

[Utilize the Slideshow (SL) &/or Full Screen (FS) Modes for maximum viewing pleasure]