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June 29, 2006
Broken Social Scene at the Hook, 6/28/06
What a difference two years makes. When I saw Broken Social Scene at (yech) Dante's in the summer of 2004, I was so bored I barely made it through the show. Gee, having twenty people on stage-- that's a good gimmick. Their records never quite grabbed me, either. So when I got the invite for the Tag Team media fifth anniversary party, the first things I noticed were the offers of free food and booze. The "with an appearance by Broken Social Scene" part of the invite went largely unnoticed.
My friend Jess and I trekked out to the Red Hook for the event. We survived the B77 bus and swooped down like the good little culture vultures we are on the catering table and the bar.
After about two hours of schmoozing, boozing, and running in to a former Spinane (Rebecca Gates moved to Brooklyn. Everybody's doing it!), BSS took the stage. And man, did they rock it. The first half of the set was a little more "hey, we're the indie-rock Dead," but then the girl from Stars came out and they cranked it up. There were all sorts of horns and tambourines and two drums and it was like America (the band) for cool kids. I'm not familiar enough with their songs to give a rundown of the setlist, sorry.
They're playing Letterman tonight and Prospect Park next week. I'm glad I gave them a second change.
Pictures:
Posted by Cortney Harding at 05:19 AM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2006
Whip at Artistery/Dirty Projectors CDs, Movie, Photos and the sun
All you need to know is Whip. Whip with scratchy banjo and big sighs of pedal steel. Whip with two singers singing out heavenly and warm as fresh peach pie.
Whip, which is Jason from Timesbold and a buddy backing him up, gave us all some nice, spacious, quiet Americana. And not the hokey kind; this was old-feeling folk about new and relatable topics, all anchored by Jason's lyric writing which slays most all of the competition.
After walking an hour (it was what? 90 degrees out) to get to the Artistery, Whip's set was cooling, a nice chill down after a weird and brutal day. Their last song, which Jason introduced as being 30 seconds long but ran closer to a minute I'm thinking, was one of the best things I've ever heard them do--just a sparse, intelligent, sweet little ballad sung for his parents, who were in the audience. Go see them sometime. Whip. Not Jason's parents. Go see Whip.
Also, I'd like to send a message to whoever's selling his or her used Dirty Projectors CDs at Everyday Music. Why? Why, and how could you diss the still-cresting genius of Dave Longstreth for a couple bucks? Are you a junkie? Does your mom need an operation? I'm poor as anybody and sell CDs all the time too, but I would never do that to the Projectors. Just the same, thanks. I'm buying whatever you sell. Even if I already have the record. They make great stocking stuffers.
Is "stocking stuffers" a euphemism for sex? If it isn't, it should be.
A while back I ordered two copies of James Sumner's Getty Address film he created as Dirty Projectors videos. The combination of Dave and James' megabrains together is a crushingly beautiful and original thing. Did you see the screening Towne Lounge did back in... maybe March? If so, you know where I'm coming from. (Check out photos of it below.)
The heatwave is over, but the sun is out. I'm off to walk around in it for a while.
Posted by Adam Gnade at 11:39 AM | Comments (2)
June 23, 2006
Watery Graves at the Artistery 6/22
Real quick before I go stand outside in the sun and soak in happiness: Watery Graves last night at the Artistery was an essay in “good.” Good band that plays in the middle of the room because they know the kids would rather have them close than On High. Good pianist that plunks his keys with verve and with passion but knows when to drop back and let us feel the room and the space between sound. Good drummer that plays with his fingers as drumsticks when no one can find brushes. (And, doubly, switches to said brushes when they emerge from the audience.) Good audience, too, who sit quiet and cuddle each other or sprawl out on the floor and smile throughout, no posturing or coke haggard gaunt-faced hipsterism.
Good… what else? Good VENUE for throwing real shows for real humans and making us feel thankful to (and for) them.
Good is a word that’s lost a lot of its meaning and hitting power; it’s an old, punch-scarred, heavyweight champ that now sits in the back of the Hi-Dee-Ho Bar and Lounge in Lawrence, KS, dull-eyed over a sweating glass of whiskey, and is ignored. And it’s a fine word that should mean something stronger than the more hyperbolic “greats” or “awesomes” or “perfects,” a word Hemingway used to mean “safe,” “sublime,” satisfied,” “centered,” among many other expressions of The Right On. A biblical word. An ancient word. A word farmers use for soil quality and old cowboy rancher men like my Grandfather say to describe waking up alive once again.
Watery Graves at the Artistery. Sitting on the floor watching piano, drums, sax music. Five bucks for touring bands. Warmth and white Christmas lights. These are all good things. Now, sun.
Posted by Adam Gnade at 11:49 AM | Comments (1)
June 21, 2006
Inca Ore, Portland, anytime would be fine
This is less a show review than a promise of a show review, or a quick (I’m bound, soon, for a field I found this morning full of new raspberries) typed desire/wish/plea to see a show/have a show booked. Last night as I was nodding off, I put on the Inca Ore record, the brand new one, and sunk into the river mud for a while. It was all taps on hollow metal and past life mummers and the sound of breath through hollowed femur bones. With the lights out, and with some bad being-alive-these-days boogie-fear beating around in my skull, I found valleys in the music that were strange and poisonous and that gasped for life while mortality raced all crazily ahead and dark humanness growled and rustled. It was beautiful, smart, and original, and it was just what I needed. It is, I think, an important (if only for me and my fucked and desperate headspace) piece of music.
I’m writing about this for Team Tinnitus because Eva and I’s bands share the same PR and doing it anywhere else might be a conflict of interest. (I think. I don’t know. I’m going to find out.) And I’m writing about it now because, before any summer plans get made, I’d like to put a call out for a Portland show. Anywhere. All-ages would be great. The record, a collab with Lemon Bear, is called The Birds in the Bushes, and it’ll be out on 5RC August 22.
Posted by Adam Gnade at 05:40 PM | Comments (4)
June 20, 2006
Jackie O Motherfucker at Tube 6/19
How good was Jackie O last night at Tube? So good I left halfway through, walked to the Madison street bus-stop, and went home. Which is not to say it was bad, or that I was disappointed. It was just that I reached a point where the music was making me so confusedly emotional, making me feel the sound so intrinsically, that I had to split and go be alone for a while and think about shit.
Good art, good personal expression gives you big reactions, visceral ones, the kind that aren’t summed up by writing or thinking “journalistically,” and Jackie O took me in some strange and heavy way. It was somewhere I’d been before, not exactly foreign territory, but it wasn’t my usual stomping grounds.
I guess I should say I couldn’t see the band. There were a lot of people at Tube, many of them yeti-basketball-tall, so I stood in the back with Dan and Eli and closed my eyes and just let it all froth over, around, and into me--the drum rolls strafing down like potshots from a Fighting Tiger, the vocals aching out and warped into… what? Into what? A sax solo played by a whale. Not to be cutesy or anything; that’s just how it felt…. low, moaning, stricken, inhuman but natural, pained, sorrowful, anxious while the guitar picked out some deep deconstructed twanging boogie and the overall, overriding sound (again, couldn’t see where or who it was coming from) droned and swelled and shimmered.
So it got to me, hit me “where it counts.” (Which, really, is an unknowable place; don’t let anyone try and say What Is or compartmentalize it for you.) On the way to the bus-stop, passing by all the rich drunks staggering out of bars, and poor drunks in doorways with shiny yellow dead faces, I got to thinking about some of the music I give my time to and about how a good bulk of it is nowhere near as real, original, contradictory, or experience-orientated (does that make sense?) as a good Jackie O show. Bands that hold fashion above substance, singers that preach and pimp self-destruction as a marketing tool… all empty, dry husks and a king-hell waste of time. (“I came all the way from Texas for this shit” said a guy behind me.)
After the big ride down Division, staring out the window into black and streaked yellow and white lights, I got home to find my house cold and my pet tortoise, Tat’yana, dead. He’d been sick for a while, lungs full of fluid, eyes swollen shut. The vet bills had been high, recovery more or less doubtful, but my housemates and I had been giving it our all; shots once daily, various medications from tiny white tubes, hand feeding, lots of love and worrying. But it was, after all that, not enough. Tat’yana went away somewhere between yesterday morning and last night.
I can’t help, then, but feel like Jackie O’s set was some kind of –pre-eulogy—at least for me—a funeral before the funeral. This is probably not what you want to read in a show review, but fuck it, that was the experience I had, and I want to tell the truth as it came to me. I’m not a big fan of hokey, tidy, standard music writing, and there are a lot of writers that’ll dish it out in spades… so I give what I can and I’m not going to try and be anything I’m not. I hope that’s okay with you.
Posted by Adam Gnade at 01:52 PM | Comments (6)
June 10, 2006
The Oh Sees, Dragging An Ox Through Water @ Valentines 6/8
The Oh Sees at Valentines was one of those shows where you buy the album and then go home and listen to it that night. Or, that would have been my plan if my stereo wasn’t in repair limbo. The only other John Dwyer-led band I’d seen was Pink and Brown, so while I knew Oh Sees was his “folk” project, I still wasn’t really prepared for something all pretty and succinct, but it totally was. His voice managed to be powerful, goofy and sincere all at the same time, while playfully weaving around the warm twang of his singing partner. It was awesome and definitely the work of a guy who makes loud fucked up music but decided to contain that loud fucked-up-edness in tight, sweet little melodies. And then sail them out to reverb island.
Dragging an Ox was great as always and a super appropriate choice to maintain the plunky acoustic guitar + effects vibe. Brian just seems to get better and better. And his pretty little seven inch vastly improves a quiet Portland morning.
Rookie mistake: I forgot my camera. Visuals next time fo sho.
Posted by Mason at 12:28 PM | Comments (1)
June 09, 2006
Doctor Moss @ the Know 6/2
Holy fuck did Doctor Moss not kill it at the Know?! It was their first show but it could've been their 10th anniversary gig after years of battling out in the bloody, slippery trenches. They were tight, direct, and any jam action sounded realized and smart, not loose. Doctor Moss plays hard fucking prog, loud as fuck, thick as hell (thanks to some righteous baritone guitar), but never get too dorky or overly mathed out. The crowd loved it. I loved it. And--maybe most important--the band loved it. They truly seemed to be enjoying themselves as the baritone dueled with the second guitar (both switching off as lead), while the bass held shit down, and the drummer went off into the Fantastic Planet and made cosmic joy out of wooden sticks.
They're playing again Sat, June 17 at the Know. You should really check these guys out. Also, it took me 'til now to listen to it, but how fucking great is Paranthetical Girls' CD? Wow. That shit really steamrolled me. Zac Pennington made a damn good thing with that little pink album. Buy it post haste if you have the means.
Posted by Adam Gnade at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
Call to Arms
I know there's more of us out there. I know that Team Tinnitus only has "I"s in "Tinnitus" and none in "Team." So, where is everybody? Where are all the showgoers and house party kids and club rats that used to drop love and hate on these pages? Jenna? Matt? Courtney? Anybody? I'm shouting out into the void here and only getting dead air back. I went to Doctor Moss and Conifer this weekend, got goddamn wasted, and had a great time. I saw These Arms Are Snakes the weekend before that at Steal this Festival and began to doubt political hardcore as a means of communication. Where were you? Where are you? Where are yr words and firebomb adjectives? Let's breathe some life back into this thing. In the words of that fucking lunatic Howard Dean, "YEEAAGHAAHHHHHHHGHH!!!" Don't be scared. I love you. Don't cry. Don't... don't. Let's get ready to rumble...
Posted by Adam Gnade at 04:31 PM | Comments (4)