Rants + Raves

05 Jan

Posted at 19:16h in Movies by

OK, so my internal clock knew it was almost Oscar nomination time (January 25th), and I’m one of those people that still cares (and even throws an Oscar party, where invitees have to bring a dish inspired by a Best Picture nominee – I’m already thinking “True Grits…corny, I know).

I love films, and there are some that are inseparable from the music associated with them. I’ve never been a fan of musicals (I believe they’re the most difficult type of films to do well), but I’ve included a couple.

Just in case you need an inspiration/memory jog, go here.

This is Spinal Tap – it is difficult to say how profound this film has been in ridiculing the music industry, bands in general, documentary filmmaking., and Stonehenge. Hello Cleveland!

Hedwig and the Angry Inch – who knew that a musical about a transvestite could be this good! And gummy bears!

30th Century Man: Scott Walker documentary – the first third of the film is essential viewing, 2nd third for frustrated Romantics like me, the last third for fans of difficult listening (me too!)

I’m Not There – a bizarre but fun look at various actors portraying Bob Dylan in different stages of his life (Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, etc.) – plus, really good covers of his songs!

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – Gene Wilder will forever be Willy Wonka – shame on you, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton

Oliver (the musical) – Food! Glorious food!

Buena Vista Social Club – Wim Wenders is one of my favorite filmmakers (see below)

Neil Young: Heart of Gold – a quality job of following one of the cornerstones of American music

Dig! – came because of the Dandy Warhols, stayed because of Brian Jonestown Massacre

24 Hour Party People – more enjoyable glimpse into Factory records, Manchester scene, etc.

O Brother Where Art Thou? – even though the soundtrack become an industry unto itself, the film holds up because of it

Stop Making Sense – Talking Heads concert film directed by Jonathan Demme

Wings of Desire – Wim Wenders’ marquee film, with a great soundtrack that is actually essential to the film – PLUS appearances by Nick Cave, and Crime and the City Solution. Not for everyone (my dad never slept better, after watching about 20 minutes) – but it rewards patience.

Movies I had higher hopes for:

Control (Joy Division biopic that offers little insight to band beyond the clichés)

Almost Famous (fun but ultimately not as grand as it attempts to be)

 

01 Jan

Posted at 20:24h in Live Shows by

Last October’s Apples in Stereo show at Portland’s Mississippi Studios brought home two urgent points:  1) not enough bands seem to have fun playing live and 2) more bands should wear uniforms.

In a town where brooding, flannel-clad folkies vie with irony-crippled hipsters for stage space, the Apples’ unabashed spirit of pop confectionery was a welcome relief. As they took the stage, frontman Robert Schneider grinned at the crowd and said, “Cool!” as if he was genuinely amazed by the fact that people come to hear him play. It was a refrain he repeated throughout the night as Schneider led the band through a frenzied, sometimes sloppy, but always rocking set that spanned the Apples’ nearly 20-year history.

Watching the band’s six members schlep their own gear before their set, you had to conclude that they were in this because they loved it—they’re certainly not living the rich rock star lifestyle, despite having released seven albums since 1995. The band was touring in support of their new album, Travellers in Space and Time, a continuation of their ELO-inflected, keyboard-heavy sound that began to emerge on 2007’s New Magnetic Wonder.

Sporting the “new” lineup that took shape in 2006 (after Schneider and longtime drummer Hilarie Sidney got divorced), the band crammed six members onto the tiny stage, including three keyboards (!), and the indispensable vocoder featured in recent songs like “Dance Floor.” The song is silly and fluffy, and therefore brilliant in the way the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” is brilliant—it’s 100% pure pop, with no apologies and no attempt to make a grand point.

In other words, it’s fun.

And that’s not something I can say for one of the opening bands, Fol Chen, which describes itself on its MySpace page as playing “melodramatic popular song.” (Sadly, I missed the opening set by Portland’s own The Minders.) By turns mopey and precious, the band’s 40-minute set couldn’t even be redeemed by the cool matching red uniforms they wore. Nothing like Nehru collars and epaulets to bring a band’s stage presence up a notch, I have to say. I won’t be getting their album, but if I could find one of those jackets, I’d buy one.

And while we’re on point number 2 (i.e., the benefits of band uniforms), I should mention that the Apples came on stage wearing matching sparkly silver uniforms. Schneider, whose outfit was more like a long silver robe than the jackets worn by his bandmates, announced “We’re the Apples in Stereo, and we’re from the future.” (Because what else says “future” like sparkly silver? Except for maybe vocoders.) Again, there was no real point to it, but it was pretty fun.

After a handful of songs from the new album, the band dipped into several of my favorites, including “Strawberryfire,” “I Can’t Believe,” and “Tin Pan Alley,” as well as great newer songs such as “Same Old Drag” and “Energy.”

Drummer John Dufilho (also of The Deathray Davies, a band you should check out if you don’t know them) gave the encore tune “Tidal Wave” (from the band’s first LP, Fun Trick Noisemaker) a whole lot of extra juice, creating a more tribal, pulsing intro than the one on the album and generally adding a lot more Ringo-ness (to coin a term) to the tune than Hilarie Sidney ever could. (No knocks against Sidney, though. Her work with the High Water Marks the last few years is worth a listen, though it’s probably not as fun as the Apples in Stereo.)

I’m hoping the Apples come through town again soon. If anyone knows of a particularly fun band scheduled to play here soon, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll be looking for one of those red jackets.

31 Dec

Posted at 19:12h in Album Reviews by

Here are my selections for Best Albums of 2010 based not so much on what I think should be the best, but what resonated with me and “stuck around” more, causing repeated listening. There were many recordings put out this year that are technically marvelous, interesting and challenging. So, maybe this list should be called my “Favorite Albums of 2010” instead and, because of that, they tend to be a bit more “pop.”

  • New Pornographers – Together
  • Beach House – Teen Dream
  • Broken Bells – s/t
  • MGMT – Congratulations
  • Superchunk – Majesty Shredding
  • Grinderman – Grinderman 2
  • Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
  • LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
  • Maximum Balloon – s/t
  • Unkle – Where Did the Night Fall
  • Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
  • Spoon – Transference
  • Surfer Blood – Astrocoast
  • Tame Impala – Innerspeaker
  • The National – High Violet
  • Swans – My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
  • Crystal Castles – s/t
  • Laura Veirs – July Flame
  • Les Savy Fav – Root for Ruin
  • Massive Attack – Hegioland

Honorable Mentions: !!!, Eluvium, Yeasayer, Ruby Suns, Brian Eno, Janell Monàe, Arcade Fire, Cee-lo Green, Los Campesinos, Four Tet, First Aid Kit, Belle & Sebastian, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Joanna Newsom, Robert Wyatt-Gilad Atzmon-Ros Stephen, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti, Foals (liking more and more), Sufjan Stevens, Broken Social Scene, The Black Keys, Titus Andronicus, and Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings.

30 Dec

Posted at 18:55h in Album Reviews by

I’m intimidated by the thought of writing about Nick Cave. There’s something so serious about an artist as complex and celebrated as he is. He’s been performing for decades. He has a dedicated, sophisticated fan base. He invites and inspires extremely thoughtful criticism with every new project.

I can write about Grinderman 2, however. It’s a noisy, kick-ass rock record, and I know my way around that kind of thing.

The opening song, “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man” is a perfect choice to start the record.  The rhythm section is strikingly reminiscent of the Jesus Lizard’s finest moments, the guitar playing is vicious, and the vocals are pure Cave. I recently cranked this up on the hi-fi after a bad day at work and it absolutely delivered me from evil. At least, a certain kind of evil.  (The Song “Evil” is also a 100mph banger.) This is not a morally righteous collection of songs.  Sex, Lechery and Violence are front and center in this band.  Nick Cave and AC/DC are from the same country after all.

Of course, being a Cave project, there’s a lot more to it than that. Consider the band name. Contrary to popular imagery, the Grindermen of years past did not depend upon the gratitude of a music-loving public for their livelihood. They sat in one place with those fucking music boxes and tortured everyone in the listening area until their suffering audience finally paid up.  They were notorious for doing it at night, underneath apartment buildings. They were finally outlawed.

The Grinderman songs conjure up lots of unwelcome, undesirable thoughts. Monsters are rampant, victims are found, and the lust is selfish and possessive. It comes to a head during “Kitchenette”. Cave sings his horniness to a married woman. Her husband, the sleeping “executioner”, is “sleeping with a fireman’s axe”. The narrator is not exactly a knight in shining armor; he reminds the hapless wife that she has “the ugliest fuckin’ kids I’ve ever seen”. The men in her life leave much to be desired.

But by the next song, “Palaces of Montezuma”, Cave seems to have faced up to the intolerable Grinderman who dominates the first seven songs of this album. In a beautiful, Bad Seeds-sounding “psychedelic invocation”, Cave exorcizes the monstrous side of his desire and asks for  “precious love to hold”. He seems to have found some serenity.

The final song on the album, “Bellringer Blues”, loops psychedelically towards the conclusion that the haunted, anxious Cave can ultimately manage all of this stuff just fine, thank you, and he is willing to do it on his own terms. He ends the album singing, “It’s okay Joe it’s time to go!”

With Grinderman 2, Nick Cave and his band have recorded a challenging, provocative collection of well-written, well-performed rock ‘n’ roll songs. It looks stripped down and primitive, but it ain’t. It’s actually pretty amazing.

Smells Like:

28 Dec

Posted at 16:48h in Album Reviews by

  1. Broken Bells – ST
    The best pop songwriter (James Mercer) and producer (Danger Mouse) of the last decade at the height of their game.
  2. The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt
    Just when you thought one man and a guitar couldn’t sound fresh.
  3. The Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
    Reveals more on each repeated listening; Damon Albarn taps into the schizophrenia of our times.
  4. Beach House – Teen Dream
    Baltimore twosome’s 3rd long-player adds to the strength of their prior two albums.
  5. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest
    Bradford Cox’s most solid and consistent songwriting to date.
  6. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
    Whether folks like the comparison or not, their earnestness, musicianship and big sound brings to mind a certain Irish band in its heyday.
  7. Tame Impala – Innerspeaker
    Australian youngsters reveal musical chops beyond their years as they create an album best listened to from beginning to end.
  8. Wyatt, Atzmon, Stephen – ‘……….for the ghosts within’
    Robert Wyatt (and friends) continue to push the boundaries of pop, accompanied by that unique, weather-worn voice.
  9. David Sylvian – Sleepwalkers
    Sylvian takes a break from his avant-pop recent works to cull an “odds and sods” collection of more accessible material that holds together remarkably well.
  10. Eluvium – Similes
    Though Eno’s fingerprints are all over this work, Matthew Cooper’s strong songwriting sensibilities and clear talent carry him past his forefathers.
  11. Laura Veirs – July Flame
    Subtlety and musicianship separate Ms. Veirs from her (sometimes more commercially successful) singer/songwriter peers.
  12. Field Music – Measure
    This is excellent song-craft at its finest – even as they labor in the shadows of the latest flavor of the month.
  13. The New Pornographers – Together
    The strongest effort, from beginning to end, from the Canadian “supergroup”.
  14. Big Boi – Sir Luscious Left Foot…
    Andre who? Just in case people weren’t already aware of who was responsible for most of the irresistible hooks from Outkast’s work.
  15. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
    Kanye who? The adventurous, unpredictable, multi-layered work that some critics keep thinking they’re hearing from Sir Tweet-a-Lot.

28 Dec

Posted at 02:10h in Album Reviews by

Smells Like Pop’s editors and writers listen to hundreds of records every year–not because we have to, but because we need to. We need new music like sharks need surfers. Please take a look at our lists of best albums from 2010 below, and see some of favorites from years’ past here.

27 Dec

Posted at 14:13h in Album Reviews by

If you’re like me (David Bailey), you’re probably wondering what gave me pause to hit the “star ratings” button on iTunes this year. Well, wonder no more, my star-obsessed friend! Here’s a list of songs that were in heavy rotation on my office speakers this year, divided by genre for your perusal.

Of the rock-n-roll type (including pop rock):

  • Superchunk – Fractures in Plaster
  • MGMT – Brian Eno
  • Spoon – Written in Reverse
  • Grinderman – Heathen Child
  • The Apples in Stereo – Next Year at About the Same Time
  • Best Coast – The End
  • Beach House – Zebra
  • Clinic  – Orangutan
  • Los Campesinos – Romance is Boring
  • Fang Island – Life Coach
  • The Ruby Suns – Dusty Fruit
  • Arcade Fire – Empty Room
  • Queens of the Stoneage – Monsters in the Parasol
  • UNKLE (feat. Blank Angels) – Natural Selection
  • The National – Afraid of Everyone
  • New Pornographers – Silver Jenny Dollar
  • Broken Social Scene – Sentimental X’s
  • Black Keys – Everlasting Light
  • Ariel Pink – Menopause Man
  • Belle and Sebastian – I Want the World to Stop
  • Belle and Sebastian – I’m Not Living in the Real World
  • School of Seven Bells – Joviann
  • Le Savy Fav – Let’s Get of Here
  • Robert Wyatt, Gilad Atzmon & Ros Stephen – What a Wonderful World
  • Spoon – Out Go the Lights

Of the danceable variety:

  • Crystal Castles – Year of Silence
  • Maximum Balloon – Tiger
  • !!! – Steady as the Sidewalk Cracks
  • Foals – After Glow
  • Delorian – Stay Close
  • LCD Soundsystem – Drunk Girls
  • Gorillaz – Superfast Jellyfish
  • Janell Monàe – Tightrope
  • Cee Lo Green – F@#k You!
  • Broken Bells – The Ghost Inside
  • Massive Attack (feat. Martina Topley-Bird) – Babel
  • Caribou – Odessa
  • Chromeo – I’m Not Contagious
  • Sleigh Bells – Riot Rhythm

Of the Country-rock style:

  • First Aid Kit – Hard Believer
  • Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Time of the Season

Of the Electronic / Ambient sound:

  • Four Tet – This Unfolds
  • Eluvium – Cease to Know
  • Brian Eno – Late Anthropocene
  • Eluvium – Similies

01 Dec

Posted at 21:59h in Album Reviews by

Undulating, padded guitars and hints of echoing percussion lull the listener into thinking that this may be another album in the mold of Eno’s Music for Films. Nice. Then abruptly the songs take on the seeming structures of rock and pop from his Here Come the Warm Jets period. Yes! But, that was just another feint in a different direction, as the “songs” take on a lovely and spaced-out electronic/trance shape. But, what’s this? Raw electric guitar slicing through on “2 Forms of Anger”. Yet, as one would expect from the man who brought African rhythms and song structure to pop music via the Talking Heads and his collaborations with David Byrne and others, it still doesn’t sound like traditional Western music. The rhythms are trance-inducing and the melody is almost completely ethereal.

Each subsequent track is like an exploratory scouting party, moving forward, and then just when you get comfortable, the tones and style shift direction. “Dust Shuffle” locks into a nice groove that is here and gone in just under two minutes! The remainder of the album is made up of soundscapes much like the beginning that sound like no place on this planet. Rumbling tones reverberate with a sense of loneliness, while muted piano and percussion treatments echo in-and-out of the Abstract Expressionist sound paintings — familiar to fans of Eno, yet welcome and beautiful as new works of art from a master of the form.

Smells like: 8/10

25 Mar

Posted at 18:40h in Live Shows by

Midwest “neo-soul” shines at Portland venue

What’s the difference between folk music and the sounds that Bon Iver produced at Holocene recently? I pondered that as I reveled in the beautiful soundtrack to an introspective life that the band (whose name is a play off of what Francophiles and others know translates to “good winter”) reproduced.

I am not a big fan of the watered-down stuff that passes as folk (the stuff you hear in Starbucks, generally); Justin Vernon’s music captures the human experience as only recording in isolated places – like his father’s Wisconsin hunting cabin – can. But it is music also informed by modern anxieties. Vernon himself refers to his music as “neo-soul”.

So, it was no surprise to learn mid-set that Vernon has a punk-pop band called Michael Jordan, as well. Hearing the edge of Bon Iver’s music emphasized in their live set reminded me of when I saw Iron & Wine in town and witnessed Sam Beam and Co. growl, and not ironically cover New Order. It’s the stuff of early Dylan, where traditional sounds were often the shell of a more disturbing sonic narrative.

But it’s the heartache in Vernon’s voice which is the difference (which, especially live, reminded of a cross between Jeff Buckley’s falsetto and the aforementioned Beam’s raspy world-weariness). Bon Iver found new dynamics in its already subtle fledgling debut For Emma, Forever Ago. When Vernon asked the Holocene crowd to sing along to the refrain from “The Wolves (Act I and II)“, nervous looks abounded. The song ended up becoming a magic moment that somehow produced harmony from a group often more concerned with appearing to be coolly indifferent.

Though For Emma is not a perfect album, it is an early front-runner for my record of the year. In these troubled times, this album reflects my hope that a talented guy from the Midwest might bring a good winter.