Monday, August 8th, 2005
There exists a cult of Jason Molina that I just don’t understand. I’ve heard both albums from Songs: Ohia and The Magnolia Electric Co and saw the latter live last October and while I enjoyed all of the above, the devotion I see from some his fans makes me wonder if I’ve missed out on something. With a guest list spot and a free evening this past Friday, I decided to give Mr Molina another go.
Having hit The Airfields show at the Cameron House earlier in the evening, I missed most of the openers – all of Jon-Rae Fletcher & The River (no biggie, seen them before, will surely see them again) and most of Grand Buffet. Grand Buffet were touring with MEC and have no doubt left a trail of bewildered and probably angry Molina fans in their wake. From the 10 minutes or so of their set that I caught, I can say they were truly an odd choice of opener. A two-man comedy/rap group along the lines of Tenacious D, I thought the bits I caught were pretty damn funny but I know a lot of the crowd hated them… which I suspect may have been partly the point.
Molina and co took the stage just after midnight and led off with “The Dark Don’t Hide It”, my favourite track off their latest album What Comes After The Blues and spent the next hour performing songs from both the Magnolia and Songs: Ohia repetoire. Perhaps fittingly, the best audience response came for songs from the transitional Magnolia Electric Co album that served as Songs: Ohia’s swan song. They were certainly my favourite songs in the set – “Farewell Transmission” was particularly excellent. While I was mostly indifferent to their last show at the Horseshoe, I enjoyed this one quite a bit more. The band seemed less jammy and more focused, but looser in a good way. I can’t help but wonder if maybe the six-piece band configuration is too much. With all due respect to the lead guitarist and keyboardist, I found myself thinking that maybe a four-piece with Molina, the lap steel player and rhythm section might have given the songs more space to breathe and stretch out. With the half-dozen players onstage, it seemed there was a little too much going on.
Oddly, the Electric Magnolias did not return for an encore not that I was complaining – it was pretty late, I was tired. So while enjoying the show, I still haven’t figured out what the faithful are seeing that I’m not. Molina is a wonderfully emotive singer and songwriter, and his band is very solid if a little heavy on the conventional Southern/roots rock tradition, but seeing the looks on the faces of some of the audience, it was obvious they were enjoying the show on a different level than I. And that’s fine, I don’t have to get it. I probably like stuff that would leave them scratching their heads too… Anyway, photos here. Every time I looked at Molina’s scarf, I just thought he looked like a terrier.
Bonus – Junkmedia also has part one of a two-part interview with Jason Molina about his philosophy of touring everywhere and anywhere.
The Postal Service finally has a website – just in time for the project to be put in mothballs while Ben Gibbard gets behind the wheel of the Death Cab. What took you so long, guys? At least they’ve got some downloads and videos to make the visit worthwhile. And they’ll happily sell you a t-shirt.
Dressy Bessy’s Tammy Ealom tells Chart they’re pleased as punch to associated with Metallica’s old label. They’re also planning a tour with Canadian dates this Fall.
Sufjan Stevens breaks his legendary media silence and gives The LA Times a rare interview. Treasure this one, kids – who knows when we’re going to have another… Probably tomorrow. Via LHB.
Mark Eitzel talks to Acting Now about the difference between actors and singers and how the professions should be mutually exclusive. And how he hates people in general. Looking way into the future, Eitzel has a new solo album due out this Fall (Candy Ass) a new American Music Club album is in the works with an eye towards release in March or April of next year.
RIP, Peter Jennings.
np – American Music Club / Love Songs For Patriots
Sunday, August 7th, 2005
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The Bees / Free The Bees (Virgin)
The Bees’ (or Band Of Bees as they’re known in the US) second album, Free The Bees, is a slice of ’60s and ’70s throwback pop/rock/soul that sounds like a DJ set at one of the countless mod/britpop retro dance nights that litter this city or a long-lost AM radio station broadcasting from 40 years in the past. All perfectly listenable and sure to tickle the nostalgia bone for those who yen for all things retro, but I find it all somehow pointless. I already have my Beatles, Byrds and Motown records, and they’re better. There is no small amount of irony in a band paying tribute to their musical heroes by aping their sound and style when the intangible thing that made them so important and memorable in the first place was their inventiveness and originality. File under terrifically executed but ultimately redundant. |
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Gang Gang Dance / God’s Money (The Social Registry)
This, on the other hand, I have no frame of reference for. If I were to make up a genre of music called Balinese synth-dance operettas, this would be the Rolling Stone essential album of that type. To say that it sounds like the soundtrack to one mightily fucked up dream would probably be taken as high praise by the creators. This is an album that I am sure someone out there loves and swears by. I am not that person. That person would frighten me, and probably fancy themselves far too cool to hang out with me anyway. |
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Meow Meow
So I was looking for a third item to review for today and lo and behold, what’s this in my inbox? A MySpace friend request from an outfit out of Los Angeles called Meow Meow. Hi, Meow Meow – get in the ring. Lucky for them, their influence list reads like my CD collection – a healthy cross section of space rock, Americana and good old fashioned pop music. A good sign. Going track-by-track through the samples on their MySpace page, we have sun-kissed California melodies laid overtop either fractured Sparklehorse-y sound collages or late-era Primal Scream white noise squalls. Not all the elements blend as seamlessly as you might like, but the pieces fit closely enough together to create a pleasantly tilted landscape that doesn’t look entirely unlike the kingdom of The Flaming Lips. I approve. Their debut album, Snow Gas Bones, came out in 2004 on Devil In The Woods |
np – Centro-Matic / Love You Just The Same
Saturday, August 6th, 2005
A free evening and some guest list action translated into a good old fashioned rock and roll double-header for me last night – but in the interests of milking what content I do have, I’m spreading the reviews out over a couple of days. This blog thing is all about advance planning, man.
First up was local atmospheric pop combo The Airfields, who I sang the praises of a couple months ago. Despite having a few chances since then, I hadn’t managed to see them live though I did get their lovely City-State EP some time ago (the entirety of which is available to download off their website). They were playing an early set at the Cameron House last night, so scheduling allowed me to pop in and see what they were about outside the studio setting.
Live, they’re a good deal louder (though you couldn’t really get quieter) and punchier. Whereas the EP played like a long-lost Sarah Records release, onstage the Airfields widen the lens a bit to encompass all things C86-ish. New elements like frantic Wedding Present strumming and Jesus And Mary Chain bursts of noise did well to broaden the sonic palette.
Despite the extra challenge of being the debut show for their new keyboardist/glockenspielist/melodicaist/vocalist, the Airfields still impressed and I’m excited to see some good old school indie pop coming from the Big Smoke. I know there’s an audience out there for their sound, if they can find them and connect with them, I think good things could come. Photos here.
The second half of the double header was The Magnolia Electric Co at Lee’s Palace – look for that writeup come Monday.
LiveDaily interviews drummer Murph about Dinosaur Jr’s return from extinction. Enjoy it while it lasts. Via Prefixblog.
Eisley tells Chart they like it when you stare at them.
PopMatters talks to Eric Johnson of Fruit Bats about marine life. Their Spelled In Bones came out last week and reviews are pretty good.
Chuck Klosterman riffs on the abundance of animal-named bands, the fashionability of wolves in particular. Zoilus is not impressed with the absence of any substance in Klosterman’s piece and challenges him to a fight at the jungle gym after school. I have just started reading Killing Yourself To Live – no, Chuck isn’t the most profound writer around but he makes me laugh. Like Ziggy.
np – Slowdive / I Am The Elephant, U Are The Mouse Original Soundtrack
Friday, August 5th, 2005
I don’t know if actually knowing who Werner Herzog is would have increased my appreciation for Incident At Loch Ness or at least given me a different angle from which to enjoy it, but I somehow doubt it. I rented it for… well, no real reason I can articulate. I think I read something good about it before and, um, I’m a fan of the Loch Ness Monster.
The conceit of the film is rather clever, though fundamentally unwieldy and unworkable. Herzog wants to make a documentary about the cultural phenomenon of the Loch Ness Monster. His producer (also director of this film), Zak Penn wants to make it a flashy Hollywood adventure film. The whole production is being filmed by a crew making a documentary about Herzog, which is ostensibly the film you are actually watching. And then there’s the Loch Ness monster. A crew of actual actors might have been able to pull off something reasonably convincing, but the non-actors the film uses (not counting the actress/Playboy model Penn brings in to be a “sonar operator”) simply aren’t capable of selling what they’re trying to peddle. It’s ineffective as a drama, too dull for an adventure film and not nearly sharp or incisive enough to function as satire. The fact that you can clearly see what their goal was just makes it that much more obvious how far off the mark they fell.
Yeah, oh well. If you want to see a really excellent film about the disastrous making of a film, rent Lost In La Mancha, which documents Terry Gilliam’s doomed attempts to bring Don Quixote to the screen. It’s fascinating and all true.
While I don’t usually link to complete album MP3s, I’ll make an exception here – someone on the Mojave 3 message boards has uploaded the score/soundtrack to the film I Am The Elephant, U Are The Mouse which was written and recorded by the Pygmalion-era Slowdive. These are easily the best sounding versions of these tracks I’ve heard (224 Kbps!), and are worth saving and keeping. Every once in a while someone hears news that the rights to these recordings are getting sorted out and it might see a proper release, but I’m not holding my breath. Grab em while you can – if the links go down for whatever reason, I have the zip files on my computer.
Broken Social Scene reveal to Billboard that their new album will not be called Windsurfing Nation as had been promised for well over a year now, but will instead be self-titled. It’s still coming out on October 4, though, and will be followed next Spring by yet another album.
Prefix (the magazine) interviews Iron & Wine. The I&W/Calexico EP has leaked and people are gushing about it. I haven’t heard a note and am holding out until In The Reins comes out on September 20… but damn it’s hard. No east coast tour dates yet, but they are expected on this half of the continent in November.
Prefix (the blog) has an update in Absolutely Kosher’s quest to liberate the first two Wrens albums from the evil clutches of their old label, Wind-Up. Unfortunately, it’s still fruitless. Every once in a while, I get emails from Wind-Up asking if I want to play blog-buddy with their label. I should send them a reply back that I’ll pimp whatever Creed side-project they’re trying to sell in exchange for the rights to the Wrens records. Because surely THAT is worth more than the $100,000 AK offered…
Bradley’s Almanac is working a Canadian theme with live reviews and recordings from recent shows by Picastro, A Northern Chorus and SIANspheric.
Concert news – Lou Barlow has cancelled his October 3 show at the Horseshoe because he’s now part of the opening for The Posies at Lee’s Palace that night. San Francisco’s Oranger are also on the bill. Also coming to town are Ohioan blues boys The Black Keys, playing the Opera House on November 19.
np – Son Volt / Okemah And The Melody Of Riot
Thursday, August 4th, 2005
Despite long hiatuses, constantly-shifting lineups and generally keeping a low profile, Burlington’s SIANspheric have still managed to establish themselves over the past decade as one of the bands keeping the true space-rock/shoegaze flame alive. To celebrate their tenth anniversary, they recently released the RGB DVD/CD collection which functions as an aural and visual retrospective of their career. I haven’t watched the DVD yet, but I suspect this is another case where advertising it as a DVD with a bonus CD is a bit of false advertising, as the CD invariably has far more interesting content on it. But anyway…
Despite going way back with SIANspheric (My first band shared a bill with them at my high school’s coffee house in… Fall 1993? They were still called Gleet then), I confess I’ve never really listened to them. They always seemed to be a little too intent on exploring the noisy end of the space-rock genre, perfectly happy to do away with conventional song trappings like hooks and structure in pursuit of the perfect drone. Seeing them live for the first time back in March really only seemed to confirm that, as their set was a full-on aural assault that, while viscerally enjoyable, was also pretty exhausting. So on listening to the CD portion of RGB, I was a little surprised how listenable their studio output was.
Stylistically, they’re hard to pin down. There’s huge echoey hazes that recall early Verve, songs recalling the liquid beauty of Slowdive, drones worthy of Spacemen 3 and massive piledriving walls of distortion that could be Loveless run through four or five more Big Muffs. Sound still sometimes takes priority over songwriting, but there’s enough here to appeal even to a pop-centric sort like myself. Fellow shoegaze-nut Mystery & Misery just ran a review of RGB as well and The Toronto Star (Bugmenot) talked to the band about the process of looking back and what lays ahead.. Sonic Unyon has some songs available to stream off their website as well as offering this download:
MP3: SIANspheric – “The Stars Above”
SIANspheric will be celebrating the release of RGB last week as well as the end of a brief tour through the American east coast (a couple reviews of their Chicago show, courtesy of a couple of Big Takeover listers) with a show at the Drake this Friday, August 5. They’re playing with Off The International Radar and Sunriser, tickets $10 at the door. Bring earplugs. For the love of God, bring earplugs.
James and Emily Metric tell MuchMusic about going all DIY in the making of new album Live It Out, out September 27 (and not October 4 as previously reported, at least if their website is to be believed). They’ve also got audio from one of the new tracks, “Monster Hospital”, available in RealAudio.
Anyone who didn’t feel like mortgaging their house to see Black Mountain open up for Coldplay this past week will be pleased to know that they’re doing their own show at Lee’s Palace on October 1. Tickets a non-bank-breaking $10.50.
The Magnolia Electric Company plays Lee’s Palace tomorrow night. Maybe you noticed I was giving away passes? Oh – too late now. Anyway, JAM! talks to Electric Magnolia Jason Groth about the band and their undeniable Neil-isms.
You had a couple days off from the Sufjan Stevens content… No more. MTV has an interview, via Prefix.
Torontoist week in shows. Wheeeeee.
np – Luna / Bewitched
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