Monday, November 8th, 2004
I don’t think I’d ever been to a farewell tour before. You know, a show that was officially acknowledged by the band to be their last, at least in that city, ever (or until the reunion a decade later). I’ve seen shows on tours that were rumoured to be swan songs, but never one that came with a press release bidding adieu. So in appreciation of the fact that it would be Luna’s final jaunt through Hogtown, a damn near packed house came out on a Sunday night to bid them farewell. It was a particularly bittersweet occasion for me as I was seeing one of my very favourite bands of the last six or seven years for the (almost) last time, but I was determined to enjoy every mintute of this evening.
Thankfully, openers Wayne Omaha made it easy. I knew them from the Joy Division/New Order tribute night that Lake Holiday played with them last year, but obviously I wouldn’t have gotten any idea of what their own sound was like from that sort of show. Adding some nice droney/spacey influences into a solid base of roots rock, they reminded me of The Skydiggers mixed with some Feelies while looking like Grandaddy. They won me over from the minute they took the stage, what with their guitarist/keyboardist playing the show – and quite ably no less – with a broken arm in a cast. Bobby Baun would be proud.
And then Luna. Oh my Luna. They’ve long held a reputation as a stellar live act, though it’s hard to articulate exactly why. They’re not the most animated band in the world onstage, but jumping around and general hijinks really wouldn’t work for their music, and at least until the recent addition of bassist Britta Phillips, they weren’t a whole lot to look at (though I’ve heard it said by some that drummer Lee Wall is quite a hit with the ladies). No, what Luna does so well live is play. It’s all about the music. They’re so tight, they seem to do it so effortlessly and the songs which can come across as a little sleepy on record crackle with a strong but understated energy. They’re just so GOOD.
And last night, they were SO GOOD. Opening with “Malibu Love Nest” off their latest/last album Rendezvous and following up with almost-signature song “California (All The Way)”, they reached back through their entire catalog (with the exception of Days Of Our Nights) for a more rocking than typical set. I would have liked to hear more Rendezvous material, as I feel it’s their strongest set in years, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain about hearing “Moon Palace” or “Tiger Lily” instead. Even though I’d grokked Britta’s setlist before the show and knew what to expect, they still pulled a fast one dropping “Lovedust” at the last minute in favour of Lunapark’s “I Can’t Wait” and closing the main set with an extended jam of “Black Postcards”, itself not a jammy tune. Proving that this was indeed a career retrospective tour, they opened the first encore with Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat”, altering it slightly to repeat the line, “I don’t want to vote for your President” more frequently. This they followed up with “23 Minutes In Brussels” and the fitting, “Time To Quit”. The crowd wasn’t letting them go that easily though, and the band came back out for one more go-around on “Friendly Advice”. And then that was it.
It was a superb show, but it’s going to be strange to think we’ll not be witness to Sean and Dean’s sinuous dueling guitars again (Luna are my favourite guitar act on the planet, bar none), nor Dean’s bedhead hair (which was looking pretty sharp last night – I’m not cutting my hair for a while) and laconic vocals, Britta’s gorgeous harmonies, Lee’s perfectly understated but propulsive drumming or Sean’s goofy between song MC-ing (the pride of London, Ontario!). I think Dean seemed gratified at the obvious love the audience was giving the band, thanking him for so many years of great music – all three times he left the stage he was wearing a big-ass grin. I get one last shot of Luna magic this Friday in Chicago, but for Toronto, all we have left are the memories. And the photos. I’d never gotten a chance to shoot Luna before, and obviously after this week I never will again, so I’m glad how these ones turned out.
PS – That “I’ve never seen a band on their farewell tour” bit was a lie. I saw the Dismemberment Plan on their final tour last year. I only realized this after I’d written it and didn’t feel like rewriting the paragraph.
The new Doves record has a release date and title! Some Cities will be in stores on February 15.
The Kansas City Star (login with freddy@mailinator.com/a12345) talks to the reclusive Berke Breathed about Bloom County’s 25th anniversary (!!!) and the accompanying hardcover book, Opus: 25 Years Of His Sunday Best. I still have not seen any of the new Opus strip anywhere. From Largehearted Boy.
np – Old 97’s / Fight Songs
Sunday, November 7th, 2004
Something is up in Wheat-land, and it doesn’t look good. They’ve just recently wrapped up touring for Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second and not surprisingly all had been quiet for the last little while. Then last week a message from guitarist Ricky Brennan showed up on the mailing list inviting subscribers to come see his NEW band in Boston. New band? As in side-project, or…? Curious, I hit their website and found a message on the news page that recapped their ordeals over the past two years in getting and touring relentlessly to promote it. The tone was one of sagging shoulders and overall weariness, and reading between the lines it sounded very much like a farewell despite some vague mentions of future band activities, both recording and touring. Then one day later, the post was gone. Add to this a thread on their message board titled, “In Mourning” with the message, “Say it ain’t so…please”, with the poster later implying some inside knowledge about the state of Wheat that they weren’t at liberty to divulge. Now if you go to their website, both the news page and message board have been disabled completely.
Obviously, none of this augers well. Wheat have had something of a hard time of it throughout their career. Their first album Medeiros was a slow and hazy piece of slowcore-pop with a charmingly lo-fi wrapper, but it was sophomore effort Hope & Adams that really made them a band to watch. Producer Dave Fridmann threw just the right amount of gloss on their sound to smooth things out but not lose all their rough edges. The songcraft was tighter and it soundtracked my life through pretty much all of 2000 – seriously, I loved this record. I wasn’t the only one, either, as a moderate buzz began building up around the band and they eventually signed on with British indie label Nude only to have it go tits-up shortly thereafter. This left the band and third completed record Per Second pretty well screwed while they looked for a new home. Eventually, they announced they’d made the great leap forward and had signed with Columbia records farm team-subsidiary Aware Records. The indie faithful were concerned. Then came word that the band were re-recording large chunks of the finished Per Second record, which from the leaked MP3s sounded great as is. The next warning sign came when the original early 2003 release date became Spring, then Summer, then Fall, and then second week of October, then third week, then early November, then late Nove… It’s never a good sign when an album gets pushed back seven or eight months.
As a stopgap, they released the Too Much Time EP in March of 2003 and gave their fans a first taste of the new Wheat sound – and reaction was mixed, to say the least. As their official bio put it, “If Medeiros was like a grainy black and white photograph and Hope and Adams was a subtle but momentous shift to muted hues, Wheat’s glorious major label debut Per Second, Per Second, Per Second, Every Second is a giant leap into Technicolor” And it was true – the new songs were hugely produced numbers with an ultra-high gloss sheen. The songs were still strong but the sonics… Naturally the band maintained that this was the natural evolution of their sound, but not everyone was buying it. When the album finally got a release in late November, I had already resigned myself to the fact that they were now a different band than the one that had grabbed my heartstrings three years previous. I learned to enjoy Per Second for what it was, and it wasn’t a bad record by any means, but it just didn’t measure up to their older stuff.
I caught them in November of last year opening for Liz Phair and was pleased to see that they had improved as a live act in the three and a half years since I’d seen them last and that the new songs were still solid underneath the shellac of the recordings. Their touring schedule was fairly relentless through the latter half of 2003 and early 2004, but they never managed to make the big commercial breakthrough that they and Aware were obviously hoping for. Despite Aware’s best efforts, I think that at their heart Wheat were just too ‘indie’ in aesthetic and presentation to really catch on with the top 40 crowd. As overproduced as Per Second was, some of the b-sides and compilation tracks that surfaced over the same period were much more in line with their older sonic style. Perhaps looking to reestablish their original indie/alt fanbase, the band were booked on the second stage of the 2004 Lollapalooza tour… and we all know how that turned out. The abrupt cancellation left the band with a big gaping void in their Summer schedule which they scrambled to fill with dates around the US, but it had to have hurt. Which brings us to today. What’s going on? I don’t know. Does anyone? If so, please let me know. Was this a eulogy? I hope not.
If I’ve piqued anyone’s interest in Wheat, check out the following:
- Some mp3s from the Too Much Time EP and live radio session tracks. The “naked” versions are from the original record that the band submitted to Nude and IMO they sound so much better than the official versions. Apparently a full version of this is circulating the internet ether – I’ve not found a copy yet. Anyone got?
- Epitonic has some samples from their first two records. These were actually the exact mp3s that I listened to incessently in early 2000 before I managed to find a copy of Hope & Adams.
- The video for “Don’t I Hold You”. The closest the band has had to a hit single, it was originally on Hope & Adams but re-recorded and added as a bonus track on Per Second, much to my dismay. I thought the original was damn near perfect and the extra – I’ll say it again – GLOSS on the redo just smothered the spirit of the song. The video is a pretty lousy RealVideo stream, but it’s all I can find right now.
JAM! Music talks to Torq Campbell of Stars.
The Toronto Star asks Ben Rayner and Vit Wagner what it’s like being music critics for The Toronto Star.
It’s rock-n-roll week! Five shows, seven nights, two countries, starting with Luna tonight at Lee’s Palace. Whoo!
Yesterday was Vic’s birthday so we threw him a surprise dinner party at a fancy-pantsish restaurant down in the entertainment district of Toronto, AKA the club district, AKA the worst fucking place on the face of the Earth on a Saturday night. Swear to God, if I could have called in an airstrike last night I would have.
np – The Wrens / The Meadowlands
Saturday, November 6th, 2004
The Jeff Buckley documentary Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley will make its Toronto debut at the Bloor Cinema on November 17 at 9:30 PM. Admission is just a non-perishable food item. The film has just started making the rounds on the film festival circuit, having screened at CMJ, Woodstock and Leeds. Check out this Rolling Stone piece for some background on the doc, which looks at the legacy of Jeff Buckley and investigates how it was that an artist with only one proper and modestly successful album managed to become so revered and influential – after all, the man’s name has become an adjective for every has (or thinks they have) a soaring, acrobatic voice.
It’s funny, I really enjoy Jeff Buckley’s stuff, but I can’t abide any of his copycats. Usually when I hear someone described as ‘Buckley-esque’, it means histrionics, drama-queen antics and self-indulgent warbling. Hell, even Buckley learned to rein things in and use his voice to serve the music instead of the other way around – compare restraint displayed on Grace versus the occasional over-the-topness of Live At Sin-e. Just because someone has the pipes doesn’t mean they have a clue how to use them properly.
Another Luna break-up article, this one from the Boston Phoenix.
So I finally got around to watching the Van Helsing DVD I won last week, and you know what? It wasn’t awful. In fact, I actually found it enjoyable for what it was. I think the key was that it was exactly the film it wanted to be, and that was a cheesy, campy, low-budget, old-school monster flick. It actually feels, no doubt deliberately so, like an old James Bond flick only set in the 19th century, and with rapid-fire crossbows instead of a Walther PPK and Dracula as the villain instead of Blofeld. Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale are both quite dashing and easy on the eyes as the monster-fighting heros and Richard Roxburgh is quite possibly the least fearsome Dracula to ever grace the screen. The Wolfman is fairly rote – there’s not much you can do with a character whose only dialogue consists of variations on, “Raarrrrhgh”, but the take on Frankenstein’s monster is a good one.
Comparisons to The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman are to be expected (“hey, how does one cheesy Victorian-era monster flick measure up against another?”) and I’d say Van Helsing fares better if for no other reason than there is no reference point for which it can be measured as a disappointment. I will complain that it seemed to hedge itself a little too much. Not enough jokes or self-awareness to function as a satire, not enough depth to be any sort of character piece, not enough money to offer up more than passable special effects, not enough creative action to distinguish it in that category. And not enough naked Kate Beckinsale (none at all, actually. Alas). The only thing there was too much of was too much of was running time – two hours plus is way too long for such a slight film. Oh well, it gave me something to veg out in front of last night. And it didn’t cost me a cent.
np – Pavement / Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe
Friday, November 5th, 2004
I missed these pieces from The Toronto Star yesterday about next week’s Luna and Matthew Sweet shows, sorry. The two articles are probably password protected, so get a fake login from Bugmenot.com. And if you don’t want to login but still want a fix, Chart has a piece on Matthew Sweet and The Boston Globe has a piece on Luna. The latter link from Largehearted Boy.
I’m pretty excited about these two shows. The Luna one will be my third time seeing them and (obviously) the last time at home, at least. Next Friday in Chicago will be the final farewell. Matthew Sweet, however, I’ve never seen despite having been a fan for over a decade. In the Girlfriend heyday, I was too young to be concert-going and when I was older, the stars never quite aligned such that I could have gone to see him play. The only opportunity I had in recent years was when his ez-rock trio The Thorns came through town, and for reasons I can’t fully articulate, I refused to even acknowledge that outfit’s existance. I think it was a lot to do with their utterly bloodless and unnecessary of The Jayhawks’ “Blue”.
Anyway, though I haven’t heard Living Things, I’ve gushed at length about the return to form of Kimi Ga Suki so I have high hopes for the show even if I’m a little disappointed he didn’t enlist Richard Lloyd for guitar duties. Alas. For those planning on being in attendance on Monday night, the show with Velvet Crush will have a bit of an unusual configuration – Matthew says, “We do about a two-hour show where I do a bunch of songs and then I sing and play back up with Velvet Crush. It’s like they are the supporting act, but they are nestled in the middle of the set. So people should come early.” There you go. I believe doors are at 9.
Check out the video to the Drive-By Truckers’ “Never Gonna Change” from The Dirty South, which I can now safely say is one of the year’s best records. Choose from High-bandwidth Windows Media, High-bandwidth Real Video or Low-bandwidth Real Video. It’s a pretty standard live clip montage, and not very inspiring. It certainly doesn’t capture the energy of a proper DBT performance but hey, what can you do.
Is it just me, or does everything in the Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith trailer look like a freakin’ cartoon? Except Alec Guinness, that is. Yeah, I know I’ll see this one eventually and grudgingly, comforted by the fact that I know EVERYONE dies, but I’m still not excited. But Knights Of The Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords? Yes, please. From Geekent.
np – Six By Seven / The Closer I Get
Thursday, November 4th, 2004
NOW previews a couple shows on my calendar this week. First off, there’s Luna’s farewell show at Lee’s Palace on Sunday night, and then on Monday night there’s the Velvet Crush (whose crappy website has gone AWOL completely), opening for Matthew Sweet at the Mod Club (and Pulse Of The Twin Cities has a piece on Matthew, courtesy of Largehearted Boy).
The Crushing Sweetness show, as I just decided to call it and which I’m sort of regretting now that I see it on the screen, will be one big power pop love-in, with Sweet and his bassist Tony Marsico playing with Paul Chastain, Ric Menck and Peter Phillips as Velvet Crush, and then the same lineup backing Sweet for his set. I expect they’ll be playing material to promote their latest album Stereo Blues, which I honestly found to be a modest disappointment. They try too hard to bring the rock and that’s just not where their strengths lie. I expect to be one of many who wants to hear more Teenage Symphonies material, but whichever way they go it should be a good show. Hell, at $25 a ticket it damn well better be.
Billboard declares The Shins to be “successes”. I’m sure they’re pleased to hear it.
Not many shows being announced as the calendar year winds down, but there’s still a trickle. Like that The Gossip are at Lee’s Palace December 5. And some more info on the Stars show at the Mod Club December 18 – tickets are $15 and Gentleman Reg is opening.
Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again has given a lot of thought to what the outcome of the Presidential election means to those on the left, and what happens next. The Incredible Hulk has some more succinct thoughts on the topic.
Thinking about fleeing the United States? Harpers offers some helpful tips. Or we can look into redrawing the borders along partisan lines – this proposal looks pretty good to me, or this one (from More Cowbell). Though that reminds me – I’m going to be in Chicago in a week. I should really figure out what I’m going to do there.
np – Superchunk / Come Pick Me Up
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