We Were Promised Jetpacks SF Noise Pop Festival Slim’s San Francisco, CA February 27, 2010
Turns out we won’t actually be needing those jetpacks after all. I mean, there’s just not much in the way of thrills that can top what this band We Were Promised Jetpacks delivered on Saturday night at Slim’s. Turns out that this band itself actually is a machine from the future, one whose whole purpose evidently is to make your heart pound hard. Hey, don’t take my word for it, just ask these guys:
Based on the album, I had my own idea –call it a hope– of what this band might actually sound & look & feel like live. Because as exciting as the record is, it’s also pretty cleaned-up, yet constantly it hints at edges that are substantially rougher, dirtier, more dangerous.
& damn if that isn’t just what we got at Slim’s on Saturday night! It starts with Michael Palmer’s right hand just pummeling the strings on his black Telecaster fast as faster as fast as that arm can drive it, force feeding his Marshall half stack, feeding back & feeding it some more. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Adam Thompson, we already know that he’s a deep-chest shouter, but holy shit in person the man just roars.
OK, so this music is noisy it’s dense & that’s enough already to make it a beautiful thing. I mean, IMHO. But wait, there’s more! There’s a real brilliance here in the way that Darren Lackie (drums) & Sean Smith (bass) are able to channel all the noise, efficiently & precisely, into the compact parameters of the songs. There was no real stretching out here. This band gets in, winds it up tight & hard, & then gets the hell back out. There’s no screwing around, they’ve got some shit to do & that’s what they get done. Fantastic.
Atlas Sound SF Noise Pop Festival Great American Music Hall San Francisco, CA February 26, 2010
I have already gone on record w/my strongly-held view that Bradford Cox is one of very few actual geniuses working in popular music today. A few months back, I was delighted to learn that he’s also a warm & engaging performer. Both aspects were again made plain on Friday night at GAMH.
This current iteration of Atlas Sound was “just” Bradford, solo, w/acoustic guitar, his (still-incongruous) harmonica, & about a dozen effects pedals & loopers. From these ingredients, Bradford crafted his sound-sculptures right there in front of us, he built them up & then he broke them back down. This music was rich & layered & sonorous & deep. Except for when it wasn’t. Because the lush, processed artifice could switch off in an eyeblink, leaving only the reedy voice, the minor chords, the harmonica whining. On a dime, this guy all alone can turn from Atlas Sound into Neil fucking Young. & when that shift happens, it’s dynamic, it’s poignant, it’s goddamn masterful. Bradford Cox whipping up High Art in real time; he’s like the iron chef I swear to god.
& yet all the while, he makes it look so easy. Bradford onstage is unassuming. He is chatty, spontaneous, just steadfastly genuine. He’s telling little stories, cracking jokes, taking requests (including mine, yay!). He’s plainly reveling in the singular moment of Now, & we are there in it with him. That feels like some magical shit. & when, late in the show, there are scattered outbursts of affection from the audience well, that feels appropriate. Because Bradford is sharing the love, & only some kind of an asshole would fail to reciprocate. I mean, right?
It was in that rather glad aura that I actually forgot to be taking notes. So I’m going to be a bit shy on the actual details here. I’m pretty sure he played for about two solid hours. I remember “Sheila” & “Walkabout,” but also a lot of songs I didn’t know, so they’re probably new. Um, he played “An Orchid.” Oh, & his dad was there.
It feels like he played about ten songs for the encore, although it may have been substantially fewer. He did play “Quarantined,” (that was my request), and he played something that we’re not supposed to tell anybody he played. (bc Lockett will get mad, so that’s all I’m gonna say about that one!) He closed out with “Kid Klimax,” and then “Logos.”
I understand that Deerhunter is about to get busy w/ new projects again, including the opening slot on Spoon’s tour. That particular circus comes to our town on April 13 at the Fox in Oakland. You going?
Just go ahead & press play on this link. Hear some of it while you read. This is, first-off, a cultural artifact. 1969 in Toronto. At, somewhat incongruously, some sort of rock&roll “revival” event. The guitar players are Eric Clapton & John Lennon. The banshee-squealing is by (who else?) Yoko Ono. Maybe you’ve heard this before & maybe you haven’t. Either way, you probably come to this with a whole a lot of preconceptions, right? Try, please, to forget them for a minute, & just hear.
A couple of pedestrian observations, right off the bat:
1. You’ll wait in vain here for a chorus, bridge, or other meaningful variation of the riff. I submit that the arrangement is, functionally, a Loop. A proto-sample, even. I think that’s interesting, historically speaking.
2. Yoko is not tentative, not hesitant, not even slightly deferential to the heavy hitters on stage with her. She is confident. Shit, she’s ferocious! Her performance is not haphazard; she very clearly knows what she’s doing.
So, but this is some weird shit, yes? The full title of the song is actually “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow).” I daresay that nobody in 1969 in Toronto had ever heard anything like this before. But now it’s forty-plus years later. & I think we ought to not be quite so taken aback. I mean, how many different flavors of weird have we enjoyed, even wholeheartedly endorsed, since then? We have long ago processed & assimilated, e.g, Kate Pierson. & Lene Lovich. Nina Hagen. Kathleen Hanna. & cetera. I mean, now, we have Molly Siegel, now we have Satomi Matsuzaki. Shit, now we got Karen O. I could go on the list is so long, but my point being: Just the bare fact of Yoko Ono ululating & shrieking & Oh, it’s not pretty & it’s not polite & it’s not very nice should no longer give us pause. I mean, right? We should be able to just hear it.
& yet: Yoko & co are coming to town next month & I have been delivering that news to WOW quite a mixed bag of reactions from the people I know. What exactly is it about Yoko that can still spark such reflexive aversion? Such rancor, even? I merely pose the question; it’s not something I’m going to try to explain.
Anyway, Ms. Ono does what she does. She’s an experimental artist, & she expects you to do your share of the thinking. She’s not necessarily going to just feed it to you. She provokes. She works in a very wide variety of media, & right now evidently she’s working once again in music. She’s got a new album out, called Between My Head and the Sky. When it succeeds, it’s really kind of a thrill: YO-Waiting for the D Train mp3
As with any mad scientist, not every experiment of hers is a successful one. I won’t lie: There are some songs here that are campy in a way that is, I’m sorry, totally unintentional. Wince. But I have a lot of respect for the reaching, the naked risk-taking. & I just have nothing but affection for the unshirking & well-earned positivism that lies at the heart of all Yoko’s work. This is somebody who has faced the fucking heart of darkness more than once. Yet, what is her ultimate message? It’s pure & it’s sublime, it’s: Yes.
It’s: War is Over, qualified by nothing other than If You Want It.
Anyway, the new album: Yoko once again shares the stage w/some heavy hitters (including Sean Lennon), albeit this time maybe not the best-known ones around. One reason I personally am excited to see Yoko Ono is that Yuka Honda is in the band.
Yuka Honda was, once upon a time, ½ of Cibo Matto. Do you remember their first album, Viva! La Woman? That was some seriously brilliant shit, & it made a significant splash back in, uh, nineteen ninety-freaking-SIX (jesus). OK, I’ll just go ahead & assume for the sake of discussion that you don’t remember that one, so here’s a kind of a Whitman’s Sampler of Cibo Matto for you:
Fun, right? See, that’s the thing that I now think: shit has to be fun. It’s experimental OK but it doesn’t have to be like taking your medicine all the time. People want to impose every damn kind of hierarchy on the music of the world. The older I get, here’s the one question I want answered correctly: Am I having fun when I hear it?
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band are playing the Fox in Oakland on Feb 23. It's exciting to me that I have no clear idea of what to expect. This is yet another episode of the SF Noise Pop fest. & just to put a cherry on top of the whole deal, Deerhoof is opening!
We Were Promised Jetpacks is the cheeky name of this band from Glasgow, & I’ve been spending some time with their debut album, These Four Walls. With admittedly nothing to go on other than what I can hear here, I picture brawny bad lads somewhat spiffy for job interviews or for church, but reeking yet of booze & maybe still bruised up from brawling. Yeah, that.
The first & primary impression here is of singer-slash-guitarist Adam Thomson: he wants your hands off his chest, is conducting electricity, thinks he’s solving crimes, & cetera. These are his tropes. It's all delivered from deep in the bottoms of his lungs, emphatic & earnest & delectably (b)roguish. Reminds me at times of a certain Irish singer name of Mister Vox. Now, I know that not everybody who cares about music nowadays can even remember that U2 was once actually raw & dangerous (or even that Bonohad 2 names), but you’re going to have to trust me on this one. End of digression.
Anyway, this here Adam Mister Scotch T can wind it up well & truly something fierce, can scream it out good, & then the whole band will just pummel the crap out of you for a good 6 or 8 measures before catching any breath at all. The Sunday-spiffy part, though, is that somebody has gone & reamed a lot of the grit, gravel & noise out of this music, presumably for record release purposes. OK so fine, they’ve made it in through the front door now. My strong suspicion is that We Were Promised Jetpacks is a far less solicitous proposition once this band gets going in the live, onstage realm.
I’m hoping to be proven right on that point in a couple of months. These guys will come through town for our local Noise Pop Festival. February 27 at Slim’s, specifically. I’m there. See, hear:
Posts
