Take It From Me -- Track #4 -- TV on the Radio

“DLZ” by
TV on the Radio
from Dear Science
September 2008

I have to admit I was a little slow to catch on to this group, & I really have no excuse since they have THE BEST band name since, like, Talking Heads.

That alone should have clued me in, right?

Happily, I saw TVOTR play at the Fox in Oakland this summer, & the show left me very excited, very interested. Their music is not exactly rock, or jazz, or funk, or hip-hop, or techno, or doo-wop, or high-concept performance art, or etc. But it seems to me to connote all of those things & more. Oh, & it’s overtly & aggressively political, too. There’s just a lot going on inside of there, & all of it is (most importantly) very fun, danceable, & yeah, sexy.

I understand the band is now on a 1-year hiatus while Kyp Malone pursues his solo project, but I’m expecting a long & fascinating career ahead from these guys. In the meantime, I can recommend this album without reservation, as well as Return to Cookie Mountain (admittedly weird title), from 2006.

DLZ - TV On The Radio

Take It From Me -- Track #3 -- Atlas Sound

“Ativan” by Atlas Sound
from Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
February 2008

Like I said, I’m still working my way through last year. This year’s Logos is also excellent, & may well appear on next year’s mix. So.

Anyway, usually the 1st thing that hooks me into any bit of recorded music is some flavor or texture in the way the thing is produced. e.g., I most certainly do love the swirling, sonic smear of Atlas Sound, solo project of Bradford Cox (of Deerhunter). Often, a song’s lyrics are the last thing to get my attention, but the opening lines here (“I slept til I threw up.”) are, um, kind of arresting yeah?

That said, I really just love the big, lush reverb that pervades this album. This music has direct antecedents in My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain, Velvet Underground (in reverse chronological order), all of which I will almost certainly address in future postings here.

Ativan - Atlas Sound

Take It From Me -- Tracks #1 & #2 -- Flaming Lips

“Aquarius Sabotage” &
“See the Leaves” by the Flaming Lips
from Embryonic
October 2009

Hold on to your hat, right? Our compilation kicks off loudly, with a frenetic blast of free-jazz-ish electronica. The distortion is intentional, no need to adjust your equipment. Also, don’t panic as the chaos lasts only for approximately 1:05 before plunging into a bucket of feathers, a cloudful of sighs, a melancholy idyll. & that’s only the 1st track! From there, we segue into a throbbing march, dark & portentous. Are you getting chills? I’m getting chills.

This music is evocative, challenging, surprising. As you likely know, the Flaming Lips have been around since 1983. As far as I can tell, no band that’s been working it for over 25 years has any business at all putting out something this unexpectedly good. I think I listened to the whole album about ten times right after I bought it. I was stuck home with the flu that day, & this boisterous, baroque gem was a very medicinal tonic indeed.

Aquarius Sabotage - The Flamin...

See The Leaves - The Flaming L...

Take It From Me -- The Scoop

OK, full disclosure: My ostensible year-end compilation CD, entitled Take it From Me Mix, contains 18 tracks, only half of which were actually from 2009. The rest were from 2008. Um, except for that one from 2007. I will cheerfully cop to having omitted many fine selections that actually were released in 2009, in favor of pieces I included for no better reason than I like them & I listened to them a lot this year, & plus 80 minutes is a finite number.

Distribution of these discs is & has been pursuant to the friends & family discount, terms of which are set forth as follows: I give you the CD & you, in turn, flatter my great taste in music. Win-win! For those not lucky enough to score a disc, links to the operative tracks will appear here over the next several days, along with my brief commentary on each.

Ponytail

It's a lucky privilege indeed to live in a city where every single band on tour can be depended upon to stop by sooner or later. Yes, it is.

On the other hand, that's a whole lot of hubbub, & it does get difficult to keep track of it all. I'm just not that in the know, much as I'd like to be (Action items: 1. Quit job. 2. Get fake IDs for the children. 3. Never miss another show.). But don't you just hate it when you get all clued in to some "new" band, only to discover that they came through town already like, last freaking year? That is the thing that I hate.

So anyway, Ponytail. Don't answer out loud OK, but have you already seen Ponytail? Shit. I'm hunting online & I see an old tour schedule where it looks like they played Bottom of the Hill last May. Did you see that show? Shit, don't even tell me bc I'm just now getting hip to Ponytail & I want to see them SO. BAD. & as far as I can tell right now they're touring Australia and New Fucking Zealand. & that is very far away indeed from here.

Sigh.

Ponytail is one of those bands where you hear the record & you just immediately know the concert would be so much better. Like, the recording is just so plainly a mere shadow of what you think & dare to hope the band is really all about.

I don't even know how to convey the thrill I'm getting from this music. The band is fast & very, very tight. On first listen, it reminded me a little of Battles. But this is different. It's just more dirty & more sweaty. Nimble, but not even remotely subtle. Bright & hard, but not shiny. Is any of this helping? No, right? Here, hear:

7 Souls - Ponytail

Die Allman Bruder - Ponytail

I think I'm hearing two guitars & no bass, at least some of the time. The vocalist is Molly Siegel. I'm not calling her a singer. I mean, if Molly wants to call herself a singer I'm not going to object or anything, & I have nothing but admiration for what she does. I just think at the end of the day it's too damn reductive to call it singing. Molly yelps, Molly yowls, Molly hollers. She howls.

I just want to be in the room with this band doing its thing. I want to eat some of that euphoria. I want to hear it in my bones.

Atlas Sound

Great American Music Hall
San Francisco, CA
November 3, 2009

Bradford Cox is playing hooky from his day job with Deerhunter.

I definitely think of Deerhunter as a quote-unquote experimental rock band because they do question & expand the usual boundaries of the form. It's just that they often do so in stealthy ways, loading relatively conventional songs chock full of Trojan-horse surprises.

But that's another day's discussion. Tonight, Mr. Cox is engaged in his *other* project, Atlas Sound. I've spent a lot of time with the "Let the Blind Lead..." album, where the "experimentation" is overt & obvious. There, the "band" does not produce "songs," so much as aural tableaux vivants. Dream-ish snapshots, half-obscured, evocative & lush. The new album, "Logos," is somewhat less insistent on its own iconoclasm, but still: Altas Sound is processed sound, distorted & manipulated beyond easy recognition, repeatedly confounding of the listener's expectations. Delicious. Hell, it's magically delicious.

In Atlas Sound, Mr. Cox wields the fact of recording & production itself as his primary musical instrument. There's a lengthy tradition for this sort of thing, & he has described this project as a venue for ideas ill-suited to the usual rock band format.

Well, OK fair enough. But I'd been wondering: now that he's touring Atlas Sound as a rock band, how does its essence translate back to a live performance context? Based on tonight's show, the short answer is: It thankfully doesn't. My concern had been that this concert would be all self-serious, & that the band would execute wan imitations of those rich & complex recordings.

But No. First of all, Bradford was jovial & warm from the start. I was completely thrown off as he cracked jokes, flirted brazenly, recruited an audience member to play tambourine, & cetera. So by the time he started playing acoustic guitar & a fucking harmonica, well, I had already been so utterly disarmed & seduced that I was ready to follow wherever he & Atlas Sound were planning to go. (To be fair, he did allay fears by promising to play "some really weird shit" later in the set.)

This was a thrilling show because, while everybody knew to expect "experimental" or Experimental or whatever, this band played nothing that fit easily into any such pigeonhole. Instead, we got ~80 minutes of veering madly from one modus to another, never settling anywhere comfortably, & all of it was just damn fun! Mr. Cox has a lot of electronics on the floor, including some fancy-ass sampling machines. So, e.g., the acoustic guitar could morph into a hammer dulcimer on crystal meth, the harmonica could transmogrify via god's own echo-box. Or, just as often, not. Because playing it clean & straight is just one more color in this artist's very big wheel. & just to not leave the stone unturned: Bradford Cox is a fucking bad-ass electric guitar player exclamation point.

One favorite moment among several: tonight's version of "Quarantined." Stripped of its popping reverb & (deliberately, ironically) cheesy sequencer, the song was suddenly driven by Bradford's surprisingly passionate & ultimately poignant vocal performance. A complete reinvention of a song I have well-known & well-loved. Outstanding.

DP update

Dirty Projectors at Bimbo’s 365 Club

San Francisco, CA

November 1, 2009

The bass player has grown a porn ‘stache. Or maybe it was just a fake one, left over from Halloween yesterday. Either way, it was a good omen: in direct contravention to my last post, Dirty Projectors clearly joined in the fun tonight. Dave & Amber were actually rocking out, bouncing around, jamming together. The drummer got so worked up he stripped off his shirt mid-set. Shit, even Angel was looking happy & cracking jokes! Dirty Projectors have been on the road for a good long time, now. & they no longer play like they’re Dave Longstreth’s hired crew. No. Finally, now, they’re a fucking band. The ensemble playing is tight, tighter than ever. But there’s an evident ease & fluidity to what these six individuals are doing together onstage now. They nailed it tonight. I’ll bet they’re doing that a lot lately.

I kept pretty good track of the set list, but I didn’t recognize the 1^st song. It was just Dave alone; his guitar playing had a guttural quality I don't think I'd heard before, so I'm guessing it's an old song dug out from the trunk. Or maybe it's a new one, pointing to changes afoot. Apart from that gap, my notes have the set as follows:

[?]

Ascending Melody

No Intention

Temecula Sunrise

Two Doves

Spray Paint (the Walls)

The Bride

Cannibal Resource

Remade Horizon

Stillness is the Move

Useful Chamber

When the World Comes to an End

Knotty Pine (encore)