Music Review

Live Shots: Lucius sells out the Independent on a rainy Friday

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by Avi Vinocur

1:53am. Just got home.

Ok so listen. Tonight I saw this band at the Independent. Two girls. Super cute. All hip in matching red dresses. They sang together like they were related. Don’t think they were though.

The shorter one was totally flirting with the drummer. Bet they’re dating. Or worse: Married.

My buddy in New York has raved about them for years. And then I saw the Shook Twins cover their song at Cafe Du Nord a few months back. “This is a Lucius song,” they said. All of that means they must be legit, I thought. Definitely were. Holy schnikes the songs. Not to mention their guitar player crowdsurfed.

The crowd for Lucius

Apparently the girls in the band (Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig) met where most young confused musicians meet on the East Coast: Berklee in Boston. But then they fled the frigid northland for warm tropical Brooklyn, New York where they are now based. To give you an idea: they both stand facing each other in the middle of the stage, dwarfed and mirrored by their new but quickly iconic backdrop, playing a smattering of keyboards and tom drums. They have three dudes backing them up (Peter Lallish, Dan Molad and Andrew Burri) on two guitars and a strange but advanced kick-drumless drum set.

They encored the show by going in the middle of the crowd around one mic and singing two songs — like all singers should be able to do (but most can’t). “Two of Us on the Run” was a fantastic one. I’ll play that later tonight on the record I bought. Reminds me I need to move my record player from the living room into my bedroom. For that song.

Lucius

The opening band was better than great. Seriously. They were called You Won’t. I bet they’ll headline this place in their own right in like three months. They came out in wigs dressed like Lucius. Brilliant. Who does stuff like that these days. A few songs in the singer goes, “You guys smell great…hint of lavender here, whiff of thyme there. I like a tidy cohort and San Francisco, you’ve really delivered.” Sold.

Raky Sastri and Josh Arnoudse are it. Just two guys. I could see them as supporting characters in a college movie with Tom Green. On stage, the pair aren’t beholden to specific instruments but they tend toward drums and a Telecaster respectively. But they also tickled and blew a harmonium, harmonica, and musical saw as well as other stuff I’ve never seen. They are self-described “Massholes,” which is both a testament to their sense of humor and a great way to figure out where they are from: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

They covered some familiar songs — “Two of Us” and also “Can’t Help Falling in Love” sung through some sort of car hose or pool toy. It was awesome. Their originals were the best part though. “Television” and “Who Knew” are on their record. And then they did some new stuff that I didn’t recognize from the album I legally downloaded. But I liked it all a lot.

You Won't

Long story short, Lucius and You Won’t were both phenomenal, drew a sold-out crowd of outlandishly attractive girls, and are the reason I accidentally had a couple more beers than I planned to. Otherwise I’d be in bed by now, sad and songless.

I have work in the morning I think.

Flamenco goosebumps: Buika at Herbst Theater

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Large portions of my life have been chronicled by music. Chopin waltzes from when I was starting to learn piano, Iron and Wine from my college Seattle days, and this summer, Spanish flamenco singer Buika. Sam Love and I have had her music playing literally non-stop, whether it’s while we’re editing photos, having dinner parties with friends, or driving north to Point Reyes for a hike. We’re totally addicted.

But the discovery of Buika and her sultry music came at random one evening when we were curled up on the couch watching the very disturbing Almodovar film The Skin I Live In. (The perfect choice for inducing super-creepy dreams). Buika makes a cameo in the movie, singing at a holiday party.

Although the movie was too scary for my tastes (too much chopped liver, thank you very much!) we Googled the beautiful voice that stood out from all the mayhem. It was Buika. And after a month of total immersion in her music, we found out she was coming to SF for a concert, and we knew we had to go.

Ok. So here it goes. I’ve been to many, many, live concerts. Big shows, small shows, even tiny living room shows. Buika’s concert on Friday night was the most amazing performance I’ve ever been to. I cried throughout the whole show and had a permanent layer of goose bumps frozen over my skin. Buika sings with every inch of her body, her voice wrapped in warmth and passion. She mixes her African and Spanish roots together to create music that is unique, but also traditional and classic in a way that enables everyone to easily connect with her music. Buika has the energy of Janis Joplin on stage, a burning fire that is truly magnificent.

 

Ash Reiter and Idea the Artist keep it sunny at Cafe Du Nord

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Cafe Du Nord always feels cozy, and the sounds of Bay Area based Ash Reiter and Idea the Artist were a perfect fit for Wednesday night’s crowd of rapt listeners. Although Idea the Artist’s music was sometimes slower paced and more sentimental than Reiter’s rocking pop ballads, both vibes struck the right chord with this crowd.

A group of girls danced wildly during Reiter’s set, one wearing a glittery pink globe attached to a headband. While Idea the Artist (a.k.a. singer-songwriter Ines Beltranena) closed off the night with her soulful folk songs, Reiter’s set warmed up the audience on a chilly San Francisco night, giving us tunes to dance to and a reason to feel that the fun of summer is well on its way. And during that so-called summer, keep an eye out for Ash Reiter’s upcoming sophomore album Hola, which will be released later this summer. Along with a penchant for the warm months, the band thoroughly reps Bay Area. Lead singer Reiter and her eponymous band are based in the Berkeley Hills, and included a song called “Oakland” on most recent release release, Heatwave.

Idea the Artist’s album The Northern Lights Are On… was just released May 23, and recorded in Victoria, British Columbia (by Grammy-nominated producer Joby Baker). Her sound, recorded and in person, is lush and incredibly beautiful – it would be a perfect accompaniment to a dramatic coastal drive along Highway 1.

Beltranena’s voice is harmonized with beautifully, and also accompanied by piano, strings, guitar, bass, and drums. Purchasing a physical copy of her album is well worth it – each track is accompanied by her handcrafted artwork in the booklet, including photos of sculptures, paintings, and pastels.

She’ll be releasing a novel soon as well, which is a retelling of the Grimm Brother’s fairytales and Greek myths and legends, but according to Beltranena, darker. In her artist’s bio she explains that “ to ‘idea the artist’ is to realize that you alone are the creator of your colorful and potentially explosive existence, and that to see this, to know this, and to act on this, is to idea your artist”.

These are certainly two bands to watch for and, lucky you, both California native-led bands are set to go on tours soon. That is, California is coming to a town near you.

Live Shots: Portishead at the Greek Theatre

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Once while talking music with friends on a long road trip I was posed with the task of describing Portishead’s sound. Struggling to articulate the sum of their collective parts, I did a hasty mental cut-and-paste and said, “They’re sorta like…if Pink Floyd was a hip-hop band…and Billie Holiday was their singer.” It’s a clunky description, not so much for the references, but because Portishead’s greatest attribute is their ability to bend genres so seamlessly that it all morphs into their own sort of singular sonic universe. Even the prevailingly appropriate moniker of trip-hop (of the Bristol variety) really seems more of a launching point than a description.

So it was a rare opportunity this past week to witness Portishead’s audio empire live in the Bay Area for the first time in over 13 years (when in 1998, it recorded an epic version of “Sour Times” during a Warfield performance for the Roseland NYC Live album, later that year). Playing the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Friday October 21, Portishead worked through a 16-song set as a six-piece live band, dark silhouettes set against a backdrop of vibrant visuals as band members broadcasted an eclectic mix of their catalogue (pulling most heavily from their more recent LP, Third). Singer Beth Gibbons was in fine tortured form, even as the early part of the set was dominated by surprisingly straightforward renderings. But during the second half of the performance Portishead delved deep in their element with a batch of expanded arrangements on some prime tracks that produced stunning results, most notably a massively ominous “Wandering Star” and an out-for-blood “Machine Gun.”

Tracks off of the band’s self-titled second album showcased Portishead’s mastermind Geoff Barrows working his way from a cocoon of varying instruments to the turntables were he cut up gargantuan spots on “Over” and “Cowboys.”  The night’s showstopper came in the form of “Roads” (off of the band’s landmark debut Dummy) as Beth Gibbons’ vocals hit their apex for the evening.

Seeing Portishead again for the first time in a decade, I tried to improve on my original description of their sound, but I’m still not so sure how to peg it all: they sounded like Nina Simone scoring a James Bond film, and the beginning of the end of a great romance, and a DJ battle under pulsing blacklights. Of course, none of these are fully apt either. After all…it’s Portishead. For those who know, it’s description enough.

Setlist:

Silence

Hunter

Nylon Smile

Mysterons

The Rip

Sour Times

Magic Doors

Wandering Star

Machine Gun

Over

Glory Box

Chase the Tear

Cowboys

Threads

(Encore)

Roads

We Carry On

 

 

 

 

 

Space is the place: The Sword’s “Warp Riders”

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Once a metal album has surpassed a certain threshold of ambition, it is obligated to begin with an instrumental intro track. If said album is a concept album, this is doubly important. Warp Riders, the latest album by Austin, TX quartet the Sword, is a concept album in the most deliciously nerdy sense.

Weaving a dense science fiction tale of a distant plant caught in the throes of “tidal locking” (confining one hemisphere to dark and one to light), its songs regale the listener with visions of archers, mystical orbs, time travel, space travel, time/space travel, and beings called Chronomancers. The instrumental intro, “Acheron/Unleashing the Orb,” is therefore exactly as epic as you would suspect, erupting out shuddering guitar effects into hard-charging downbeat thrash.

The Sword have traveled a long way since their debut Age of Winters landed them on tour with Metallica. Warp Riders’ second track (and first single) “Tres Brujas” bears the trappings of this journey, boasting a chunky, arena-ready riff that prepares to bang heads in the nosebleed seats without sacrificing the band’s distinctive sound.

In the hands of producer Matt Bayles, this sound is rounded, warmed and perfected. Full of crystal clarity and meticulous composition, the album represents a milestone of professional accomplishment, if nothing else. Every note seems to fall in it’s proper place; every fill is carefully constructed and performed. Even the palm-muting sounds mysteriously augmented.

Third track “Arrows in the Dark” is a classic Sword singalong, taking advantage of singer J.D. Cronise’s improved vocal power and enunciation. Cronise is responsible for the album’s impenetrable plotting, so any questions about why arrows play such a big role in a sci-fi story should be directed to him (or possibly James Cameron).

“Chronomancer I: Hubris,” which follows, provides the album’s best riff, an anthemic masterpiece that resolves into vocal-powered verse that inches the story along. “Lawless Lands,” immediately after, is more of a sleeper hit, a stylistic departure that allows the band to settle deep into a hypnotic groove, showcasing bassist Bryan Richie.

After a methodical beginning, the tempo revs up for “Astraea’s Dream,” which is sure to please fans of the band’s more adrenaline-soaked early material. The title track that follows is a barn-burner along the lines of “Freya” (the song that got the Sword their big break), delivering big chunks of exposition along with a massive, concept-encapsulating chorus.

If there’s a song on the album destined to get goats, it’s “Night City,” a mid-tempo Thin Lizzy-style butt rocker with a chorus riff that borders on tongue-in-cheek. But when you consider what the lyrics describe — “You’re in a place they call the Night-side/In the shadows where the killers and the pirates hide/Stick around if you think you can survive” — the choice of a bloozy, verse-chorus-verse number to match a hard-drinking, hard-partying spaceport makes much more sense.

“Chronomancer II: Nemesis” opens with thunderous heaviness and finishes with a guitar solo – Kyle Shutt joins Cronise on a hair-raising tapped harmony as they conclude the enigmatic time-sorceror’s story. The table is then set for “(The Night the Sky Cried) Tears of Fire,” a valedictory epic built around the “Immigrant Song” drum pattern, lovingly adapted by drummer Trivett Wingo. Rife with cataclysmic imagery and infectious choruses, the song burns hot before breaking apart, resolving into the same keening guitar that began the album.

Though it represents the band at its most accessible, but also its most self-indulgent, Warp Riders is nothing if not a smashing success. That a band with such ability has the time, skill, inclination, and funding to craft an impeccable stoner rock album about time travel can be viewed in this day and age as a great boon. The Sword have escaped the gravity of their Sabbath homage roots, and dodged the asteroids of their detractors. Only one question remains: where is this rock ‘n’ roll spaceship headed next?

Pentamiligrams: Pentagram deliver the wrong dosage of rock

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Between the pre-salers and the at-the-door buyers, Pentagram fans shelled out around $20 each for the DNA Lounge show Wed/24. Though the complications of the band’s discography could fill the pages of a sizable book, suffice to say that they are not promoting a new album — the concert-goers in attendance were universally excited for a healthy portion of Pentagram classics (especially those diehards who saw July 2009’s command performance, also at the DNA).

The set that followed was a sham. It started auspiciously with “Forever My Queen” and “Review Your Choices” — two of the favorites that everyone expected. Then singer Bobby Liebling, 56-year-old butt poured into turquoise skinny jeans, reached for his harmonica.

What followed could hardly be called a “song,” and would be more appropriately and unfortunately be called a “jam.” It was the most ham-handed attempt at concert filler I’ve ever witnessed. Despite a half-hearted attempt to evoke ZZ Top’s “La Grange” somewhere around the middle of its bloated, 20-minute run time, it was largely an exercise in poorly-rehearsed, poorly-performed 12-bar-blues, packed start-to-finish with Liebling’s unsettling attempts at being “sexy” onstage (read: lots of cunnilingus-style tongue waggling and Robert Plant crotch diddling). After two more songs (the well-received “Sign of the Wolf” and “20 Buck Spin”), Pentagram bugged the fuck out, without playing an encore.

Turns out the band’s long-time lead guitarist, Russ Strahan, quit under mysterious circumstances right before the current tour was about to start. According to a statement posted on his MySpace page, Strahan felt he had to walk away “Due to communication breakdowns and inner band issues,” refusing to “compromise [his] values and love of playing music.” He cryptically concluded: “True fans of Pentagram … will understand the ongoing internal turmoil that has haunted this band from its inception & I refuse to air dirty laundry to the public.”

As tempting as it is to speculate, the exact nature of the stains on the band’s “dirty laundry” is likely to remain unknown. It is telling, nevertheless, that Liebling is the sole constant in a band that lists no fewer than 23 “former members” on Wikipedia. The singer is notoriously difficult to get along with, though, to his credit, he has recently kicked a long-running and devastating drug habit, thanks in large part to his relationship with 23-year-old wife Hallie, a fresh-faced, fashion-forward blonde who ironically blogs and twitters under the name “Halcoholic.”

In order to continue with their current tour, the band recruited axeman Johnny Wretched (formerly of under-appreciated Mid-Atlantic doomsters Unorthodox) to fill in for Strahan. Though a competent guitarist, he was apparently unable to learn a sufficient amount of Pentagram material in the short time frame available, leading to the debacle that transpired onstage at the DNA Lounge last night. It would certainly behoove the band to be more forthright (one pre-set apology aside) with their short-changed fans in the future. More importantly, those intending to attend one of the shows later in the tour should “Be Forewarned.”

For further reading, check out this fascinating interview with Liebling on metal blog The Obelisk.

Bay Area black metal: Ludicra’s gripping new “Tenant”

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It’s hard to believe, but black metal is around 20 years old. During its second decade, the music has been gradually subsumed into the metal mainstream, cannibalized, recombined, and reinvented. Pulled in one direction by the commercialization of bands like Dimmu Borgir, and in the other direction by the hermetic inaccessibility of solo studio acts like San Francisco’s Leviathan, fans and metal taxonomers have circled the wagons around arbitrary criteria, judging bands on whether or not they use a keyboard, or whether or not they’re from Scandinavia.

Thankfully, in the Bay Area, we’ve got a black metal band who couldn’t care less what the guarantors of kvlt (sic) purity have to say. San Francisco’s Ludicra hit stores with their fourth full-length today, and Tenant (Profound Lore Records) showcases an act at the height of their considerable powers, churning out organic-sounding, progressive black metal mixed with affecting, punk-rock humility. In place of frozen Norwegian rivers or blood-soaked Vikings, the album derives its themes from the eerie, uncanny, and horrifying aspects of urban living, as its title eloquently suggests.

Guitarists John Cobbett (also of Hammers of Misfortune) and Christy Cather favor warmer guitar tones of the type that won Wolves in the Throne Room so much critical aplomb, and they’re buttressed in this choice by the throat-shredding vocals of Laurie Sue Shanaman, which give the music a visceral, catharctic potency. Drummer Aesop Dekker is nimble if understated, and brings a welcome humanity to a genre that is generally so chops- and blast-beat-heavy.

The scything 6/8 riff that begins album opener “Stagnant Pond” is a harbinger of things to come, ascending into meditative chaos before giving way to the stately, mid-tempo blast that opens “A Larger Silence.” “In Stable” is the LP’s barn-burner, with its pulsing, black ‘n’ roll verse and massive ending build.

All of the album’s seven tracks are longer than five minutes, and two top nine, so it’s a testament to the Ludicra’s arranging talent that the songs breeze by as fast as they often do. Whether it’s a stop-on-a-dime meter shift or a clever bit of pagan-folk filigree, its hard not to be impressed by the band’s songwriting acumen. “Clean White Void” displays a notable NWOBHM influence, a stark contrast to the relentless blast beats on “Truth Won’t Set You Free” and the meditative chanting in the album-closing title track “Tenant.” Taken as a whole, the album is a gripping evocation of anger, fear, and sadness – what’s more black metal than that?

High on Fire’s latest is divine

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Wielding his custom-made nine-string axe, churning out tone so thick it could flaunt hot pants in a rap video, and crafting an ever-expanding arsenal of neck-snapping riffage, High on Fire guitarist Matt Pike has done it again.

His playing on the Oakland trio’s new album, Snakes for the Divine (Koch Records), surmounts a new, fiery height. That the things he already did well (effortless, legato hammer-ons, heavy-handed, scything chords) are done better is hardly surprising – it’s the expanding versatility of the snaggle-toothed shredder’s songwriting and technique that impresses, along with his ever-improving vocals. Though Pike’s work in Sleep will inevitably serve as a preamble, it is likely that the virtuosity and creativity of his High on Fire output will reverberate longer, and heavier, in posterity.

The album’s production, courtesy of Slayer knobsman Greg Fidelman, strikes an agreeable balance between Steve Albini’s uncompromising, abrasive work on 2005’s Blessed Black Wings (Relapse Records) and the enveloping warmth of Jack Endino’s Death Is This Communion (Relapse, 2007). Fidelman’s task is made easier by the fact that High on Fire are a power trio that sounds like a power octet. Nevertheless, he replicates the commendable work he did on Slayer’s World Painted Blood (American/Sony, 2009), wringing vast, organic-sounding potency out of the drums and amplifiers without sacrificing instrument separation.

Bassist Jeff Matz deserves plaudits for his reverberant, foundation-shaking appearance in a supporting role, anchoring crucial chord progressions and driving thunderous grooves as Pike ascends into the sativa stratosphere. One-guitar bands often lose momentum during leads and solos, and the fact that High on Fire never does is a testament to Matz’s quality, along with that of drummer Des Kensel. One of the hardest hitters in the business, Kensel’s truncheon-like approach is complimented by the exorbitant circumferences of his cymbals and toms. He and Pike have long enjoyed a striking musical understanding, exemplified by the lockstep concordance of the former’s riffs and the latter’s barbells-in-the-dryer tom runs, and the connection has rarely born riper fruit than the meter-bending wallops of album’s title track, along with the drummer’s effortless shifts into double-bass driven double-time later in the song.

Following immediately after the eponymous opening salvo, lead single “Frost Hammer” kicks off with cascading drums before settling into a propulsive, downbeat-heavy groove, delivering an arena-ready shout of “frost ham-mer!” at a number of key junctures. “Bastard Samurai” starts as a doomy, meditative plod before erupting into strident, lost-face anguish during the choruses, and is soon followed by reckless, frantic thrash of “Ghost Neck.”

Closing track “Holy Flames of the Firespitter” begins with a riff that hearkens back to the band’s previous albums, reminding old-school fans that even as High on Fire evolves, they remain relentlessly true to their hard-scrabble roots. Don’t expect them to be changed by a new label, a big-name producer, or last year’s arena tour — they’re a band that eats Motorhead, drinks Sabbath, and bleeds Slayer, and Snakes for the Divine proves that they are at the absolute pinnacle of their game.

Snap Sounds: Moon Duo

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MOON DUO

Escape

(Woodsist)

I’ve been thinking about how Moon Duo‘s name sounds a little like Amon Düül. Maybe that’s just tangential coincidence, but the SF twosome’s songs allow for the kind of daydreaming that produces such thoughts.

Escape delivers on the great promise of Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s earlier recordings, especially last year’s Killing Time (Sacred Bones). Like that EP, Escape is made up of four songs, but the lunar flares sprawl ever outward to album length. We’re only a month into 2010, but here’s a contender for Bay Area album of the year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzXD_uA7c4w

Iron and Wine is what happens when you’re making plans for Friday night

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By Erik Morse

So the night, Nov. 30, was a disaster of sorts but not for the reasons you’d think – and before you gag yourself with the prospect of another music review-turned personal soapbox or group session, bear with me. I’d like to think there is a point to my mawkishness. There is a certain regimen that proceeds from a typical Friday evening in the Bay that includes: 1) Driving with abandon, windows down, sunroof retracted, a hurly-burly of pre-weekend tune-age, a ritualized exorcising of the week’s frustrations, fleeting Bay vistas obstructed by billboards to the right and a swathe of mountains to the left; 2) The trickle of evening that always seem to greet you at that asymptote of the Peninsula where the sepia tones of suburbia meets the neon city with its bleary-eyed halogens and dayglo pleasuredoms; 3) A fine meal, which is to say nothing in moderation and everything in excess; and 4) A moment of love, nostalgia, tomfoolery, or any of a number of sensuous terms that might describe the simple, inexplicable pleasures that only live music can afford us – jouissance, freude, orphic plaisir, or, at the very least, “like a monkey making love to a skunk – maybe didn’t get all he wanted, but got all he could stand…”

Of course, you see, it didn’t happen that way. Driving up the 101 in Friday rush-hour has its occasional pleasures and aesthetic appeals but not when dinner reservations in the Mission and a hop-skip-jump over the Bay Bridge are timed out perfectly to coincide with Sam Beam’s performance at the Paramount. Over an hour parked in the concrete desert is a numbing death-trip. Honk. Break. Lurch. Then there’s the inevitable parking morass that is downtown SF: where one parks in the Richmond to play on Harrison – and the confusing cell-phone tag-games that often delay dinner reservations and sometimes end friendships.

Reservations cancelled, eh?

What?! 7:30 already! I’m barely through the second scotch and soda and already it’s time to move on. Back onto the road and across the great steel artery leaving the flickering night of the city before it’s even begun in earnest. Wait…wait…where’s my WALLET?!

Believe it or not, we all might learn a thing or two from Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam – namely, not to sweat the little things and embrace your quotidian flaws. His Hirsuiteness took the cavernous auditorium of the Paramount on Nov. 30 for two hours of brittle ballads and po’ boy twee pop.

P&J jam

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Icons come and go, with all the fanfare, dressers, and folderol that legends demand, you know — with a wiggle of a ruddy nose, the flash of a cape, a blast of TNT, the slam of the estate gates. Goodbye, James Brown (RIP Godfather of Soul, Dec. 25, 2006), may you work a little less in heaven than

you did on earth. Fare thee well, Village Music (music geeks’ vinyl treasure trove), readying to close Sept. 30, due to the high rent demanded in Mill Valley. Next?

I was ready to say hasta luego to that mammoth warhorse of all critics’ polls, the Village Voice‘s Pazz and Jop. The massive compendium of top 10 album and song lists and legitimizer of toiling, stinking music crit midgets the nation over, the creature seemed to be next on the list of endangered species when creator-caretaker Robert Christgau (dean of American rock critics) and Voice music editor Chuck Eddy were fired last year after the New Times’ purchase of Village Voice Media.

Still, the yearly e-mail appeared again early last month — "Hello. You are one of the 1,500-odd critics we’d like to include …" — this time signed by the Voice‘s new music editor, Rob Harvilla, who got the NT corporate relocation orders from the East Bay Express.

Is it the same poll without Christgau keeping tempo? Honestly, few envy Harvilla, who has had a tough shoe to polish in pleasing Voice readers and filling his well-established predecessors’ boots while boasting little of sheer record-reviewing chops and logging a fraction of the critical thought that has gone into the careers of Eddy and Christgau. The latter for good reason dubbed his graded music review column Consumer’s Guide. Ever the idealistic, outraged, yet overthinking lot, music writers were conflicted — torn between their loyalty to the old Voice editors and the scent of a continuing or future paycheck. The notion of alternate polls was batted around on the blogosphere.

Still, when Gawker Media actually began one, who suspected the brouhaha that would ensue? Gawker’s music blog, Idolator, announced its startlingly similar Jackin’ Pop Critics Poll with the cheeky, gauntlet-tossing headline "Time to Raze the Village," called out Christgau’s and Eddy’s cannings, and issued the salvo "For those who had long turned to the Voice to help guide them through the realm of pop, rock, and hip-hop, the 51-year-old alt-weekly now had about as much musical credibility as, say, a three-month-old blog." Shortly after that, Idolator poll editor and ex–Seattle Weekly music editor Michaelangelo Matos was informed, through a multiple-source grapevine at the NT-VV Media–owned Minneapolis–St. Paul City Pages (the alt-weekly at which he began his career) that he has been banned from that paper.

Gawker-Idolator later reported that word quickly went out to NT-VV music staffers that they’re not allowed to vote in the Idolator poll. "When we announced the poll, that day, I saw an e-mail from John Lomax, who is the Houston Press music editor — he’s head of New Times music editors — instructing all music editors and staff writers that hourly and salaried staffers of New Times were not allowed to vote in the Idolator poll," Matos told me from Seattle.

Matos added that despite NT-VV being "obviously hardball kind of guys," he took umbrage at the fact that "they didn’t tell me I was banned. I heard it from somebody else. I think the way they handled it was chickenshit, but from the way I can tell, that’s one way they operate, through fear and imprecation." At press time, Lomax and City Pages music editor Sarah Askari had not responded to inquiries.

Is this just a matter of new media versus New Times? Corporate print media fending off the pricks of a million busy blogging digits? To make matters even more complicated, Christgau himself, whose Consumer Guide was recently picked up by MSN, has voted in both polls. "I have told people who’ve asked to do what they wish," he e-mailed me, adding that Eddy, now at Billboard, is not voting in P&J.

Yet other aboveboard and down-low boycotts of P&J abound, Matos said. Ex–Voice staffer and current Pop Conference organizer Eric Weisbard is skipping the poll because, the former P&J pooh-bah e-mailed, "participating in Pazz & Jop validates the New Times neanderthals who now run Village Voice Media. They may want to keep alive a poll that generates more Web hits than anything else they do, but in all other ways, they hate and are trying to eradicate everything that the Village Voice music section stood for: intellectual discussion of popular music and popular culture."

"A number of people who aren’t voting in the Voice poll are older and better established," added Matos, describing an argument he recently had with a friend. "I heatedly called it a labor issue, and my friend said, ‘If I vote in the Voice poll, am I a scab?’ It’s probably not that cut-and-dried…. Everyone in New York knows how bad the Voice has gotten, but for a lot of people, the Voice still represents a decent paycheck. It’s a hard thing to argue with. People who don’t want to piss off the Village Voice, and frankly, till this poll came along, I was one of them."

Vote in both, don’t vote in P&J, or vote in P&J and pen protest too? I’ve always internally chafed against the voice of critical authority, inclusive yet contentious, implied with P&J. Perhaps that sense of center is a bastion of the past, along with traditional music industry models. Yet even the first P&J Matos ever read — from 1990, with De La Soul on the cover — included an essay by a writer who refused to participate in the group grope. The gathering was that quirky and open to dissent.

An alien concert in the new order of NT-VV? "Good going, champions of the free press!" Idolator crowed after announcing the NT-VV response, excerpting a supposed example e-mail from a NT-VV music editor to writer. "To get revenge, we plan to not patronize the porn ads in the back of your magazines for the next week. You have no idea how much that’s gonna cost you."

One long-tenured P&J pooh-bah continues to watch over the proceedings, if from afar. "I look forward with considerable curiosity to both polls," Christgau wrote to me. "I very much doubt either will be as good as the last PJ, but we shall see." Nonetheless, it seems unlikely the boycotted and participation-by-dictate P&J will, as Matos put it, "open things up for you," as good critics and past polls have. *

SATURDAY

0

JUlY 8

FILM
A Scanner Darkly
Placing a surreal frame around Philip K. Dick’s tale of addiction and paranoia in the not-too-distant future, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly represents the best possible marriage of story and style. It’s hard to imagine what a conventional film would’ve done with Dick’s material after seeing Linklater’s take, which represents his second foray into interpolated rotoscoping (basically, animation over live action; Waking Life was the first). Visually, the technique heightens the impact of plot devices like an undercover cop’s shape-shifting “scramble suit”; it also adds an extra layer of what-the-fuckness to the downward spiral of said cop, Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), who happens to be rabidly bound to a mysterious drug known only as Substance D. (Cheryl Eddy)

San Francisco theaters

MUSIC
Tilly and the Wall
In the grand irony that defines the indie rock generation, nostalgia is huge. Childhood is the kingpin of nostalgia. Tilly and the Wall take all the colors of innocence and drop them into a bubbling vat of flamenco-flavored whimsy. Using a tutu-wearing tap dancer in place of a drum kit, this band is taking the Peter Pan syndrome to a whole different level. Bottoms of Barrells (Team Love), the most recent release from the Tillies, includes accordion, cello, trumpet, plenty of handclaps, and the University of Nebraska’s Trip the Light Fantastic choir, propelling their sound from scaled-down kiddy rock to a lushly complex excuse to use the word “syrupy” in a music review. The flagship band of the Omaha-based Team Love label (started by Bright Eye’s frontman Conor Oberst) will be tapping into Cafe du Nord tonight. (K. Tighe)

9:30 p.m.
Cafe du Nord [www.cafedunord.com]
2170 Market, SF
$12
(415) 861-5016