Danica Li Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Late of the Pier

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April 14, 2009

PREVIEW Late of the Pier is catchy while still retaining an essential core of flighty, fidgety weirdness. With its askew harmonics, squelchy synths, and wildly off-key vocals, Fantasy Black Channel (Parlophone, 2008) marks the big label debut of a band bent on peddling an oddball sound to the masses, to say nothing of a kitschy aesthetic. The album’s cover presents a haphazard assortment of drums, kits, cords, and keyboards scattered atop outcroppings of granite — an apt visual for the band’s chaotic approach. Some tracks suggest a recorder switched to on-mode at the site of a train wreck, while others rescue some order from the mayhem. Discerning musical adherents will peg the group as contemporaries of outfits like Metronomy, Hot Chip, and Klaxons. This quartet is inventive and almost extreme in how far they’re willing to take their sprawling multipart sagas, instrumental transitions and elaborate glam guitar breakdowns. Plain-jane indie rock outfits have nothing on them.

Late of the Pier hail from Castle Donington, London, where they formed in 2004. Frequent nightclub fixtures and the toast of a large teenage fanbase, the group was picked up by a few small record labels before landing a slot on one of French dance it-label Kitsune Maison’s annual compilations. Fantasy Black Channel is produced by electro DJ Erol Alkan, who brings his pedigree as a remixer (Mylo, Chemical Brothers, and Digitalism) to the recording’s sound. Now that its spunky electro-rock numbers have been rapturously received by the oft-smitten British music press, the band is setting its sights on the U.S. We should like what we hear: Late of the Pier’s fingerpainted audio tableaus add some slapdash vitality to the musical orthodoxies of today.

LATE OF THE PIER at Popscene. Thurs/16, 9 p.m.-2 a.m, $13 (advance). 330 Ritch, 330 Ritch, SF. (415) 541-9574, www.popscene-sf.com

Cut Copy

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March 10, 2009

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PREVIEW Cut Copy can’t help being so likable. They’re here to dance, they’re damn happy about it, and they want you to know it — and jump in. The happy-go-lucky aesthetic worked: last year’s In Ghost Colours (Modular Interscope) debuted at the top of the Australian charts and topped scads of year-end best-of lists. The trio — a skinny bunch with swishy haircuts, delectable Australian accents, and a pathological addition to plaid — put out that luminous trove of swirly synths, Day-Glo pop, and irrepressible dance-rock groove to near-unanimous critical acclaim.

And about time, too. Downright disco raver "Lights and Music," an ecstatic summer anthem with a veritable shirt-grabber of a hook, spawned about a trillion remixes and lit up transcontinental dance floors across the globe. Vocalist Dan Whitford, who started out as a DJ and has released comps under the Fabriclive mix series, formed the band in 2001, collecting guitarist Tim Hoey and drummer Mitchell Scott along the way to the band’s 2004 debut, Bright Like Neon Love (Modular Interscope). Maybe it’s Whitford’s DJ impulses that account for In Ghost Colours‘ chimerical meldings of disparate rock and electronic elements that give the group’s music its diverse, pastiche-y textures — and, for determined music taxonomists, a certain elusive quality. Nu rave, disco-punk, synth rock? Whichever and whatever, it just sounds like a good time.

CUT COPY With Matt and Kim, and Knightlife. Thurs/12, 8 p.m. $25. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.livenation.com. Cut Copy DJs a Popscene after-party. Thurs/12, 10 p.m., $10. 330 Ritch, SF. (415) 541-9574, www.popscene-sf.com

Valentine’s Day Music

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February 10, 2009

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PREVIEW There couldn’t be a more disaster-prone pairing than Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day, but if the Black Valentine’s Masquerade on Feb. 13 at Mighty has anything to do with it, everything’s going to go horribly, horribly right. UK electro weirdo James Lavelle of UNKLE and DJ duo Evil 9 are slated to kick off a party that includes shambling zombies, friendly demonic folk, blasts of electro-metal, and horror-movie synths. To be sure, it’s a costume party, so try to remember that the ghouls and ghosties aren’t actually anything more than people in disguise.

John Cameron Mitchell, director of Shortbus (2006) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), which he also wrote and starred in, proposes to tip off V-day with nothing less than a showcase on the origin of Love — or so the name of his gig and film screening would have you believe. Mitchell’s set to belt out a few numbers live onstage at the landmark Victoria Theatre, then screen his cult hits Feb. 13–15. The show also promises an exclusive director’s commentary on the goings-on behind the scenes, plus a slew of titilutf8g readings on sex, love, and romance.

If a more traditional concert is more to your taste, minus drippy musings on the perfume of roses and a huddle of cooing lovebirds, consider the Valentine’s Day punk rock soiree at Hemlock Tavern. The defiant lo-fi anarchists of Hunx and his Punx — a side project of Gravy Train!!!! keyboardist/vocalist Hunx — will bring their take on distorted garage rock to the fore, just as V-day winds down. Pitiless amounts of noise, anyone?

BLACK VALENTINE’S MASQUERADE Fri/13, 10 p.m., $15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com. John Cameron Mitchell and Hedwig and the Angry Inch Sat/14, 7:30 p.m., and Sun/15, 8 p.m., and Shortbus Fri/13, 8 p.m., and Sat/14, 11 p.m., $25. Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF. (415) 863-7576, www.victoriatheatre.org. Hunx and his Punx with Dreamdate and Shannon and the Clams Sat/14, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

“The Bird and the Bee”

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February 3, 2009

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PREVIEW For a band that has leased tracks to Grey’s Anatomy, Sex and the City: the Movie (2008), and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), the Bird and the Bee curiously still bear the burden of being just one buzz band among the ravenous, clamoring multitudes. Nonetheless, the duo’s brand of frothy pop has gained traction among various species of photosphere hipsters.

According to their nonchalant MySpace bio, Inara George and Greg Kurstin met, hit it off over jazz standards, played a few, and then never looked back. An established producer, Kurstin has collaborated with artists running the gamut from Beck to Britney Spears. The Bird and the Bee’s self-titled, 2007 Blue Note debut garnered attention for the pair, thanks to songs like "I Hate Camera," a capering, catchy track with glinting synths offset by playful electronic noodlings, The music, which the band itself has described as sounding like a futuristic 1960s American film set in Brazil, fuses Kurstin’s retro inclinations and suave jazz accents with George’s sweet sing-song to darling, almost uniformly excellent results. With George’s bold Cleopatra chop and the twosome’s taste for playfully kitschy promo pics, you can’t say the kids lack style, either.

With the musical intelligentsia stroking their graying beards over the pass/fail results of the second album’s litmus test, the consensus is that new record, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future (Blue Note), delivers its bubbly pop goods with minimal deviation from what’s already working. It’ll all be up for examination at the Independent.

THE BIRD AND THE BEE With Obi Best. Mon/2, 8 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422, www.theindependentsf.com