Music Blogger

A portrait of a musical migrant worker: Chris Arnold

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By Sonny Smith

I kept seeing this guy at all the shows, always with the big Grizzly Adams-type beard, with a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. A tall man, long hair, large features. I met him outside the public library once. It was raining, and he stood there spouting some convoluted scheme to make art across the country. I couldn’t puzzle together what the hell he was talking about.

Every time I see him at a show he’s setting up little microphones all over the mic stand and the stage, and then video taping it, too. He’s got a big Samsonite suitcase full of digital tape. He’s probably got about one hundred thousand billion hours of live local music – not to mention video. The Oh Sees, Jolie Holland, Michael Musicka, Entrance, etc.

“I like the idea that music actually makes a difference” he said to me. “More than just a soundtrack to people’s lives. I wanted to shoot stuff and put it in the context of my life, the story of my own life, so the songs tell my story. Isn’t that what a mix tape is all about?”

‘Eh!’ Istituto Italiano di Cultura toasts a Tuscan ball game

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

Envision tennis without racquets – as the French name of the sport, jeu de paume or “game of the palm,” implies. Then take away the nets, like the tennis term “the line” suggests; Hold the five-centimeter ball in the palm of your hand and before serving always yell, “Eh!” And you’ve got Palla Eh!, a traditional Tuscan ball game played pick-up style in the piazzas of six hilltop towns.

These very small villages of about 1,000 residents have kept Palla Eh! alive and vibrant as a swift, spontaneous sport that brings the entire community together. The game originated in the 16th century and spread throughout the region, evolving over the years, but with roots that clearly demonstrate that Tennis and Palla Eh! share a common ancestor. The sport was formalized as it spread to Holland, South Eastern Spain, and Piemonte, Italy, but the rules within these Tuscan villages remain malleable, varying from town to town.

The game’s small, handmade balls are constructed from recycled materials such as couch covers and yarn, and are thrown or struck – rather then caught – with either a bare or gloved hand by facing teams. Games are played in the piazza of a village, a central feature in Italian towns, and the boundaries are marked with painted lines, but there is no net, and players can move freely between sides.

Britpop Faves: Fly, doves

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By Daniel N. Alvarez

Part of a continuing series: Britpop Faves.

Something must be in the water in England’s second city. For a population of less than half a million, Manchester has spawned a hair-raising number of musical visionaries that are often as charismatic as they are brilliant. While the Gallagher brothers, the Moz, Ian Curtis, Richard Ashcroft, and Ian Brown may have stolen the headlines, three likely lads from Wilmslow, a Manchester suburb just 10 miles to the south, quietly built a sublime, glistening catalog.

Doves made a splash with their stunning debut, Lost Souls (Astralwerks, 2000), which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. While it didn’t take the award, it was a statement of intent, highlighted by “The Man Who Told Everything,” still among their best.


Approaching: “Here It Comes.”

Entroducing… James Lavelle at Mighty

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By Brandon Bussolini

If the name James Lavelle rings familiar, think back: this is the guy behind UK label Mo’ Wax, which in its heyday endtroduced DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Tommy Guerrero. He’s also the mastermind behind UNKLE, the collaboration-prone production team that paired him with Shadow for their five-years-in-the-making debut, Psyence Fiction (Mo’ Wax, 1998).

More talked about than actually heard — the first album included contributions from Thom Yorke, Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis, and Mike D, among others — UNKLE went on to replace Shadow with Richard File for 2003’s less compelling Never Never Land (Mo’ Wax) and 2007’s virtually ignored War Stories (TBC).

But focusing on Lavelle’s lofty ambitions as a music maker doesn’t give credit to his considerable contributions to hip-hop and house music in the UK; with his boutique label and club nights — That’s How It Is, with Gilles Peterson, lasted a decade — Lavelle helped midwife trip-hop by establishing hip-hop as a living tradition, one whose boundaries weren’t strictly musical.

The new old-school: Stone Foxes rock the blues

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By Kat Renz

It’s rare to visit a MySpace site or see an opening band and say, “Holy crap, they’re gonna be huge.” Had I been on the scene in the ’60s or old enough to drive to Seattle in 1989, the exciting shiver of finding a band in their infancy reeking with inevitable promise would feel perhaps more familiar. Today, not so much.

So I was totally unprepared for the Stone Foxes. Though I know it’s a fatal blunder for music writers to prophesize, I’ll do it anyway: the Stone Foxes are gonna be huge. They’re the least pretentious band I’ve heard in, like, forever, which means everything in a modern music scene tainted by image-obsessed emo-tiveness and outsider status posturing.

First I loved their name and second appreciated their MySpace page’s photographic homage to blues-rock influences of yore (the Who, Sabbath, the Faces, Neil Young, et. al). But such attractive details were immediately trumped by their music: pure rock ‘n’ roll, so heavily and blatantly rooted in the blues, augmented with a hearty helping of country’s paradoxical blend of naiveté and grit.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Patti Smith, Kings of Leon, M.A.N.D.Y., Hubba Hubba Revue

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Jesus: Patti Smith in The Black Generation in 1979.

So much to do, so many to see. Here are the notables that didn’t make print.

HUBBA HUBBA REVUE
Every third Friday, the frocks come off and the old- ‘n’ new-school burlesque is ahn. Loved Lady Satan’s recent toy-gun-humping Sarah Parlin striptease – she’s here at this Oktoberfest edition, along with Trixxie Carr, Sparkly Devil, Alotta Boutte, and Calamity Lulu. Lee Press-On and the Nails provide the live tunes. Check the show out every Monday eve at Uptown Nightclub, too. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $10-$15. DNA Lounge, 375 Eleventh St., SF. (415) 626-1409.

Pop Montreal part three: Ratatat, Beach House, Wire, and more

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Rah-rah: Ratatat.

By Laura Mojonnier

A snapshot of the Pop Montreal festival, Oct. 3, 4, and 5.

Day 3

Ratatat and Panther at Club Soda, 10:30 p.m.

I began Friday night, Oct. 3, with the second most-hyped show of the festival: Ratatat. (First place goes to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who played Metropolis on Thursday night – not even my press pass could get me in.) It was sold out weeks before Pop began, but somehow Club Soda managed to not feel like the inside of a wet diaper in mid-July. So props to whoever was in charge of air circulation.

I saw opening act Panther over the summer with maybe 30 people in the room at an Oakland gallery smaller than my apartment, so naturally I assumed that seeing them six rows deep in a huge downtown venue was bound to disappoint. But the Portland, Ore., art-rock duo, composed of multi-instrumentalist Charlie Salas-Humara and drummer Joe Kelly, actually managed to pull it off, oozing enough delirious energy to fill the 800-person room.

Reality 1.1: Sara Kraft’s ‘HyperReal’ provokes with little analysis

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

The opening: a long-haired lady dressed in black – this is Sara Kraft – walks to the center of the stage and breathes. She breathes louder than one normally breathes, as if she’s attended an excess of yoga classes, and just huffs for several minutes. During this long introduction, Kraft has already bored me – and is beginning to annoy me. I could go to a yoga class if I wanted to hear this. The episode concludes as her arm slowly trembles upwards – rhythmically in step with her gasps.

In the next scene, I discovered Kraft’s voice to be as annoying as her breathing, sometimes more affected than other times, but always in a know-it-all tone that reveals the clearly scripted nature of the performance piece. The major motif of HyperReal – presented Oct. 10-12 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – revolves around “a formative experience I experienced at 4,” as Kraft puts it: the first ocean image she witnessed was in one of the first movies she ever saw: Jaws.

From here she explains the confusion between the real real ocean and the ocean she learns about from Jaws, which includes terrorizing, man-eating sharks. Scenes, like the first two, with Kraft sitting or standing alone onstage, often speaking into a microphone, explaining experiences such as going to Universal Studios and encountering the mechanical Jaws shark or reading the dictionary definition of “reality,” were juxtaposed with scenes performed behind a thin curtain.

Will Ivy makes us itch for more

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By Jen Snyder

Man, San Francisco, you are a very musically incestuous city.

On Friday, Oct. 10, I traveled to Chinatown’s Li Po Lounge for a show. I really appreciate any reason that sends me to Chinatown, be it a mission as a tour guide for house guests or a dire need for new China Flats, but this was a particularly promising trip. Li Po Lounge is a totally legitimate dive bar, plus it has one of those excellent creepy basement show rooms that you usually only can find in Oakland. The sound isn’t super-great, but the lighting (there basically is no “lighting”) and the mood is perfect. To top it off, Will Ivy of Bridez was performing his solo material.

I knew it was going to be good: I’d already listened to a few of Will Ivy’s lo-fi tracks on MySpace and totally dug them, particularly the song “Scrap Plastic,” but my hunch was based slightly more on the fact that most good bands have members with excellent side projects. I’ve always been a fan of songwriters and the diary-style lyrics and the mood that’s created when you’re writing things alone in your room.

Pop Montreal part two: Irma Thomas, Silver Apples, DD/MM/YYYY, and more

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Ripe for the picking? Silver Apples’ Simeon back in the day.

By Laura Mojonnier

A snapshot of the Pop Montreal festival, Oct. 2.

Irma Thomas at Ukranian Federation, 8:30 p.m.

The night started off with a bike ride up north into Montreal’s Mile End area to catch Irma Thomas and a full backing band play the Ukrainian Federation.

I’d only been to this venue once before, to see Patti Smith play a secret show at last year’s festival, and the place certainly seems made for that kind of gig. The venue feels like a cross between a middle school auditorium and a Protestant church, rows of 40-year-old theater seating on the first floor and a pewed balcony for the choir. In conclusion, Ukranian Federation is not great for rocking out, but it’s just perfect when watching Thomas belt torch songs for middle-aged Quebecers.

In the red with Weezer’s Scott Shriner

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By Daniel N. Alvarez

Weezer’s long-time bassist Scott Shriner is fired up. After spending almost a year holed in Los Angeles working on this year’s critically acclaimed, Weezer (Geffen), also known as “The Red Album,” he is psyched to be back on the road. Flanked by U2-loving Angels and Airwaves, Weezer are currently bringing their narcotic hooks and questionable facial hair to a town near you. Shriner was good enough to talk about The Red Album, his love of metal, and being inundated with YouTube celebrities, among other things.

SFBG: This album is a big step forward for Weezer. Without losing your signature sound, you guys were able to try some new things that were really successful. What are some aspects of the new Weezer that may surprise the fans?

Scott Shriner: I mean, it’s the first time, since I’ve been in the band, that we all contributed writing on the record. Also, we all took turns singing lead vocals, and a couple of the songs have the lead vocal spots kinda switched up. For example, Brian (Bell, guitarist) sings the chorus of “Everybody Get Dangerous” and Rivers (Cuomo, primary vocalist-guitarist) sings the verses. Or in “Greatest Man,” I sing a couple of verses, Rivers is sings a couple, and then we all sing on a couple parts. There’s just a lot more participation from the band.

Pop Montreal, part one: Hot Chip heats up, Sic Alps smashes, Woodhands sweats

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Great Northern: Mixylodian.

By Laura Mojonnier

Montreal is the kind of city you only appreciate once you leave for an extended period of time, as I did when I relocated to the Bay Area for a few months this past summer. Living here spoils you – it makes you think that all cities have vibrant art and music communities and cheap rent, that all cities serve poutine (fries, gravy, and cheese curds) at every 24-hour corner food joint for your drunken feasting.

Sure, there are drawbacks: the five-month winters, the unchallenged hegemony of skinny jeans, the fact that the gravely pit in front of my stairwell probably won’t return to its former state as a sidewalk until early 2009. But, at its core, this city has a fiercely independent nature that makes festivals like Pop Montreal possible.

What began in 2002 as a series of shows all booked in the same weekend has exploded into a five-day extravaganza that takes over every venue in the city every year in early October. The core of the festival remains the music, but now there’s Film Pop, Art Pop, Puces Pop (a craft fair/exhibition), Pop Symposium (panels, discussions, lectures), and Kids Pop. And though a small corporate presence has arisen – rumor has it that all staffers received a fresh pair of Converse this year – Pop is still run mostly by hip 20-somethings and a hoard of volunteers jockeying for five-day wristbands. As a result, the festival has a refreshingly laid-back, organic vibe, even if the published set times are occasionally unreliable.

Sonic Reducer Overage: Pendulum, Killdozer, Kowloon Walled City, and more

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Taken for granted? Pendulum’s “Granite.”

Whoa, again, San Fran coughs up the fun stuff to do this week – and as usual, it’s far more than we can handle in one mere newspaper. Here’s what didn’t make it into print, but may be worth leaving the house for.

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SKYGREEN LEOPARDS AND EYES
SF’s feline psychedelicists stir, alongside Eyes’ proggy dreamers. With the Mantles. Thurs/9, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.

GLITCH MOB
The LA glitch-hoppers unleash the Equal Opportunity Enjoyer on an unsuspecting public. With Megasoid, Rustie, Eprom, and Anasia. Fri/10, 9 p.m. doors, $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880.

Duke’s gonna get ’em: High Decibels’ main man turns that shit into gold

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By Billy Jam

Shit happens. We all know that. But it’s what we do with that shit in life that is the important part. In the case of East Oaklander Duke, ne D’Andre Johnson, of new Oakland rap group with a blues twist, the High Decibels, the MC/poet has managed to take the negatives dealt him in life and spin them into something a lot more positive.

In fact if weren’t for one of his earliest humiliations as an artist – being booed offstage at a talent showcase at his Oakland high school – that he wouldn’t be doing what he is doing right now. “I went to Skyline High School, and at that school, they have a really good performing arts program, and they do this thing called “Showtime at the Line,” like at the Apollo with the Sandman and all,” he recently recalled of the night that he and his brother entered the contest. They were confident that their rap performance would win over the audience.

Not so. “The theater holds like five thousand people and it was packed. So we started out our song, and the music started skipping. And I was first. I just started busting a cappella. The music came back on and I was off beat. And we got booed off the stage,” said Duke of the incident that happened about eight years ago when he was 14. “And for the next year I would be walking down the hallway and one person would start booing, and before I would get to the end of the hallway, the whole hallway was booing.”

That Dude

Genghis Tron: electrogrindcore of the gods

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

Imagine Zeus and Ares, up on Mount Olympus sipping cocktails when suddenly they start arguing about Ares’ old-news fling with Aphrodite. What ensues is more then expected, with lightning bolts flying into trees, morphing them into vertical charcoal, and spears being sent high into the sky as vultures descend upon the slain. The members of Genghis Tron brought a little of that mythical drama when they took the stage at Bottom of the Hill on Oct. 6. The band churns out cacophonous metal that waxes and wanes between caliginous grindcore and mellow yet still moody electronica.

Openers Religious Girls from the East Bay stepped in for Yip-Yip, which couldn’t perform due to a member’s illness. The group mirrors the point in which Zeus and Ares are still just sipping cocktails: it’s a good moment because you’re drinking, but it’s not unusual enough to order anything less original then a gin and tonic. They played with passion, pounding beats ferociously on multiple drums, with war chants and shrieks that sounded somewhere along the lines of Animal Collective’s “Native Belle” and “The Purple Bottle.” Not to say that I don’t love Animal Collective, but Religious Girls’ sound didn’t come off as entirely original.

Clipd Beaks, the onetime Oakland combo, was the lull while you’re trying to get the attention of the bartender to order another drink – hopefully the one that’ll push you from tipsy to drunk. Their sound was simple and synthy. Nic Barbein vocals were filtered with noise as he sang undecipherable lyrics into two mics, once even sticking one into his mouth. Overall, it was like being ignored by the bartender for more than 15 minutes because that more aggressive patron distracts him or her and takes all the attention.

Thrills a-plenty from New Thrill Parade, Judy Experience at Bottom of the Hill

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Skeleton crew: New Thrill Parade. All photos by Jen Snyder.

By Jen Snyder

I like to rediscover relics from my past. Whether it’s an old sweater left to die in a storage unit, or 20 bucks that made it through the wash, the reunions are always pleasant – mostly because you know you’re encountering something that you’ll like.

Similarly I remember seeing New Thrill Parade at a house show years ago during college. I recall a gothic, schizophrenic dog-pile best paired with sweaty air. When I moved I lost track of them. But guess what? They moved, too. It’s always fun to see what happens to bands that only hold reference in your mind as photo stills: the cast had changed slightly, but the scenery was better than I remembered. At Bottom of the Hill on Sept. 30, the outfit, which is now located in San Francisco, had some pretty excellent opening acts, too.

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The new, new Strip Mall Seizures.

Kicking off the night was Strip Mall Seizures, another combo I hadn’t seen in years. I had been excited to see the klezmer-inspired punk band I had known and loved, yet as the first song ended and the second began, I began to feel like I was seeing a completely different group. I asked another listener in the crowd about my musical amnesia, and he said, “Yeah, they lost some melody but gained some power.” Then I realized that I don’t have a pair of Creepers anymore, and Strip Mall Seizures doesn’t play klezmer punk either. And you know what? I think we’re both better off.

The latest mission? Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom

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By Brandon Bussolini

When the Guardian checked in with Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom two years ago, the quasi-annual, daylong music festival, organized by UC Davis student-run radio station KDVS, was in its fourth incarnation and ready to present one of the most ambitious lineups of its short existence.

Seventeen bands, ranging from Kid 606 to Michael Hurley, were slated to play, but just as 606 and hip-hop crew Third Sight were setting up – the bands with the biggest guarantees – Yolo County’s finest shut the proceedings down. “Some nearby residents complained about the noise level to the police,” writes Elisa Hough, co-organizer of this year’s O:RMF and a KDVS DJ, in an e-mail. “Everyone – even people who weren’t involved in the organizing – looked and felt so defeated.”

Plainfield Station, a Woodland country bar that has hosted O:RMF since its inception, is an unlikely place for this to happen: plunked down amid flat, tawny farmland, the nearest house is probably at least a mile away. But regardless of the small irony that crops up between its name and that incident, O:RMF is a provocative title in more ways than one. According to Rick Ele, a longtime KDVS DJ and veteran booking agent in Sacramento’s underground music scene, the name comes from a brainstorming session with former KDVS Events Manager Brendan Boyle and former DJ Joe Finkel.

Catching up with ballboy’s chamber-pop poetry

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I Worked on the Ships
(Pony Proof)

By Todd Lavoie

I’ve never kept this a secret, but here goes: I’m a lyrics guy. Little surprise, I suppose, given my stats. I work in a bookstore. I’m a voracious reader. I’ve been known to throw words upon the page from time to time. I geek out over silly things like etymology and colloquialisms. Not only do I own several dictionaries, but I also have a shelf full of books of slang, quotations, and various other word-nerd delights.

Not to sound all Hallmark card about the whole thing, but words – well, they mean a lot to me. I am, after all, one of those saps who immediately yanks open the liner notes upon getting a new CD, scanning to see if the artist included the lyrics in the pages. As much as I love to lose myself in dense guitar washes or crunching synth riffs or blaring trumpet fanfares, ultimately I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the thrust of whatever is leaving the vocalist’s lips didn’t matter the most to me. As a lover of books who admittedly doesn’t read too much verse, I’m a sucker for lyrics probably because they’re the closest thing to poetry in my life. Hell, some might even argue that certain songwriters out there – Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, maybe even Joni Mitchell at times – are bona fide poets as well.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say that ballboy’s Gordon McIntyre is a poet, but he does have a knack for penning engaging, lexicon-loving lyrics. Ever since arriving in a shower of wordplay in 2001 with their EP-collecting, snarkily-titled full-length Club Anthems (SL/Manifesto), the vocalist has pulled listeners close to their speakers with absorbing tales of love, sex, and the burning desire for something bigger and better.

The dobro mastery of Jerry Douglas in all its glory on ‘Glide,’ at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

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JERRY DOUGLAS
Glide
(Koch)

By Todd Lavoie

Universally regarded as the finest dobro player in contemporary music, Jerry Douglas has long been the go-to source for the most evocative of resonator-guitar textures.

Starting off as a session musician back in the ’70s and ’80s – and having worked along the way with everyone from bluegrass pioneers David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs to country artists as varied as Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Trisha Yearwood – Douglas eventually launched a solo career which established him as one of the forerunners of the burgeoning “newgrass” movement. Proponents of the newgrass sound wanted to expand the boundaries of bluegrass by drawing from other traditional acoustic-based styles – particularly jazz – and the drive to rescue the dobro from pigeonholing was certainly understandable, given the perceived limitations many folks had up until that point.

The instrument has been frequently, almost predictably, used in film and television scores to introduce a Southern setting – often rural and run-down in nature – thanks to its ability to fashion moods from its lazy slides between notes. Sure, its “we’ll-get-there-when-we-do” slides and slow finger-pickings easily summon up images of sweltering afternoons under a merciless sun. But the dobro can do so much more – and Douglas has made it his mission to prove exactly that.

Noah and the Whale’s twee cinematic charm, in SF for the first time

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By Chloe Schildhause

The charmingly romantic, springy UK folk band Noah and the Whale have just begun their US tour, and their San Francisco debut will happen at Amoeba Music and Popscene today, Oct. 2.

Their first album, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down (Mercury), was just released in August, but the band has already been a big part of the summer UK festival circuit with gigs at V Festival, Summer Sundae and Glastonbury. Over the phone from the road, frontperson Charlie Fink told me: “Festivals have been cool. I sometimes find it intimidating – the big crowd and stuff. But it’s been fun.”

Fink writes Noah and the Whale’s lyrics. His personal favorite is the title track, he explained. “It says the most of what I’m trying to say on that album.” But what that is exactly is a mystery. “People are trying to get me to assess the lyrics,” said Fink. “But I find it quite difficult because what you say in a song is what you can’t express any other way.”

My, my, My Bloody Valentine at the Concourse

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As the last hiss, groan, and shred of so many guitars in maximum overdrive faded into the comforting murmur of C&W at the Concourse – and the buzzing began in earnest in my earholes – I had to admit, those My Bloody Valentines are still fricking bloody amazing.

I remember ’em way back when, among all those hazy watercolor memories of the ’90s, at the Kennel Club, now the Independent. And back then, around the release of Loveless, I remember thinking, they’re good but they’re no Sonic Youth. No mistake, I still love me some SY. But after the last multitextured blasts of “You Made Me Realise” surged first one, then twice with delicious rock ‘n’ roll drama, inspiring a small sea of fists to shoot up at the front of the stage, I had to admit this band has been bloody well missed.

There were a lot of confused looks last night, Sept. 30, at the shed-like venue – right there on the faces of casual listeners and maybe a few older fans who viewed Loveless as the most daring entry in their CD library. Live, the band has lost none of their fury – or volume. The 20-minute-long noise finale – which kept me riveted with its groans, shrieks, and force-of-nature undulations and seismic shifts – doubtless disturbed. Still, the courage and audacity of MBV came through – even to someone who has attended her share of noise shows. Their organic suture of, er, noise aesthetics to pop song structure heaved up a strangely benevolent, animal-like sort of sound – nonhuman, rather than inhuman. Against that wall of distortion, it was nice to see the little bodies lying on the floor, cradling themselves, holding fingers to ears, and studying the stage from across the football-field-sized room, basking in radiating sound and taking in the aural waves coming off Expo Center Beach.

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Sonic Reducer Overage: Deerhoof, Mos Def, Noah and the Whale

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Perfecto: Deerhoof’s “Perfect Me.”

Are we having a ball yet? Now is your chance… an artists ball and more shows than we can shake a stick at. Best to catch them before they fade away.


Free ways: Mos Def freestyling.

ARTISTS BALL SEVEN
SF socialites just might swoon to the tunes of Mos Def, Hercules and Love Affair, and Rogue Wave at this annual benefit fete for YBCA’s New Works Fund. Fri/3, 9 p.m., $125-$150. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787.

The subtle ebb of Beach House at Swedish American Hall

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By Michelle Broder Van Dyke

Beach House’s slow melodies and ethereal lyrics are filled with mysterious, “Holy Moments,” captured in simple couplets, like “Pick apart the past, you’re not going back / So don’t you waste your time,” surrounded by atmospheric, somber, lightly strung-together pearly words that create a tone reminiscent of a short I saw on Friday, Footnotes to a House of Love, directed by Laida Lertxundi, at Artists’ Television Access.

Set in the desert of Southern California, the 16-mm color film is a collection of collaged cuts of empty dilapidated wooden rooms, loosely hanging screen doors, and parallel views of lovers caressing. The chopped scenes fuse together to create a sense of place that is more fulfilling than any individual shot, much like the sentiment that Beach House captures.

This mood is similar to the manner in which Beach House’s meditative melodies wash over their audience, as they did Sunday, Sept. 28, at the Swedish American Music Hall. If you’ve ever felt heartbroken, or any moderate pain at all, you can interpret Beach House’s abstract lyrics filled with mild images – “I’ll pour some tea for us” (“Astronaut”) – stuck somewhere in nostalgia (or maybe in the imagined future), and suit them to fit your own emotional state at the time.

ATP Day Three: My Bloody Valentine rips, Dinosaur Jr. rages, Bob Mould sweetens up, Yo La Tengo be jamming

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Shoegazer love-a-gore-gore: My Bloody Valentine at ATP NY. All photos by Jessica Reeves.

By Todd Lavoie

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”

Walking around Kutsher’s Hotel in Monticello, NY, knee-deep and beyond in Catskills swank-gone-asunder, oohing and aahing and occasionally cackling in shuddered horror upon stumbling across yet another shining example of ’50s-era Borscht Belt décor in steady decline, I couldn’t help but evoke that priceless line from what is possibly the cringiest of ’80s cringefest flicks, Dirty Dancing, as I kicked off day three, Sept. 21, of All Tomorrow’s Parties NY.

As it turns out, Kutsher’s – the epicenter for all things indie for that weekend – was also apparently the inspiration for the set of Dirty Dancing. Wikipedia away – you’ll see. Everything began to make sense. Here we were, on our third day of the festival, and the talk of the town wasn’t Saturday night’s Les Savy Fav and Shellac double-whammy, or the astounding seven-places-at-once ubiquity of Kevin Shields, who seemed to pop up from every corner – someone has to be in the corner, obviously, since Baby can’t – but instead it was the irrefutable suspicion that this place held a singular role in so-bad-it’s-good moviemaking history. We indie kids love our irony, after all – and we’d all been thrust upon the motherlode.

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