Ryan Prendiville

Live Shots: Treasure Island Music Festival 2012

Tony Robles
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Music nerds talk lineups the way sports fans manage fantasy teams, particularly with festivals, where suddenly strategy becomes a part of catching a show. Treasure Island Music Festival, is sort of an exception, since in theory you can catch every single act, given the two alternating stages. At the same time, this means that unless you head to the silent disco or take a nap, one of those geeks will be standing behind you during a set, obsessively talking about how the lineup should be slotted differently.

Day 1
SF’s Dirty Ghosts had the challenging task of being a rock band opening the festival on the traditional hip-hop/electronic day. K. Flay followed, and told the crowd “I know it’s early, but we can still party,” and the local MC proceeded to give a hair tossing performance that had her drummer breaking a snare. It was a decent lead in for Oakland’s the Coup. Boots Riley has been off my radar for a bit, but it appears our ambassador of P-funked rap has been keeping more than his afro tight – pulling from now-more-appropriate-than-ever classics like “5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O” and the upcoming Sorry to Bother You.

At 2:31pm, a guy in a tie-dye Quicksilver shirt was vomiting near where Grimes was playing: the festival had started. Like Matthew Dear and Porter Robinson, Grimes is a returning acts from this year’s Noise Pop. Maybe it was just her bandmate’s flowing iridescent ponchos, but Grimes’ sound seemed lighter than at the Rickshaw Stop. I decided I preferred this side of Grimes, but the Euro bubblegum quality of the creepily infantile “Phone Sex” was pushing it. Matthew Dear seemed out of place in full sun on the Bridge Stage, fog machines pumping. His set was similar to what I heard at Public Works, but progressed slowly. Nearing the end of his set the band got into a groove with “You Put a Smell on Me” but it’ was a little late.

Toro y Moi sounded just like when I saw it a couple years back, but would probably have fit in better somewhere on Sunday. Near the end you could hear a DJ on the other stage playing snippets and raising the crowd, partly using soundcheck to hype for Public Enemy. When actually starting, Chuck D arrived on stage, introducing the whole support crew but saved Flavor Flav for last.

The hyperbolic performance took me back to a time before reality TV. Chuck D was outspoken (Fuck BET. Fuck urban radio. Fuck Viacom.) but used time well. Flavor was Flavor, and rambled for five minutes after his time is up. AraabMusik, waiting on the Tunnel Stage didn’t seem to mind: he gave an impressive, sample stuttering finger drumming MPC performance, after having a smoke with his crew.

At 6:01 I saw the guy who’d been throwing up earlier, walking arm in arm with a girl, both smiling and probably holding each other up.

Things started to blur, the time between switching stages seemed to decrease. Porter Robinson left no impression on me. Tycho sounded like a person making slow, thoughtful love to a synthesizer, but whereas it could have been a great lead-in to the xx, suffered from being between Robinson and a high energy performance from the Presets.

Speaking of which, I’ve had an aversion to the Presets (largely stemming from issues I have with Australian pop), but their performance, particularly “If I Know You” won me over. An awkward soundcheck delay for the following band, SBTRKT, meant the worst thing I could say about it is that it felt too short. Producer Aaron Jerome and singer Sampha played to their strengths, closing with “Wildfire” and having what seemed like the whole crowd leaning back and strutting like they were the sexiest, smoothest motherfuckers on the field.

Girl Talk opened with the awesome (and oft utilized) “International Player’s Anthem” by UGK before quickly triggering “Dancin’ in the Dark.” I hear the Boss at least once more before I leave twenty minutes later. I’m sure there was confetti.  

Day 2

Between openers Imperial Teen and Joanna Newsom, things were rather low-key, just all around relaxing, emotional, sunny music (including my returning favorites, Hospitality.) The crowd trickled in steadily and the field fills up with blankets faster than the day before. It’s a rather sedate afternoon, aside from one thing.

Who scheduled Ty Segall – noted garage thrasher, guitar mangler, and kick drum stomper – in that mid-afternoon slot? Love the dude, he sounded great, but he was not much appreciated outside the pit. The blanket crowd? It didn’t dig that. Particularly right between Youth Lagoon’s indie emo Bob Dylan and Gavin’s second cousin. That’s prime time nap time, especially when the first half of Joanna Newsom’s performance can’t be heard past the soundbooth. (Seriously, can Nap Time with Joanna Newsom be a real thing? On Nick Jr. after Yo Gabba Gabba?) The collective bombast of Los Campesinos picked things up – back to back with Segall would have been a hell of a way to wake up.

And bake up. Because Best Coast was playing with the sun going down. When this festival is at its best, the music and the environment seem to play into one another, and from there out, it basically went perfect. I haven’t seen the band since a sloppy show at Regency Ballroom with Wavves a few years back. The basic sound is still the same – beachy guitar pop with a stony edge – but has developed since then. Part of it’s lineup changes, as the new drummer is a lot tighter than before (and has easily the loudest snare of the weekend), part of it’s just improvement. Bethany Consentino apologized for singing a slow song, but there’ was no reason. She can definitely carry a ballad now.

Anticipation iwas high for Divine Fits, the “supergroup” featuring Dan Boeckner, Britt Daniels, and Sam Brown. Mainly I’m sure because a lot of fans were there for the Bay Area debut, but also because of the glorious, Hollywood matte painting skyline waiting for them behind the Tunnel Stage. As soon as they hit the chorus of “Baby Get Worse,” complete with the ’80s throwback keyboard, I was sold. Halfway through the set someone up front was apparently amped enough for Boeckner to ask, “Dude, are you on PCP?” Elsewhere in the crowd people pleasantly remarked, “Hey, this sounds like Spoon.”

Previously I’d thought the crowd seemed thicker due to all the blankets, but when I walked back towards the Bridge Stage, I realizes that simply way more people turned out for some combination of the last three bands.

M83 – returning to the Bay for the first time since their sold out Fillmore shows in the spring – opened with an alien, had lots of lasers, and played that one song. One thing I now know for sure: it is possible to play percussion while doing the running man.

The last act on the Tunnel Stage, Gossip was one of the only real surprises for me this festival. Punk diva Beth Ditto opened by welcoming the audience to comedy night, later commenting that the band hadn’t toured the US in three years, because the Euro is stronger. Crowded at the front of the stage were possibly the most intense fans I saw all weekend, clearly attached not only to Ditto’s vocal talent, but also her empowering, Aretha Franklin-esque sense of Pride. Pointing to the already crowded photo pit, Ditto said cruelly, “I wish there was a lot less space. And a lot more photographers.”

You couldn’t really have more photographers than there were in the pit at the end of the night for the xx, stopping in the Bay Area for the last festival date on their current tour, supporting the sophomore album Coexist.

It was clear that in their live performance the xx tries to capture the same sort of intimacy as their albums, with a stark and stripped down stage and singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim in the front. Either singer could do well alone, but together there’s an undeniable chemistry, like lovers in dialogue.

In their live show they definitely play into that, while producer Jamie XX stays literally more in the shadows; Sunday night he was up a level behind the pair, manning a series of controllers, cymbals, and drum pads to creates the fundamental beats that the guitars wash over. The resulting music takes its time – I’d call it shoegaze dance if that weren’t such an idiotic concept – and the xx did as well, opening with the enrapturing “Angels,” setting a sensual mood that stayed till then end.

Earlier Ditto had called them, obviously, the Sex Sex. Anyone who really felt that way – or just wanted to get to John Talabot and Jamie XX at Public Works – hopefully caught a cab, as the wait for shuttles off the island at the end of the night were upwards of an hour and a half. Note to self: work that factor into the TIMF strategy next year.

UK producer Max Cooper doesn’t want to see computers in tight skirts

Tony Robles
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Over the course of a steady stream of heady mixes and original compositions, Max Cooper has been gaining attention in the electronic music world – and not just for his Ph.D in computational biology. With an unconventional sensibility that’s like Philip Glass for the dance floor, Cooper brings a cinematic touch and classical influence to cerebral concepts. We took the opportunity – in advance of a performance at Public Works’s two-year anniversary party – to probe Cooper’s brain.

SFBG How did reworking composer Michael Nyman come about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFmAsoXkd2I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp34YvGAzEY

Max Cooper My best remix work seems to happen when I get hold of some real world audio, be it vocal, instrumental or other forms such as field recordings. Maybe because when I work on a remix, I’m always looking for some small element to grab me and give me a feeling or concept to run with – real audio seems to push me in an interesting direction,  and even better, the live orchestral works of a great composer like Michael Nyman. So we approached him with the idea and he gave me the green light to break his recordings down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khlLc7NNOok

SFBG On the subject of words, your EP and track titles are notoriously intellectual – playing into your biology background. Are the labels a marking of what inspired you or a key to unlocking a deeper (nerdier?) conceptual understanding of the music?

MC More often than not the titles relate to something embedded in the music – The Nyman Deconstruction and Reconstruction for example, literally describing my technical approach to each remix, one taking the original into tiny parts to form something new, the next trying to build the original back up from the deconstructed parts. When I post my tracks on Soundcloud I usually provide an explanation of the concept of each track and how it relates to the music and the title, so that people can delve in a little deeper if they’re interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByYt8IplubE

The links can often be more cryptic than literal though, for example the track I posted up today from my forthcoming EP on Traum is called “Gravity Well” – which describes an area of space warped by a large mass, in which bodies, such as us feel the strong pull of gravity. I wanted to make a track that envelops the listener in a heavy soft feeling. I think a piece of music could be made to fit almost any concept or object – I’d love to do a project where I ask people to submit any idea, and then I have to make pieces of music to represent each one.

SFBG Will computer simulation and modeling be used in the future to make beautiful pieces of music with little to no human intervention?

MC Either someone clever who knows a lot about music makes the program that follows the rules of their knowledge or someone writes software to analyze existing human music and recreate based on machine-learned rules. Either way, the programs are just an extension of us. But yes, given my disclaimer, no doubt computer simulations can make beautiful pieces of music, there are already computer-composed albums out there today which some people find beautiful (David Cope‘s Emily Howell for example).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOjV5eDXkyc

But will computers ever be able to consistently outperform human composers? I’m not sure. I imagine even if they did capture all the subtleties required, people would still choose human-composed music, as hearing music has a lot more to it than just analyzing a sound wave in our heads. Every piece of information relating to a piece of music is important in how it is heard–just look at the link between promotional budgets and popularity of current music. It’s pretty evident that some objective form of musical merit isn’t what’s important in making a no.1 chart smash. (And you can’t dress a computer up in a tight skirt and make it dance around with all its fit mates. I’m thinking it will be awhile before we get to that stage, whatever weirdness it might entail.)

Public Works Two-Year Anniversary Party with Max Cooper
Thu/4, 8pm, free with RSVP; $10 without
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
(415) 932-0955
www.publicsf.com

Live Shots: Wilco and Jonathan Richman at the Greek Theatre

Tony Robles
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What’s that thing that guitarists do in concert, where they get real close, face-to-face, and gaze down intently as if sizing up the other’s instrument? The sort of maneuver that the Traveling Wilburys probably did on almost every occasion, in a full circle formation? Does it serve a purpose? Timing perhaps?

While Wilco’s Nels Cline was having his standout moment Saturday, taking his time delivering his solo for “Impossible Germany” off of 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, the other guitarists were communing at center stage, giving each other a Wilbury. At the moment, it seemed that the show – the second of two nights at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre – was dangerously close to veering into jam band territory.

Luckily, as much as Wilco gets indulgent at times – going extra long on a solo or an outro – the songs are the opposite of improvised. That the band’s live performances so closely resemble the album versions is impressive, given how structured and varied the songs are on record. Only listen to recordings, and one could assume that a lot of the music is overdubbed, until seeing the band live and discovering that on tracks like “Misunderstood,” all that percussion is purely drummer Glenn Kotche, whose bass drum seemed extra powerful Saturday night.

Seeing Wilco more than once, there are things you come to expect. “Misunderstood” will have a shout along coda of potentially endless “Nothing”s. “Via Chicago” will see the band’s alternation between harmony and noise exaggerated to an extreme, with the guitarists in the front strumming and carrying on, seemingly oblivious to a blaring interjection of distorted noise created by the rest of the band behind. It would be tiresome if it wasn’t so well done.

At the same time, new material was given deserving attention and time in the set. Singer Jeff Tweedy started soft with a tender rendition of “One Sunday Morning,” the closing track from 2011’s The Whole Love, before building the intensity with the opening track from that same album, “Art of Almost.” It was an immediate showcase of the band’s range, and the live recreation of the shifting “Art of Almost” was particularly electric, complete with the synchronized pulsing strobes accompanying the driving, snare-cracking build that happens near the five minute mark.

Maybe the band just seemed particularly tight since I was comparatively sober. And apparently not alone. “The wind must be blowing out tonight, because I don’t smell nearly as much mari-joo-wanna tonight,” Jeff Tweedy said, adding “No, that’s good for me. I’m still high from last night.”

Elsewhere in his brief mic breaks Tweedy took the time to both thank the Bay Area crowd for “inventing concerts” and also praise the always endearing Jonathan Richman, who Tweedy called one of 12 American originals, along with Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, Louie Armstrong, Woody Guthrie and “the dude from Night Ranger.”

Richman opened the evening with perpetually stoic drummer Tommy Larkins. Tweedy is right, and it’s always great to see Richman, but given the opportunity, catch him at a smaller venue like the Makeout Room, where he seems to leach the life force and feed off the crowd in an intimate setting. Saturday night was sadly lacking in age-defying roundhouse kicks.

Evil genius

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Evil genius

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Mark Mothersbaugh wants to devolve. “I would love to be 20 right now. Kids now have cell phones that have more power than the Beatles had when they recorded their first album. You don’t have to go through the whole gauntlet of getting on a record company.” We’re looking back since Mothersbaugh’s band Devo is currently touring again with Blondie. The two bands haven’t played shows together since 1977, when Devo — on the East Coast for the first time, at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s — was an unsigned, pop avant-garde band fresh out of Akron, Ohio.

“As a kid, I’d wondered, how do you get on the other side of the moat? How do you get to be on the side with the castle that has the recording studio? It seemed so impossible when i was a kid and now it’s a non issue.” Mothersbaugh is speaking from his own “castle,” his Mutato Muzika production company on the Sunset Strip.

A multimedia artist, Mothersbaugh has made a solo career in soundtracks. Pee-wee’s Playhouse started the trajectory, and his work on Rugrats and most Wes Anderson films cemented a reputation as a go-to-guy for quirky, slightly off-center scores. (Rivaled only by Danny Elfman.) It’s a different lifestyle, being in the studio, chasing a lot of deadlines for film companies. His recent work includes 21 Jump Street, Safe, and Hotel Transylvania. Evaluating the success of a project, he seems to look to the box office. “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” he says, “was Lionsgate’s follow-up to The Hunger Games, so it wasn’t as big as their other one.”

If Mothersbaugh looks at the industry shrewdly, it’s for good reason. For much of the last two decades — while still performing at cherry picked festivals and events — Devo was on a recording hiatus. “Dealing with record companies, quite honestly, just became a burn out and made it not fun to be an artist,” Mothersbaugh says.

“At the time cassettes came out, I went to Wexler, the President of Warner Brothers and said, ‘I read something in Variety, it costs you guys more to make an audio cassette than to make an LP, but you deduct 35 percent of my royalties when you make a cassette instead of an LP, instead of letting me share the profit. Why is that?’ He just smiled and said ‘Because that’s the way it is.'”

It’s fairly telling about how labels treated musicians that this is coming from Mothersbaugh. Formed in the aftermath of the Kent State shooting — where the idealism of the ’60s suddenly devolved — Devo took a decidedly anti-punk approach, trying to change the system from within. Mothersbaugh recalls seeing Pachelbel’s Canon turned into a Burger King jingle and being inspired. “I just remember thinking that was evil genius at work. Rebellion isn’t how you change things. It’s through subversion in this country. And who did it best? Madison Avenue.” (Devo would in turn appropriate the BK jingle as lyrics to “Too Much Paranoia.”)

A band that wanted to be a brand, part of Devo’s strategy has been embracing commercialism and infecting it. “For us every time one of our songs got in a commercial we thought there was a chance that some kid would hear the song later on somewhere else and think, what is that song actually about?” An early plan (taking cues from Andy Warhol’s factory) was to send out groups of kids to perform. It actually came about in 2006, as Devo 2.0 on Walt Disney Records, but in the pre-MTV era, it just puzzled execs. “It was hard enough to talk them into letting us make our short films,” Mothersbaugh says.

Today Devo is re-energized. In addition to finding time to tour, it picked up where it left off with 2010’s return to formula, Something for Everybody, a candy-coated pop album with a cynical filling. The timing was right and everybody — the two sets of brothers that make up the band — wanted to make another record. “And probably more than anything, it was Alzheimer’s,” Mothersbaugh says. “We forgot what it was that made us stop.”

DEVO

With Blondie

Mon/10, 8pm, $39.50–$92.50

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 345-0900

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

Live Shots: Buraka Som Sistema at the Independent

Tony Robles
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How much space does a person need to dance? If you’ve been to a packed, over-sold massive EDM show lately, the answer could be zero, as being rooted in place and fist-pumpin’ seems to be all the rage. Really, though, if you’re at least going to move your feet then a little more room* is required.

Which is why I was relieved to find that the Independent, while crowded, wasn’t packed to the walls last night. Because Portugal’s Buraka Som Sistema likes to get down in a very specific way. In that way that Tribe liked to get down – devoted to the art of moving butts.


“If there’s one thing we like to do,” Kalaf Ângelo said during a brief pause, “we like to make people concentrate on the booty.” “No, not the booty,” fellow MC Andro Carvalho corrected, “the ass.” Accepting this distinction, Kalaf paraphrased Parliament: “Free your fucking mind and your ass will follow.”

The techno/kuduro sounds of Buraka Som Sistema may not have been instantly familiar – aside from momentary Lil’ Wayne samples – but following along was easy, as the trio at the front of the stage brought a level of hype (they were clearly having a good time) that was hard to resist.

Copping the dance moves, though, particularly attempting to duplicate the intense MC Karla Rodrigues – who at one point had sort of an extended ass shaking solo – was probably best left to the more experienced dancers with a generous amount of space.**

*A plot of floor with a diameter of 1.6 times the length of your shoulders is the minimum, if you want to be all specific about it.
** Seriously. You don’t want to kick someone in the face just because you really like the beat.

Retro future

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Retro future

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC The sad truth of dance music is that the party necessarily ends. Tailor a song too much for the floor tonight and it’s lifeless on the street or in the car tomorrow. Factor in the conflation between EDM and electronic music, and the latter can be all too often stuck in the shadow of the club. With his latest solo album, Salton Sea, Danish music producer Tomas Barfod steps out into new territory.

Barfod — a.k.a. Tomboy, also the drummer for electro-rock act WhoMadeWho — has worked on more projects than I could count: producing, running a label, booking Copenhagen’s Distortion festival, and lots of DJing. But tired of nonstop club performances, he recently decided to refocus and moved to LA “It was about getting away from doing gigs and focusing on studio work, that was the main goal of going away,” Barfod said. “But also to start from zero in a totally different — and awesome — environment.”

This environment allowed Barfod to work with Leeor Brown’s burgeoning label Friends of Friends, home of talented producers including Shlohmo, Salva, and Groundislava. “I’ve always had a vision about where I wanted my career to go, and almost always ended there, but never on the path that I expected,” Barfod says. Working with FoF has been an unexpected path. “It started when MySpace was almost dead. I hardly ever checked my messages, but I got one from Leeor. It took us a couple of years to really figure out how to work together, but when I moved to LA there was no question that we should do an album.”

The result is Salton Sea, named after the California lake area that’s now largely an abandoned wasteland. (Imagine the post-apocalyptic setting for a Fallout video game or Mad Max movie.) In the early 1900s, an engineering accident flooded the area and created a lake that was for a few decades rebranded as a utopian resort town.

One track on the album recalls this, consisting of a single repeated lyric: “everybody came to party.” An ecstatic house track? A hedonistic rager anthem? Barfod affects another mood entirely. The voice is robotic, with zero emotion, over a brooding four to the floor bass beat. The lyric is a statement that begs a question: and then what happened?

Saline levels rose. Water became polluted. Fish became infected with botulism and washed up on the beach. In the case of the Salton Sea, the past returned, the party was over, the people left.

Barfod describes himself as a “retro-romantic” for “places where nothing has been touched for ages. It doesn’t need to be pretty, as long as it tells a story about the past.” He was working on music and collecting pictures of abandoned places and things — ships being cut up in India at Alang Beach; empty offices in Detroit — so when Leeor told him about the Salton Sea it was a natural fit. “It’s a really special place,” Barfod says, “the lake is kind of timeless.”

Similarly timeless is Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic set against an environmental dystopia. Not wanting to be too influenced by new music, Barfod cites the film, particularly Vangelis’s soundtrack, as something he listened to a lot while making Salton Sea. Its stamp is there, beginning with the racing arpeggio and slow synth chord progressions that open the album on “D.S.O.Y.”

But the influence is beyond references. A video posted by Barfod shows visual designer Syd Mead discussing minute details like parking meters as he creates the futuristic world of Blade Runner. Key to the aesthetic is building on existing layers so that buildings use ceiling fans in an era of flying cars, and a geneticist can create artificial humans but wears coke bottle glasses. It’s a regressive sort of futurism, but ages surprisingly well.

Listening to Barfod there’s a sense of wanting to make something that sounds good now, but will last. “I think it’s very hard to make something timeless. However my way of trying is that I tend to use analog sounds in my drums and synths, and acoustic instruments so it sounds somewhat retro, but on the other hand I use a lot of computer generated effects that are new and almost futuristic. I don’t know if it makes my music timeless but I like it like that.”

The lesson of the Salton Sea is that the future can’t escape the past. The lesson of Blade Runner is that the future can’t escape the past. Tomas Barfod is in a new home, with new collaborators, and a new label, but at the same time it’s not a complete break. (Among the new voices on Salton Sea is his WhoMadeWho bandmate, Jeppe Kjellberg. When we exchanged emails Barfod was back in Europe for gigs.) While he’s moving into the future, Barfod has his eyes and ears on the past.

FORWARD WITH NITIN, TOMAS BARFOD, ADNAN SHARIF, AND MORE

Sat/21, 9pm, $15–$20

Public Works

161 Erie, SF (415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

Live Shots: US Air Guitar SF Regional

Tony Robles
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The US Air Guitar Championships held their SF Regionals at the Independent Saturday night. As such, a sold-out crowd of air-thusiests and the competitors’ family members gathered to see who would be crowned the SF champ and be given the opportunity to participate at Nationals in Denver.

As it was the final regional stop and only a matter of time before a 2012 Air Guitar World Champion would be crowned at the end-all event in scenic Oulu, Finland, “master of airemonies” Bjorn Turoque opened the night with a performance of “The Finland Countdown” (including the timely addition of a bit of “Zou Bisou Bisou”), accompanied by 2008’s World Champion, Hot Lixx Hulahan.

Hulahan would also judge the night’s competition – along with comedian Caitlin Gill and the Mr.T Experience’s “Dr. Frank” Portman – on the basis of technical merit, stage presence, and, of course, airness.

And the competition – full of requisite punny names, terribly great outfits, and ridiculous faces – was fierce, particularly the local rivalry between former SF regional champs Alex “Awesome” Koll and Matthew “Cold Steel Renegade” Feldstein.

As the event went on, it felt as though the faux-guitarists were going to attempt almost anything to up the take their performance to 11, particularly when Texan (and Jack Black/Norman Reedus love child) Taylor “Brock McRock” Fullbright precariously wobbled on a stage speaker only inches above my head.

Overcoming out-of-town disadvantage, NYC’s Justin “Seth Leibowitz” Hypes won the night, making a strong start with a heavy metal rendition of “Call Me Maybe” before seemingly levitating over the crowd in the final round. It was an impressive night, particularly if you followed Turoque’s advice at the start: “Don’t be sober, otherwise it’s just going to look kind of stupid.”

Live Shots: Quintron and Miss Pussycat at New Parish

Tony Robles
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Peer pressure is the key to any good party. “Don’t leave, don’t leave,” Miss Pussycat called out from the stage Friday night at New Parish, not so much begging or pleading, but in a tone that suggested the couple heading towards the door with their coats were crazy.

The pair turned, torn, and together mouthed something inaudible about the time, or BART, or something. “Maybe Sean could give you a ride,” Miss Pussycat said, seemingly picking a name at random and pointed out into the audience, adding with a deceptively innocent smile, “…wherever you’re going, and then you’ll become best friends.”

Whether convinced or just shamed, the two walked back into the crowd, Miss Pussycat gave a cheer, and the Leslie speaker connected to Qunitron’s organ began to spin up as he launched into the frenzied warble “Banana Beat.”

Essentially in their own genre of swamp boogie, the New Orleans-based Quintron and Miss Pussycat puts on what is basically more like a dance party than a conventional show. Sure, there’s a fair amount of spectacle. It opens with Miss Pussycat’s puppet show, a sort of DIY La Voyage dans la lune that’s enjoyable if you like the aesthetic of Pee-wee’s Playhouse and watching Adult Swim cartoons in a smoked-out stupor.

When it comes to playing music, Quintron always has something going on, using a number or inventions (like his light-operated drum machine) that no one else really does (or understands).

The closest comparison might by the B-52s. Partly because of the campy silliness, partly because of the style, and partly because the combined over-the-top male and female vocals. But mainly it’s the video for “Love Shack” that used to play on VH1 every other commercial break in the early ’90s. The one where everybody is strange, fun, and getting down. The one where they are drinking everything in sight, including the bath tub water. Yeah, it’s a similar kind of atmosphere at the Quintron and Miss Pussycat show.

In addition to crowd control and vocal duties, Miss Pussycat focuses her energy on stage by playing a pair of carefully accessorized maracas. Shaking them mostly, but occasionally tossing one into the air and catching it.

As the show went on, I was concerned by the increasing number of times she dropped them onto the floor. Until I factored in that, considering how many shots she had taken with members of the audience (including one whose shirt read “fuck you YOU fuckin’ fuck – Bourbon St., New Orleans”), she was doing just fine.

Opener
Compared to Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Dent May gave a mild performance, pulling almost entirely from his latest, Do Things and the “Eastover Wives” single. (As someone that never caught him live before, I’d hoped to hear a bit from his last album, although he did play “Meet Me in the Garden.”) The live show doesn’t quite have the understated suave playfulness of May’s records, although there’s a sense that a muted energy is still emerging.

At his best, the slow R&B ballad “Do Things” gave off an Enchantment Under the Sea feel, giving a couple in the audience a chance to slow dance. Moves like jumping off the kick drum at the very end of the set, however, were a bit too calculated.

Live Shots: The Mountain Goats at Swedish American Hall

Tony Robles
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2

“Oh god, I’m not remembering the third verse,” John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats said Wednesday at the Swedish American Hall, and continued to play familiar chords as someone from the second row shouted out the next line. His memory jogged, the singer finished “Isaiah 45:23” from 2009’s The Life of the World to Come and asked the woman he apparently recognized, “was that you?” She nodded, and he smiled, saying how great it was when someone who has been a fan from the beginning knows the words to one of the newer songs.

Are there casual fans of the Mountain Goats? “The odds that 149 of the 150 people in this room have heard this story are high,” Darnielle said, as he introduced a song. “Tell it anyway!” someone yelled. However much the singer may ramble and repeat himself at shows, the rapport he has with his audience allows it. Which is a good thing, since as much as I’d be hard pressed to say whether more time was spent talking or playing music, I couldn’t say which I enjoyed more.

Darnielle clearly loves the performance – at times he’ll hit a certain line and step away from the mic, struck with a huge grin on his face – but also takes a lot of pleasure in relating the back-stories and concepts of his songs, whether buying a desk with his father, character actor Lon Chaney Jr. losing his voice, or how Mario’s quest makes him better than Jesus. (“There you are, grabbing resurrections left and right.”)

The set for the night – the first of two at the Swedish American – came from all over the catalog, and included new song “Night Light” from a forthcoming album which Darnielle said was (like much of his oeuvre) “about mental illness, in big scare quotes, a useless term that’s used to exclude people.”

As a treat for the San Francisco audience, which Darnielle said has always treated The Mountain Goats well, he partially ad-libbed “Song for Greg Valentine,” about a wrestler who always fell back on a simple plan: “break legs, break legs, break legs.”

There was an encore in which Darnielle played “You Were Cool” – a “very special song” he intends never to release on record – and then the lights went up. Out in the street, a woman said to her friend, “He knows we’ll all be back tomorrow.”

-Pure Milk
-Dinu Lipatti’s Bones
-Stars Around Her
-Cotton
-Rotten Stinking Mouthpiece
-Ox Baker Triumphant
-Night Light
-Isaiah 45:23
-Alpha Gelida
-San Bernadino
-Black Pear Tree
-Thank You Mario, But Our Princess is in Another Castle
-Dilaudid
-Grendel’s Mother
-The Hot Garden Stomp
Encore
-Surrounded
-Mole
-You Were Cool
-Alpha Incipiens

Opener:
In contrast to the Mountain Goats, guitarist Dustin Wong was tight lipped, only opening his mouth briefly to sing without words (and to thank the room at the beginning and end of his set, wide-mouthed with beaming gratitude.) Best known for his work with Ponytail, Wong is in league with Merrill Garbus, Reggie Watts, and Owen Pallett, using looping pedals and technological tweaks to create a sound bigger than one person.

For most of the show, Wong was seated, using both feet to manipulate the pedals in a way that was often more reminiscent of a drummer than a traditional guitarist. The individual sounds were sometimes minimalist, slowly strumming a chord to its limit, or plucking on the bottom end to create tabla percussions, but as he built the music up, brick by brick, it grew into an impressive wall of sound. (Like an Eric Johnson made out of legos.)

Against a swirl of feedback Wong would occasion a few big, bassy parts, showing that individual notes still mattered. Tracklisting? Forget about it. From 2010’s seamless Infinite Love or the recent Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads? Can’t tell you if it was “Tea Tree Leaves Retreat” or “Triangle Train Stop.” The transitions consisted of adding or subtracting a layer, until Wong would shut everything off leaving the one piece he was currently playing, showing that he was still behind the controls.  

Live Shots: Spiritualized at the Fillmore

Tony Robles
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0

The guy working security at the Fillmore Wednesday night gave all the photographers in the pit the fingers. Two. Letting them know that rather than the usual three songs, they’d only be allowed to stay there and shoot the first couple. Coming from some bands this sort of announcement would be enough to send the photogs into a hurried panic, but as Spiritualized set the pace with “Hey Jane,” the almost nine-minute rocker that opens latest album Sweet Heart Sweet Light, it was clear the show wouldn’t be so rushed.

It also set a theme for the night. “Hey Jane, when you gonna die?” the band – with extra soul coming from a pair of backup singers – sang over and over. Death isn’t a new topic for Spiritualized, a group (largely Jason Pierce) that’s always combined psychedelic self-realization with gospel influenced calls for salvation. But with Sweet Heart Sweet Light, an album that came about as Pierce struggled with life threatening pneumonia and a degenerative liver disease, the topic seems to have a new gravity.

There was a fairly logical thread early in the set as the band transitioned across albums thorough “Lord Let It Rain on Me,” “Headin’ for the Top Now,” and “Walking With Jesus.” Midway through “Walking” – a bit of rhythm and blues accentuated with harmonica and a whirling organ worthy of a wildly enthusiastic church revival or Allman Brothers concert on Venus – the music got quieter, slower, and darker. Pierce’s vocals were in focus and as he sang “I know I’ve done wrong but I could have done worse.” The song dates back to the Spaceman 3 days, and the line now comes with a lot of weight.

At one point, relatively early in the set, during “Rated X” the person standing behind me told their friend, “This show is kind of boring me to death.” Minority opinion. Even after Spiritualized played their arguably most well-known song, “Ladies and Gentlemen We’re Floating in Space,” having already played for a reasonable amount of time (outside of jam band standards,) the sold out crowd was still thick.

The closer for the night was “Cop Shoot Cop.” It certainly runs on, from a strolling piano groove with light guitars and drums, to a raging wash of guitar and drums with light piano, effectively exhausting the audience’s attention span, so that when it was over the lights were ready to come on.

But for me the real goodbye was “So Long You Pretty Thing,” the final track off of the latest album. Not (just) because of my vanity, but because it – as tenderly beautiful as anything Pierce has put out – is also a reminder that every time you see a band could be the last.

Ugh, that’s depressing, but I guess that alternation between desperation and hope is pretty central to Spiritualized. So I’ll keep in mind the other line from “Walking With Jesus” – that Pierce has been singing for decades – “It’s a long, long time between now and my death.” Maybe it’s a mantra.

Set List:
Hey Jane
Lord Let It Rain On Me
Headin’ For The Top Now
Walking With Jesus
Oh Baby
Rated X
Born Never Asked
Electric Mainline
Soul On Fire
I Am What I Am
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Mary
Stay With Me
She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit)
Come Together
–Encore–
So Long You Pretty Thing
Cop Shoot Cop

Opener:
Whether her normal mode or to fit the bill, country singer Nikki Lane sang everything–songs about marriage, a move to California, or taking a walk of shame–with the same solemn tone, strumming her acoustic guitar. Her banter was a little more cheery. “I used to collect Fillmore posters,” the singer said. “I only stopped because some burned up in an apartment I had in L.A.” Then she smiled and added, “Now I have one with my name on it.”

Landlocked

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Landlocked

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Pavement. That’s all I really associate with Stockton. Personally, I’ve only been there once, few weeks back on my way to Yosemite, and I just drove through — 205 to 120 — stopping once for gas. So pavement all the way. Yet, despite the lack of waves, it’s home to Surf Club, a sunny four-piece that’s recently released its debut EP, Young Love, on Death Party Records.

“It’s not that bad living in Stockton,” says guitarist Eddie Zepeda. “You make the best of it.” Zepeda barely finished this optimistic assessment before bassist Fonso Robles offers a conflicting view: “Uh, it’s pretty bad.” Earlier in the week, Robles had been pulled out of his car, in the middle of the day, and held up at gunpoint. Before taking off, the robber cautioned, “Don’t let me catch you slippin’,” a combined threat and unsolicited piece of street advice.

Early last year, Justin Vallesteros of Craft Spells moved his project from Stockton to Seattle (where he was born), citing the former city’s number one placement on Forbes Magazine’s 2011 list of “America’s Most Miserable Cities” among the reasons. Surf Club’s Frankie Soto, then guitarist for Craft Spells, stayed behind in his own hometown. “It wasn’t really a hard decision. It was Justin’s band, so I was just like go ahead, dude,” Soto says.

There doesn’t appear to be bad blood between the groups: “Justin still comes over and we all jam,” Zepeda says, and a few days after the interview I run into Soto and Robles at the Great American Music Hall, where Craft Spells is opening for the Drums.

Still, after the split, Soto tells me he spent a few months depressed in his room, trying to find his own sound. When he re-emerged it was with Zepeda and Robles, as well as drummer Jose Medina, who the rest of the group insists is its most talented member. “He’s probably the best drummer and guitarist in the band, and he doesn’t even play guitar for us,” Soto says.

With individual experience in a variety of other bands, the four switched around on instruments, trying to find the right configuration. Medina went from bass to drums, Soto took on vocals in addition to guitar, and Robles — in a Tina Weymouth move — started learning bass from the beginning.

When the band first started coming together, Zepeda had been listening to a lot of surf rock and Beach Boys. It’s certainly an influence on the sound of material released so far, but they didn’t set out or plan to be a Dick Dale revival band.

“I can’t even swim,” Soto says, in a moment of irony recalling Brian Wilson’s fear of the water. “Of all the band names, Surf Club just seemed the easiest to hear.” (Robles angled for Faucet Water, presumably in reference to Stockton’s E. coli contamination warning a couple years back, and Youth Wave was another aquatic option.) “I don’t consider us a surf band. It’s just pop, and that’s what we focus on for all of our songs,” Soto asserts.

True to its name, Young Love is full of open-hearted lyrics with youthful longing. In addition to vocal harmonies, the biggest surf aspect is the tidal wave tempo, where bouncy guitar rhythms get carried by the super tight drumming, speedy fill, and shifts in patterns that reveal Medina’s background in metal and jazz. Soto sings with a light voice, and comes off as a bit of a tender softy. “I guess I’m still kind of shy,” he explains, “I took choir in high school, but it’s still kind of weird being in front of everyone with them paying attention to what you’re saying.”

Barely in their twenties, friends since fifth grade, a band for less than a year, with less than a dozen shows performed so far, Surf Club is clearly still figuring out how to make it work.

As Zepeda puts it, “we’re pretty young, we really don’t have any money, and we all have bills to pay.” That’s the point where people might give you advice, besides slippin’ or not slippin’. When they played with the Soft Pack a couple months back, singer Matt Lamkin gave them some. “He was telling us to move out of Stockton,” Soto says. But ignoring that kind of advice has worked so far.

SF Popfest Day 2

With Surf Club, Kids On A Crime Spree, Manatee, Dead Angle, Cruel Summer

Sat/26, 4pm, $10

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

www.theknockoutsf.com

Live Shots: The Drums and Craft Spells at Great American Music Hall

Tony Robles
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“Let’s just have a good time tonight,” said Jonny Pierce, the singer of the Drums, one song into a sold-out show at the Great American Music Hall on Saturday. He paused briefly to let the applause fill an appropriate amount of space and added, “This next song is about a dead person.”

There may have been some intentional, practiced irony at play, but the space between those two statements is the key to everything that is great about the Drums. Sure, Pierce has one of the most perfect, near angelic voices in pop music – witness enraptured fans, hands out toward the stage, looking for a hold – but more importantly, he also has one of the best deadpans.

When he’s performing, his facial expressions vary more in intensity than emotion. If you catch him smiling, it’s inward. Happy? Sad? Blah. When the band is playing bright, uptempo, yet often melancholic music, and the lyrics send conflicting cues on how to feel, the singer seems careful to pivot just right, not tip his hand.

After singing “Book of Revelation” off of the recent album Portamento, which includes the lines “I’ve seen the world and there’s no Heaven and no Hell” and “I believe when we die we die, so let me love you tonight,” Pierce said, “That last song was really important to me, so to hear you guys singing that…thank you.”

On stage, The Drums* won’t tell you how to feel about typical pop topics like love and heartbreak anymore than less typical ones like, say, being an atheist and having an existential crisis, but Pierce is seemingly happy to show what you can do in the mean time, as he’s otherwise constantly moving about the stage, calmly dancing with his own confusion.

Openers: Part Time recalled a less drugged out (or just more doobied) version of Ariel Pink, but that may have just been the lead singer’s technicolor dream coat. Also on the style watch, the drummer looked like one of Biff’s lackeys in Back to the Future (but that may have just been the glasses.)

Craft Spells’ Justin Paul Vallesteros gave a shout out to Stockton, where he started the band before relocating to Seattle. Someone in the crowd said he’d “discovered the band last year, and it turned out to be the perfect summer soundtrack.” Based on the way that the intro to “After the Moment” – from last year’s “Idle Labor” – was recognized with cheers, he wasn’t the only one that feeling that way. And given how well new tracks “Warmth” and “Still Left With Me” were live, it could be the soundtrack for this summer as well.

*Truth is the whole band has deadpan solidarity, particularly co-founder Jacob Graham who, whether playing keys or conducting a bank of analog synth – as he did for the encore opener “Searching for Heaven” – has an ever-present, captivating stillness.

Live Shots: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Lumerians, Gramatik at 1015 Folsom

Tony Robles
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Fans of intentionally reclusive rock group Black Moth Super Rainbow had the opportunity to catch the Pittsburgh, Pa.-based band at 1015 Folsom on Friday. The code-named members initially struggled in the performance, partly distracted by projector technical difficulties, but also trying to overcome an awkward lineup.

The best shows I’ve seen at at 1015 and conjoined sister club 103 Harriet have made good use of the main room’s set-up, alternating between the stage on one side of the room and the DJ booth on the other, keeping the wait time between acts to a minimum. That sort of seamless club flow is pretty essential for jockeys and electronic acts, but not always possible with bands. Since the lineup for the night was mixed and the booth may have been needed for sound engineers, a little lag for set-up was forgivable.*

But what wasn’t so forgivable, was the placement of Zackey Force Funk. Splitting time between tuning up tracks on his laptop and emcee-ing, ZFF’s performance went down like sitting on a friend’s couch while they share their latest iTunes downloads – Flying Lotus, Lazer Sword, Jonwanye – and proceed to mime along and drink Heineken.

If it has a place, it’s as an extremely chill warm-up or as part of a larger group, but not following two bands like Pictorials and Lumerians. Especially since the latter – with a percussive kineticism and vibrant psych tint – could have been a fine lead in to the main act.

As its set progressed, BMSR, with a somewhat lackadaisical air, built gradually into a rhythm. It never strayed too far from subdued, vocoded vocals against consistent, slow crashing beats, peaking on the oddly inviting “Sun Lips” from Dandelion Gum.

It seemed to do the job for the crowd, manifesting in extremely calm mosh pits and a few stage divers, one of whom – ouch – went straight to the floor. (Remember to look before you leap.)

I’d been curious what Gramatik would do to close out the night. The producer’s latest EP on Pretty Lights Music, #digitalfreedom, features an expansive sound, complete with forays into Bassnectar-like ADHD beats, but nothing that I imagined gelling with BMSR.

There was little sense of urgency, but Gramatik, accompanied by a guitarist, seemed to essentially disregard what came before, getting into a hard set that was light on overused drops and heavy on soul hooks. It was probably the best plan. The crowd had thinned between sets, and the bar was closed by that point, but as the set went on, the dancers, who may have been waiting all along, trickled back into the main room.

*No machine is 100% efficient, but some of the heat, otherwise lost, can still be used to do work.

Live Shots: Childish Gambino and Danny Brown at the Fox

Tony Robles
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0

It can be hard to take comedians and comic actors seriously as musicians. Particularly when you consider the questions posed by earlier models. Did Eddie Murphy’s girl really want to party all the time? (And if so, why didn’t he?)

In his last few albums as Childish Gambino, Donald Glover, the writer-actor best known for portraying lovable goof Troy Barnes on NBC’s cult sitcom Community, has combated the typical skepticism with a self-aware, post-Kanye confessional style of hip-hop. His show at the Fox in Oakland last Thursday made it clear that no matter how funny Childish Gambino’s lyrics are, as a performer, he’s serious.

Glover’s opener for the night was Detroit’s Danny Brown, whose latest release on Fool’s Gold Records, XXX, has been billed as an obscene concept album. It’s not the most thought-out idea, though, and lacking the inventiveness of concepts like Deltron 3030, Madvillainy, or Dr. Octagonecologyst, it seems more of an excuse to revive a 2 Live Crew Style of hedonism. (A common topic for Brown is eating pussy, and the MC, amusingly, has a habit of sticking his tongue out for emphasis.)

There’s definitely a perverse humor at work, but with lyrics like “Fuck bitches like AIDS don’t exist, I’m a young ruthless nigga on some Eazy-E shit,” your mileage may vary.

As with OFWGKTA, it can be hard to tell where the joke begins and ends, and as Brown’s DJ repeatedly played a “Swag!” vocal sample, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was done ironically. But Brown’s voice – like a strange hybrid of Dr. Octagon and Larry Blackmon – has a unique trill to it and an appealing cadence, and from the start of his set there were noticeably quite a few people in the front row mouthing along and shaking the floor boards like they didn’t give a fuck.*

Brown finished his set noticeably tired, which is understandable, since the Fox is a large venue for a solo rapper to energize. At one point I had the same concern with Childish Gambino, but Glover was backed by an impressive band.**

It wasn’t a surprise, as my expectation had been primed from videos of the first week of Coachella, where Glover gave a lively, physical performance despite wearing a large black boot on one leg, stemming from a fractured foot that caused him to cancel performances earlier in the year.

At the Fox there was no boot in sight, and Glover appeared entirely unburdened, bounding around the stage, breaking out a silly step between verses, and generally hyping the crowd up as he split his time performing tracks mainly from last year’s Camp and 2010’s Cul-de-sac, with a confidence that seemed well beyond the few tours he had under his belt.

Combined with a slick stage production – consisting of some minimal pup-tent/tree decorations and well timed, follow-along visuals – Glover seemed entirely in control of the show, which managed to come off as intimate and sincere. If it is a joke, I get it.

Setlist:
-Outside
-Fire Fly
-Freaks and Geeks
-Do Ya Like
-Backpackers
-I’m On It
-I Be On That
-Rolling in the Deep (Adele cover/John Legend version)
-All The Shine
-LES
-Heartbeat
-You See Me
-Bonfire
-Sunrise
Encore
(Freestyles)
-That Power
-Lights Turned On

*Although, one of the guys that seemed to know all the lyrics was also wearing a Davy Crockett coonskin cap. So there’s that.
**One of the members – alternating between keys, guitar, and violin – looked particularly familiar, until I recognized him as the impressively talented Ray Suen, who performed with the Flaming Lips at Bimbo’s.

Live Shots: Howler and the Static Jacks at Hemlock

Tony Robles
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0

Minneapolis’s Howler paused midway between playing songs from its debut album, America Give Up, to take requests from the audience at the Hemlock Tavern Saturday night. There were a few out of nowhere shout-outs, like “White Rabbit,” but the majority of the suggestions were titles by the Strokes.

On hearing the two bands it’s an obvious comparison, although for Howler perhaps an increasingly tiresome one, especially since singer Jordan Gatesmith seemed bored with the selections and quickly returned to the regularly scheduled program, saying “We’ll just play it safe tonight.”

The irony, though, was that if someone wanted to hear the Strokes’ “The Modern Age,” Howler’s opening track of the night, “Wailing (Making Out)”, already came pretty damn close. These comparisons should be taken as complimentary, for as much as the band seems to be borrowing at this still early in its career — and I also pick up heavy touches of the Replacements* — its doing it well, whether in the restrained guitar work or Gatesmith’s deeply droll, resonant voice, that carries each song with crystal clear lyrics, even during a live performance.

Which wasn’t the case with New Jersey’s the Static Jacks, which, despite actually being the most energetic band of the night, seemed to have it directed in strange directions. I’d been a little puzzled watching the band set-up, spending as much time getting its gear in order as arranging some cardboard art with female caricatures, only to knock the pieces down and step on them once the performance began.

It was only later on that I found out the posters had some actual function, as the singer would occasionally pick up a board — with the word “Follow”, coinciding with the song “Into the Sun,” for instance — to apparently subtitle and highlight some generally muddled and indistinct vocals. 

*My request for “Bastards of Young” was also ignored.

Live Shots: Bonaparte at Public Works

Tony Robles
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0

I felt a little bad about leaving one of my friends by himself, while I squeezed around snapping photos of Berlin’s Bonaparte last night at Public Works. He lives in Concord, works in a meat department, likes hunting and riding dirtbikes. Which is to say, our interests don’t necessarily overlap. He refers to the last show I took him to – Bear in Heaven at Rickshaw Stop – as “the Ron Burgandy band,” for obvious reasons that continue to elude me.

Bringing him to Bonaparte was partly a joke, in the same way we went to that vegan soul food restaurant (Ed. note – Souley Vegan) but I didn’t tell him until the last minute. Just to get a reaction. After Bonaparte’s first few songs I found him in the center of the crowd and checked in. “It’s kind of weird,” he said.

As far as understatements go, that one was adorably charming. While Bonaparte’s music is relatively straightforward, its performance is not. To start the show, Tobias Jundt ambled around the crowd in Public Works, wearing a faux-tribal pygmy* headdress straight off a SBTRKT album cover, eventually picking up his guitar as if it were a Coca-Cola bottle that fell from the sky or some other entirely foreign object.

When it came time to speak, he yelled one of the band’s catch phrases into the mic: “Are you ready to party with the Bone-a-party!” The crowd cheered, but not loud enough, and he gave it a few more shots. There was no real warm up band, so the cliche “I can’t hear you!” routine was probably appropriate, but in any case, that was the only contrivance of the night, as the band proceeded to follow surprise with shock throughout its set, supported by a revolving cast of characters including…well…that’s what pictures are for (see above gallery).

But don’t be misled, the theatrics weren’t there to distract from subpar music. These punks create eclectic, danceable rock that’s immediately catchy, particularly because Jundt has an ability to fuse familiar concepts with a fresh edge. “I wanna shoot my ego down,” he sang, and I copied those lyrics on paper, followed by the word “cover,” assuming it to be just that. But as far as I can tell (and I may be wrong,) the familiarity is just liberal bits of Hendrix and Wingfield, with some Freud slipped in to make an original classic.

The insane eye candy on stage (popping marshmallows, lollipops, and fruit into audience members’ mouths, stage diving unannounced, and inventing all sorts of new fetishes) during the show was mostly an extremely appreciated bonus.

On “Fly a Plane Into Me” – a desperately romantic kamikaze come-on of a song – the band kept the energy level way, way up, unaccompanied by the additional clowning, vamping circus members. Although, there probably wasn’t anything special or austere about that tune; it’s more likely that was an opportune time for rest of the crew to switch costumes, get the electrical tape pasties just right, and refill their mouths with fake blood.

*It wasn’t until after the show, seeing the diminutive rocker off stage, that the Napoleon connection – at least height-wise – made sense.

Success won’t jinx Sharon Van Etten’s ability to write sad love songs

Tony Robles
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0

Ed. note – Ahead of Sharon Van Etten’s long-sold out show in SF this week, Ryan Prendiville had the chance to catch up with the rising indie folk singer-songwriter (who recently released critically lauded third album ‘Tramp’) to discuss her songwriting process, lessons of South by Southwest pasts, and the influence of Nick Cave:

SFBG: How many shows are you playing at SXSW?

Sharon Van Etten: Just two. Last year we did eight in three days. It was really stupid. I burnt out and lost my voice for three days when we had just started a tour. I decided this year it just wasn’t worth it.

SFBG: You’re going to be touring nonstop for probably the rest of the year, are you not too worried about burning out?

SVE: I have to worry about burning out. These songs are more intense vocally with more band members, which I’ll still have to sing over. If the drummer loses his voice it’s one thing, but if I lose my voice we can’t really play. Before I just played as many shows as I could whereas now I realize that five in a row is kind of the max before we all start losing our minds.

SFBG: Are you thinking more of the long-term now?

SVE: I’m realizing that if I can learn how to perform in a healthy way, I’ll be able to do this for a long time. I know it sounds kind of adult or something. But for every record, if you really want people to hear it, you have a responsibility to tour at least a year, cover as much ground as you can, and play the best show that you can everyday. So you should take care of yourself. You’ve got to have fun, of course.

SFBG: Since your music is generally pretty sad, is there any danger, with your career going well and having fun, of hurting your ability to make similar music?

SVE: Some people are concerned that I’m going to start writing happy songs now that I’m doing well. The whole joke is, if you’re not miserable you’re not going to write as well. I’m not too worried about that. If I write differently, I write differently. I’m pretty at peace and proud of what I’m writing. I don’t want to jinx myself and say that people will like it just as much, but you don’t have to be miserable or tortured to record or be successful. So far most of my songs have been written in intense periods where I’ve been going through a hard time, but I think I can write songs just as well when I’m happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1OBHLTaHnU

SFBG: There’s a bit of a stereotype that female musicians are often more personal, writing from their own life experience, than their male counterparts. Obviously a great aspect when it’s true, but can downplay a creative aspect.

SVE: Writing more emotional songs doesn’t makes a person less creative. I think a lot of men avoid it while women tackle it, and that’s just a difference in genders. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just how most people are. Men are often more storytellers and detach themselves from an actual event, but I don’t think that makes them not passionate. I’d like to learn to be more of a storyteller, it just doesn’t come naturally to me right now. I’ve been listening to a lot of Nick Cave, and he’s really, really good at that. It makes me want to try a different way of writing next time.

SFBG: Are you working on new material while you’re touring, or do you kind of give yourself a mental break?

SVE: I’m always kind of writing, I just don’t know what it will turn into. I have different side projects that I’m working on but who knows if they’ll fuse together into something someday. I have piano music. I have electronic music. I have really minimal stuff but I also want to write more rock songs. Right now i have a lot of ideas, but can’t call them songs yet.

Sharon Van Etten
With the War on Drugs
Weds/21, 8 p.m., sold out
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
www.theindependentsf.com

Get ready for Bonaparte

Tony Robles
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0
Get ready for Bonaparte

So let’s just pretend I made a clever joke about Napoleon invading and just skip to the point: Bonaparte, an electro rock’n’roll circus led by an inspired madman, is hitting San Francisco for the first time next week (after playing SXSW and Dim Mak Studios in LA).

A collective of musicians, designers, dancers, and freaks out of Berlin, Bonaparte has toured throughout Europe, Russia and Australia, gaining a reputation forits out-of-control live show. The only constant member is the black-eyed Swiss songwriter Tobias Jundt, but if videos are any indication the other members perform with a constant theatrical, trashy punk energy that proves they’re either committed or should be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K269Y6t4cnI

There’s no better introduction to the band than “3 Minutes in the Mind of Bonaparte,” which, appropriately, consists of Jundt asking-answering a stream-of-consciousness series of questions, free associating everyone from Bobby Layne/Mickey Mantle (“If I’d have known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself, my son.”) to Richard David Precht (“Who am I?  –  And if yes, how many?”), and maybe even himself (“If nothing lasts forever, say, can I be nothing?”).

Jundt almost perfectly captures the fun part of being in the throes of a schizo existential crisis, while backing up what he asserts on the vaudeville strutting “Rave Rave Rave” where he says “Words are my main obsession” – the man knows how to turn a phrase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOFoButqan0

That video comes from the band’s DVD, 0110111 – Quantum Physics & A Horseshoe, a showcase  of not only Bonaparte’s musical side, but its collective ability to create a madcap live experience, aided by diva dancers and wildly inventive costumes that cross the sacrilegious with mundane, profane with fantastic, and baroque with straight broke.

Take, for example, the best tribute to technological dependency Devo never wrote, “Computer in Love.” While Jundt sings from the perspective of a PC – creepy, but apt lyrics like “you stare at me when you touch yourself” and “I’m your glory hole to the universe” – topless, leotard-ed, electrical-tape pastied dirty dancers writhe around with monitor heads.

It’s a bizarrely licentious display that could be termed surreal if the visual metaphor wasn’t also so god-damned dead-on. Whenever the band hits on a political or artistic agenda (and with “Anti Anti” and “Boycott Everything” they come close to manifesting a manifesto), it’s secondary. “You say Dada, I say it rhymes!” Jundt sings. Avowed hedonists, the primary goal is putting on a good show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fh2BUE9hsw

Of course, those videos feature a band in its home city, in front of a big audience of enthralled fans, and it wouldn’t be fair to expect that scale on Bonaparte’s first outing by the Bay. Accordingly, the band issues the following warning on its tour schedule:
 
“if you book us you DON’T really get 21 people and 12 disturbed animals and a real elephant because you wouldn’t be ready for that, we’d need a house, a chef de cuisine, a gardener, a horse whisperer, a doctor, and a pool – in short an entire hotel…And also a huge old Rokoko theater to perform in. Since you don’t have all of that… what you DO get is: a show with plus/minus 9 people from the collective risking their private and public lifes for you, dressed as animals or wurst and a loud concert.”

Still, sounds like a deal. Here’s one last video, recorded on a cell phone a couple days ago in NYC, to give you an idea of what they’re currently working with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM85GwG0xgg

Bonaparte
With 2 Men Will Move You, Stay Gold DJs Rapid Fire and Pink Lightning
Wed/21, 9 p.m., $10
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
(415) 932-0955
www.publicsf.com

EMA deals with a tough crowd at Rickshaw Stop

Tony Robles
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EMA deals with a tough crowd at Rickshaw Stop

No one likes to be shushed. The most intense shushing I ever endured was at the Independent, during an Owen Pallett show. I was talking to a friend as the lights went down, when the woman standing in front of me turned around, stuck her finger closer to my mouth than hers, and said “shush.” Maybe it was because Pallett is associated with Arcade Fire and plays violin – two things that demand musical respect, right? – but considering that the dude hadn’t even picked up his instrument yet, and we were standing back under the balcony, I thought the least this stranger could do was let a guy finish his thought. That said, I would have preferred all the preempting, anal shushers in the world to the shitheads at the EMA show last night.

The girl to my right, perched on a speaker with her feet on the stage, who kept hitting on guys under the guise of insisting on telling them that what they were about to see, seeing, saw, was “the most amazing thing ever.” Adoration and high praise that did not stop her from constantly asking to borrow camera phones to record videos, until the point that they demanded them back. (“Can I just email myself the video?” ”Uh, sure.” “OK. How do I do that?”).

Nor did it stop this super-fan, who works in advertising (of course) from shouting nonstop requests for “Hearts on Fire,” which EMA’s Erika M. Anderson found as perplexing as I did. “Do you mean ‘Soul on Fire’?” Anderson asked. “No, Hearts on Fire!” “Uh, I don’t know that one.” This, combined with a bro calling out “Reptar! Reptar!*” nonstop, caused Anderson to reply, “I think you guys have the wrong night.” When the brave Popscene cameraman tried to shush (in this case deservedly, right near the front of stage and throughout the whole performance) said bro’s nonstop yammer, his response was, “I’m sorry, man.” [Pause for a beat]. “Except that I’m not.”

Now EMA doesn’t exactly demand respect, and isn’t dainty.** (Quote: “I’m a lady on stage, so I want to spit and burp.”) She does have a violin player, who did open the set with that relatively austere instrument, although here less a classical influence than an experiment in electric noise, like ringing feedback. But considering that so much of her album from last year, Past Life Martyred Saints – an experiment in lo-fi versus hi-fi – involves contrasting quiet, soft moments with loud, harsh ones (particularly on songs “The Grey Ship” and “Marked”) EMA does occasionally seem to suggest that you might want to shut the fuck up. Anderson is originally from South Dakota, and I don’t usually interpret the line “fuck California” in a straightforward, hostile manner, but when she got to it at the end of her set, it was a sentiment I was ready to get behind. No one likes to be shushed, but some people deserve it.

Setlist:
-Stand
-The Grey Ship
-Anteroom
-Marked
-Butterfly
-Angelo
-Milkman
-Soul on Fire
-Red Star
-California

*Reptar was the band that was supposed to open the night, but whose van broke down en route from L.A., leaving the crowd at Popscene stranded with the DJ and likely drinking extra while waiting for something to entertain them on stage.

**I wish you could see her red, “hipster haircut” (compliments of Portland, where “the dream of 2003 is alive”) or her extra large Looney Tunes Taz t-shirt, but camera fail.

Noise Pop Roundup 3: Flaming Lips, Veronica Falls, Matthew Dear, Archers of Loaf

Tony Robles
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1

MVP for Noise Pop coverage this year goes to Ryan Prendiville. See below to find out why – Ed.

TUESDAY: The Flaming Lips at Bimbo’s

Time, for the Flaming Lips, is important. Because as a band — one that has been through all sorts of well documented shit — the Flaming Lips know the value of time (particularly borrowed) and have made it their work to not just create music but get into the complete manufacture of moments. Which is a tricky business, because moments are bastards.

Take all the pictures you want of the blinding lights, the beautiful costumed kids, the confetti cannons or all the other individual weapons that the Flaming Lips use to wage musical psychedelic war on time, and the moment still might not fit in a shutter, no matter how you slice a second. Full review here.

WEDNESDAY: Grimes, Born Gold, oOoOO, and Yalls at Rickshaw Stop

Cecil Frena described the lineup at Rickshaw Stop last night simply as “weird music.” He should know. Performing with his synth-fueled electronic dance trio, Born Gold (formerly Gobble Gobble,) Frena stood in front of a camera-slash-iPad pulpit, singing and conducting a third of the group’s sound via a motion-captured, clearly homemade, Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation era-esque military jacket. Full review here.

THURSDAY: Surf Club and FIDLAR at Cafe Du Nord, New Diplomat and Big Black Delta at Rickshaw Stop

“This song is called ‘Stoked and Broke,’” the band’s most talkative, spastic member introduced the first song, explaining, “because we’re stoked and broke.” What followed was a frenetic set of punk fueled, stripped down rock. With a rollicking tightness that reminded me of Thee Oh Sees, FIDLAR shot along, keeping the energy up by alternating singers. Full review here.

I left Cafe Du Nord after FIDLAR, hoping to catch at least some of Big Black Delta at the Rickshaw Stop. When I arrived another band was just starting. A local five piece, New Diplomat reminds me of the kind of groups that dominated the alternative rock airwaves in the late ’90s after grunge and pop-punk stopped being exciting. Since it was about the same time period when I stopped listening to the radio, and New Diplomat’s spiky haired singer had that emo/screamo edge that I have a hard time tolerating, it makes sense that the band put me off.

But then when Jonathan Bates, a.k.a. Big Black Delta started to perform, and I felt almost nothing, a more alarming possibility came to mind: maybe I’m burnt out. On record, I’ve liked what I’ve heard of Big Black Delta’s droned, vocally distorted hard electronic tracks. And performance-wise, Bates kept things appropriately dark, moody, and atmospheric, bumping up the sound with two drummers, each banging away on their side of the stage for some heavy hitting percussion. That whole stereo kit thing is usually the easy way to pull me in, but in this case all I could do was recognize it with cheap approval. Between New Diplomat and Big Black Delta the crowd thinned out a bit, and I leave early too, hoping to reset my baseline by the next day.

FRIDAY: Brilliant Colors, Bleached, and Veronica Falls at Rickshaw Stop, Matthew Dear at Public Works

My plan for the night was to see Veronica Falls at Brick and Mortar, and then hopefully run across the street to catch Matthew Dear at Public Works. But when I showed up at Brick and Mortar, the man at the door told me I had the wrong venue, their Noise Pop show was the night before. I apologized and, checking my schedule, saw that I was indeed an idiot. So much for that plan, at least I wore a coat.

The show was underway at Rickshaw. I didn’t know any of the bands opening for Veronica Falls. The androgynous singer onstage had a bowl cut and was wearing a collared button up that was the most over-sized fashion piece since Stop Making Sense. I couldn’t make out the words, but it was a nice voice – a little deep and dreamy – that mixed in with some catchy guitar riffs. The band was playing melodic pop, and having fun by all appearances. I found out later they are SF’s Brilliant Colors.

The next band, Bleached, had a sound that reminded of the Dum Dum Girls with a lo-fi punk edge. Two of the girls are blondes and the other two aren’t even girls. Bleached was more energetic on stage than Brilliant Colors, but I found their songs didn’t really hook me in. (It also didn’t help that there was a camera crew onstage with them.) The group harmonized a lot and decently, but too often spent a lot of time singing vowels (oohs, ahhs, and ohhs), which started to wear on me. They played a Ramones cover. I think it’s “When I Was Young.”

Still, it was good lineup leading into Veronica Falls, a UK band that has a retro pop sound as well. VF’s sound live was as clean and distinctive as it is on record, with nice guitar work over a signature drum sound that has an ever-present jangle that’s accomplished by little more than taping a tambourine to the floor tom. The band’s vocal style has some nice contrast, between Roxanne Clifford’s usual lead with backing from James Hoare and Patrick Doyle, but really I think it’s its structure and a Belle and Sebastian-like sense of lyrical imagery on songs like “Stephen” or “Bad Feeling” that sets the group apart.

So much so that on “Crimson and Clover”-referencing song, “Come on Over” VF can bust out some oohs and ohhs without it seeming like a shortcut. It was a good set, with a lot of new material as well, for the band that canceled its earlier SF debut due to visa issues. If anything, Veronica Falls was overly apologetic, drummer Patrick politely stated before the encore, “I know I keep saying it, and I feel like a bit of a dick saying it, but thanks.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE6BFAwzwLU

It was before midnight when Veronica Falls finished, so I hurried to Public Works, where they were still setting the stage. While waiting for Matthew Dear to come on, however, I had the misfortune of standing in front of someone explaining to everyone within earshot how terrible the venue was, how it was a warehouse that they just put equipment in but never fixed up, how if she just got a warehouse for a weekend she could fix it up nicer, how there was a bare two-by-four nailed to the beam above the stage for no apparent reason, how they charged club prices but it was “not really a club.” (Sort of the reason I actually like it, that last part).

When Matthew Dear started performing, with a live band – his second night with the lineup – it all sounded more loud and abrasive than I had expected. I think my attitude, and my tired ears had been switched to bitch mode by the girl behind me. The show was sweaty and chaotic, it being a weekend late night at Noise Pop, but I called it a night while it was still going on.

SATURDAY: Noise Pop Culture Club at Public Works, Built Like Alaska, Hospitality, The Big Sleep, and Archers of Loaf at Great American Music Hall

This would be my last day of Noise Pop, I was convinced. As much as I would’ve liked to, I started the day knowing that I would not make it to Sunday’s Dodos show. Between my day job, covering Noise Pop, and pet-sitting three cats (who operate in a binary of meowing or vomiting) back in the East Bay, I may have taken on too much last week. That said, somehow, Saturday at noon I found myself back at Public Works, for the Noise Pop Culture Club, a six-hour-long block of workshops, screenings, interviews, performances, and something called the Seagate Remix Lounge that I didn’t really understand.

When I got to PW they were screening selections of Petites Planètes, another musical documentary series by the guy behind the Take-Away Shows on YouTube. The videos were cool, but the director, Vincent Moon, wasn’t there for the Q&A. Something about being a “nomad.” Dude bailed. Disappointing. Since I was sitting 20 feet from a bartender with nothing to do, I decided to get a drink, but the shaky feeling in my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t had the right ratio of solid food to alcohol in my diet last week. Some spicy noodles from the food truck outside created a buffer on which I began to add of few layers of bourbon, while watching the restored, color version of Méliès A Trip to the Moon, with soundtrack by AIR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nx8hVGzSO4

The main plan was to see Zigaboo Modeliste of the Meters play the drums. Modeliste was there as part of a Q&A with the makers of Re:Generation Music Project, a documentary-slash-Hyundai promotion in which he appeared. The clips made the recently released film (which apparently no one in the audience had seen) seem interesting, if only for scenes with whipper snapper EDM artists like Skrillex and Pretty Lights attempting to work with established musicians in other genres, awkwardly. At the end Modeliste played the drums for a bit, and the snare was so loud that each time he smacked it everyone in the audience blinked. A walk outside in the sun and a Bloody Mary later, I returned for a how-to session on using Ableton, and realized I am un-Able ton stay awake.

Clearly, when I made it to the Great American Music Hall, I was in bad shape. Nearly asleep on my feet, with quite a bit of time to go, and not thinking clearly, I made a bad strategic move that combines Red Bull and vodka, two things I don’t like anymore together than apart. When the first band, Built Like Alaska went onstage, I was in a fairly vile mood, my head hanging limp over the balcony while I wrote down petty things about the drummer that I didn’t like: his hat (a fedora indoors) his shirt (vintage Mickey Mouse) his facial hair (Tom Selleck meets Mario Brothers). All this, when his consistently irregular drumming was actually my favorite part of the band who I really had no problem with. Clearly, I was hating hard that night.

Until the next band, Hospitality played. I’d never heard Hospitality before – it was the band’s first time playing in San Francisco – but the sound pulled me in almost immediately, led by the charming, identifiable lilt in guitarist and lead singer Amber Papini’s voice. The songs were light and bouncy, and Papini performed with a slight disaffected edge, always looking up and off to something above the crowd, making strange faces and rolling her eyes at no one in particular. When I got home later, I went online almost immediately to listen to its album and find the song “Friends of Friends.”

Likewise, I tried to find music from the final opener, the Big Sleep, but that’s more of a band to see in concert form, as the trio’s main attraction is a Jack White-like guitarist, who has a lively style of playing and a way of alternating his sound between growling and loud to Jesus Christ, where did I put my ear plugs, I can feel my cochlear hair cells dying.

Now I’m not the biggest Archers of Loaf fan – the band’s actually only been on my radar since a number of high profile reissues last year – but other people at the Great American were clearly eager to see the reformed act live. When a few random notes came out of bassist Matt Gentling’s instrument during the band’s set-up a woman above stage in the balcony yelped, jumping to her feet and clapping her hands together excitedly.

Launching into “Harnessed in Slums,” the band played with an easy energy that gave no suggestion of their hiatus or age, and people in the crowd were shouting “I want waste! We want waste!” along with the chorus. Gentling in particular was electric. He leapt around stage and struck every hard rock guitar god stance imaginable but did it with a physicality that actually pulled them off. (Dude is ripped, FYI.)

At one point early on, struggling with some technical issues, Gentling looked at singer-guitarist Eric Bachmann and joked, “It’s just like the old days, everything is breaking.” Not quite getting the kink out of his bass, Gentling asked the crowd if it’d be ok if the band just kept playing through the difficulty, and Archers of Loaf continued on, powering through a long set. The place wasn’t full, but the crowd made up for it, and was still shaking the floorboards fifteen or so songs later when Archers play “Wrong” and shred a version of “Nostalgia”, making an encore completely obvious.

Ten minutes later – when I headed for BART to wait for a train alongside a couple of giggling guys laying on the platform surrounded by what must have been a dozen empty nitrous canisters – I was no longer tired and sent a text that read: “Okay. That was a good show. Worth it.”

Promising newish acts at Noise Pop 2012: Surf Club and FIDLAR

Tony Robles
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0

He asked if there were drink tickets. The bartender nodded, saying that the band could have wine now, and then beers on stage. Neither of those options would work for Stockton’s Surf Club, whose members were all sporting big black X’s — the mark of the underaged — at their Café Du Nord Noise Pop appearance.

When Surf Club played, melancholic Stratocaster led pop, that youthful innocence was obvious in its music. Well, let’s not say innocence, maybe timidity? The lead singer was a big guy with a small voice, like Frank Black (or Kim Deal? someone from the Pixies) in quieter moments.

The softness fit with the lyrics, mostly teen angst songs void of irony with small goals and wants: just to be friends, just to get out of bed. Surf Club seems to be off to a good start, keeping it simple, strumming along to a speedy drum beat. We’ll see what happens when the shyness wears off.

The following band, LA’s FIDLAR (which, if you’re keeping score at home was 75% over legal drinking age) had absolutely no issues with confidence. Hell, with a name like Fuck It Dog Life’s A Risk, you know the band’s got to be somewhat carefree, if not downright cocky.

“This song is called ‘Stoked and Broke,’” the band’s most talkative, spastic member introduced the first song, explaining, “because we’re stoked and broke.” What followed was a frenetic set of punk fueled, stripped down rock. With a rollicking tightness that reminded me of Thee Oh Sees, FIDLAR shot along, keeping the energy up by alternating singers.

Simple can be a conscious choice, and for FIDLAR that meant shouting through a song entirely consisting of the words “I drink cheap beer. So what? Fuck You!” with just enough attitude to make it work. Recently signing to Mom+Pop and with a full slate at this year’s SXSW, FIDLAR was definitely one of the better surprises at Noise Pop so far.

Live Shots: Grimes, Born Gold, oOoOO, and Yalls at Rickshaw Stop

Tony Robles
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0

Cecil Frena described the lineup at Rickshaw Stop last night simply as “weird music.” He should know. Performing with his synth-fueled electronic dance trio, Born Gold (formerly Gobble Gobble,) Frena stood in front of a camera-slash-iPad pulpit, singing and conducting a third of the group’s sound via a motion-captured, clearly homemade, Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation era-esque military jacket.

Definitely the strangest thing I’d seen all night, until Born Gold started its second song, at which point one of the other members strapped on a pair of stilts and began marching through the audience, playing a custom instrument consisting of a Roland SP-404 affixed to a snow shovel blade. The lighting for the theatrical set was either pitch black or blazing multicolored strobes, including a pair of handhelds that Born Gold used to blind part of the audience after covering them with a black tarp.

In more subdued moments Born Gold did synchronized dances with folding fans or put on helmets and beat each over the head with drum sticks.

As much as I noticed the music with all that going on, I’d say Born Gold was a decent fit with the first opener, Yalls. Yalls’s Dan Casey also played largely vocal driven electronic, although typically at a slower tempo and with a quirkier, less sexy lyrical sense. (Did Yalls just say something about living off the pennies in his moustache?) The clipped female R&B samples that made up a sizable portion of one of his beats recalled the time that Ben Gibbard dug up J Dilla’s grave to form the Ghostal Service and cut a chillwave album.

It was clear that most people in the sold out crowd were there to see the very buzzed about Grimes, particularly the wave of hardcore photographers who emerged and cut to the front just before the night’s second to last act, oOoOO (pronounced, by Frena as “Oh, upper case and lower case.”) With a heavy, grim quality that thematically might have fit with Grimes, in terms of the night’s lineup oOoOO was just slotted wrong, as the set was an experiment in how slow one can go. The answer? Really fucking slow. Put a cassette of dirty hip hop — with lots of syncopated hi hats and claps — into a boombox, wait for the batteries to die, record the last ten seconds, loop it, and you’ll get the idea. It’s perfect music to use when training your sloth Barbara to give a lap dance.

Still, it was fairly amazing watching the pros go to great lengths to get the perfect shot of oOoOO’s parka, although the one next to me spent most of the set texting and updating her blog, which was maybe less insulting to the musician than when she was playing Words with Friends while Release to the Sunbird opened for the Flaming Lips the night before. Hopefully as a joke, oOoOO ended his set by throwing the bouquet of flowers from the cover of Power, Lies & Corruption into the audience.

Grimes was on after. She performs with the same sort of spread arm, ambidextrous style as the keyboardist from Battles, and met expectations. She had support from Born Gold, as well as a sinister, largely vestigial dancer, whose main move consisted of adjusting her hood. Weird.

Spanning time with the Flaming Lips

Tony Robles
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0

I ran into a temporal anomaly while driving. My first warning sign was the police cruiser with one headlight flashing its sirens behind me. Wrong place at the wrong time? Well, I was getting pulled over in Sebastopol on the way to Richmond from SF, but when the cop told me I was doing 78 in a 55, it suggested one thing —speeding.

And speeding isn’t spatial — location is irrelevant — you are precisely where you should be, just too fucking soon. The cop seemed hopeful that he could help me, but as he took my papers and ran back to his car I knew he had abandoned me to the crush of an impending temporal singularity, as time began to move in slow motion.

Slow motion. Some refer to it as time dilation. The sensation that a certain duration lasts longer than it should. The Flaming Lips have a song about it, called, obviously, “Slow Motion.” It goes like this:

Hey, come on over.

You know the day is going slower.

It takes a year, to make a day.

And I’m feeling like a float in the Macy’s Day parade.

Or like a boat, out on the ocean. 
I’m drifting round in slow motion.

LSD and other narcotics aside, time generally doesn’t work that way. Compared to your life so far, each additional day is a smaller proportion. Time telescopes, you speed up, it goes faster. Slowing down is the opposite, unnatural. Sitting in a car waiting for the cop to come back (Is he going to search me?) or laying on a couch with friends trying not to cry — whenever time slows down — it’s unnerving.

You only know this much about “Slow Motion” — an alternate track from The Soft Bulletin not released in the US — because you saw the Flaming Lips play it once. But which time? Not at that fair in Santa Rosa. That one had a rave after. Not at the Fox Theater. That was the one where you slow danced with your girlfriend (at the time) until the staff asked you to leave. At Sasquatch, there in the Gorge? They did play The Soft Bulletin then, but it was rushed. That guy stood behind you — when Wayne Coyne was recounting Steven Drozd almost losing his hand and Michael Ivins being in a car crash — screaming “Play-a-song!” No, there just hadn’t been time.

And time, for the Flaming Lips, is important. Because as a band — one that has been through all sorts of well documented shit — the Flaming Lips know the value of time (particularly borrowed) and have made it their work to not just create music but get into the complete manufacture of moments. Which is a tricky business, because moments are bastards. Take all the pictures you want of the blinding lights, the beautiful costumed kids, the confetti cannons or all the other individual weapons that the Flaming Lips use to wage musical psychedelic war on time, and the moment still might not fit in a shutter, no matter how you slice a second.

It was at Bimbo’s. Not the time they played Noise Pop a few years back, but more recently. They were playing The Soft Bulletin, and taking their time. Hitting every single track from every single version of the album. Not quite slow motion, but close. When was that?

It was the night after the couch. When you were watching Blade Runner on TV, just the end part. Where the maniac with white hair is running around, trying to knock some sense into the other idiot character, who hardly even realizes he’s alive most of the time. And it starts getting heavy. Meaningless inevitability; the crushing force of time. Fucking tears in the rain. Before you know it, you’re happy it’s basic cable, because sometimes a commercial interruption is all that’s keeping you from crying.

It was the night after that. The Lips were going slower for sure, but still way too fast. The moments going by before you’re ready. Before you know it, they are on to other songs, and “Slow Motion” is somewhere in the past, back there with your best friends on the couch, never to return.

The band is getting ready to play something else, Steven readying both miraculous hands on another instrument while Michael stands ready, as ever, on the bass. You want to reach into your bag to take the camera out again, but you resist the urge. It won’t capture the cold press of the air canisters at your back anyway. Or, for that matter, the hookah scented air from the smoke machines. And anyway, if you’re taking pictures during “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” you’re probably irretrievably lost.

And suddenly, everything has changed. The cop comes back to the car. Tells me my record is clear, that he just marked 65 on the ticket, because I was didn’t know where I was. He gives me some directions, regarding the roads. I don’t really listen (but do thank him and let him know about his broken headlight.) I drive forward, knowing exactly where I am. I was at a Flaming Lips show, and now I’m driving home.  

Blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr. solos as long as he damn well pleases

Tony Robles
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0
Blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr. solos as long as he damn well pleases

“Well you gonna know my name, by the end of the night,” Gary Clark Jr. sings during his take off Jimmy Reed’s blues classic, “Bright Lights, Big City.” The Animals, Rolling Stones, Clapton, Dylan –  many have had their take on it, but Clark flipped the tale of urban intoxication, giving it extra bravado and, with a notable performance at the Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010 and resulting Warner Bros record contract, turned it into an announcement of his own impending stardom (with risks involved).

As Clark Jr. walked out onto the stage of the Great American Music Hall Wednesday night it was clear that “Bright Lights” had been working given that the sold out crowd not only knew who he was, but readily sang him “Happy Birthday.” Of course Clark, turning 28, has had plenty of time to build up a following. At 17, in his home of Austin, TX the mayor was already proclaiming a Gary Clark Jr. Day, on account of his prodigious and heralded guitar skills.

It was those skills that people came out to hear at the Great American, and that’s what they got. There’s a lot of ways someone like Clark could go, but at this point in his career, Clark is still more of an old school, straight ahead blues rockers than successful popular contemporaries like Jack White or the Black Keys’s Dan Auerbach.

Clark opened the night with a couple tracks from his The Bright Lights EP. With “When My Train Pulls In,” he set a simple rule – the length of the songs would be less structured around the verses and would instead go as long as he wanted to solo. That one’s a bit heavier and slow, but he followed it up with “Don’t Owe You A Thang,” a catchy number built from some Bo Diddley-esque guitar playing. Clark would alternately double time or halve the solos, but kept the number well balanced by coming right back in with forceful vocals right before a shift in beat.

As he worked through a set that consisted of some covers and some originals, it was clear that Clark was experimenting with a number of styles, with mixed results. Compared to the confidence on display in “Don’t Owe You A Thang” and “Bright Lights,” the fluttery soul piece, “Things Are Changin’” had a John Meyer quality to it that I found unappealing. Almost reading my mind, Clark finished playing the number and said, “So enough of that sweet soft stuff, we’re about to get crazy up in here.” After a noisy intro that recalled another Austin guitar hero, Eric Johnson, the band started breaking the beat down more, playing “If You Love Me Like You Say,” with a big funky drummer solo, over which Clark pulled out some tricked out technique that sounded more like scratching on vinyl than anything I was expecting.

After a set involving a couple of real stretched out numbers, Clark met expectations with “Bright Lights.” But as he walked off stage it seemed like a number of people either had enough or got what they wanted, not waiting for the encore. People still called for it, though, and the guitarist returned, first without his band, saying “I want some alone time with you guys,” softly playing a couple songs. Anyone who left missed out, as the band came back on stage to closed the night with Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up.” It’s a song that’s hard for almost anyone to cover, particularly if they lack a really good horn section. But at Clark Jr.’s hands, it didn’t seem like anything was missing.

1. When My Train Pulls In
2. Don’t Owe You A Thang
3. ?
4. Please Come Home
5. Things Are Changing
6. If You Love Me Like You Say (Albert Collins)
7. 3 O’Clock Blues (Lowell Fulson)
8. ?
9. Bright Lights
Encore
10. When The Sun Goes Down
11. Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)
12. Move On Up

Openers:
Aren’t there a lot of bands right now with White Something as their name? In any case, when the White Buffalo finished its set, someone next to me remarked “Man, I wish there were encores for openers. I could go home right now and been glad I heard that.” For my part I could have stood to hear some more of the first opener, White Dress, particularly the twangy, smoky voice of Arum Rae, who seems to do equally well with or without accompaniment.

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