Catch-up: Cato mess with my concepts, my inner vision.

That's an insane picture. I got it from Of Montreal's MySpace, from an album called 'Of Montreal as mythology'. There were no other pictures in the album. I thought that it would be a reasonably good way to preface a review of a band I've talked about a million times before on this blog. Just click the 'Of Montreal' tag at the side to check them out...

Oh wait, I tag things in a completely senseless way, by venue and nationality. As if anyone ever wanted to check which Danish bands I'd seen or how many gigs I've been to in Crawdaddy since September 2007.

A better way to preface this review would be to go look at these incredible pictures at State and this interview at Aoife B's gaff.

Okay.


I turned up at the Button Factory alone and stood around, trying not to look awkward while people arrived. Nobody I recognised. A weird sort of in-betweener crowd: half were comfortable, beer in hand, waiting around the back to step up when a band appeared. The other half were excited, on edge, 80% female and at the front. I belonged at the back. But I went to the front. Sorry if you were a short girl and I was standing in front of you. I've put in the same fawning hours you have, get off my back.

Casio Kids played first and I was initially thinking, "wow, Unicorns!". Then it all got a bit smoothed out in a sort of a Hot Chip vibe. But then, gradually, it became clear that Casio Kids are Scandanavian. A quick Google shows that they're Norwegian, but I could not stop hearing Swedish bands once I realised they weren't Anglo-American. The Shout Out Louds. Jens Lekman. Even fucking Dungen. It's something about the inflection when they sing.

They passed the time, and I like that they sing in Norsk, but nothing to write home about.

If you were about to write home, however, and you needed something other than "things good here, hope all is well at home" to tell the people in the old country, you wouldn't have had long to wait.

Enter Of Montreal. BP Helium in Eno-mode as in 2007 (rather than Low-era Bowie mode, as 2008, if I remember correctly). A tiger, a pig, a smattering of shadows, a diplodocus-headed gentlemen of some description, and a respectable family. And Kevin Barnes, character in his own postmodern fantasy. Much of the excitement of this show is in the insane, postmodern theatrics that go on, both behind Kevin and involving Kevin. An anthropomorphic tiger hunting to tense music is exactly that in this context - it's not a song with a theatrical accompaniment.

But I suppose I should mention music. Minuses first:

- He's not feeling the lyrics. But hey, who says every singer of their darker hours has to crucify themself on stage to satisfy me.

- As with every Of Montreal live show, the sheen is dulled a little in performance, and the backing tracks are always a touch busy... as if everything's not in its right place. Although maybe that helps.

+s?

Well, as Damien Hirst knows well, if you're just arranging diamonds, you're going to end up with something pretty valuable no matter what you do. Of new material, 'Triphallus to Punctuate' was my favourite, as it is on record, because of its bizarrely disco-fried "ah yeah" part as much as anything else. Of old material, 'Sink The Seine-Cato As A Pun' was pretty stellar, as was Gronlandic Edit, and though there was nothing further back than Sunlandic Twins, 'Wraith Pinned To The Mist' waved that flag fairly well.

Just a good show then, right? Just an American band, bigger than small clubs but smaller than big theatres. Same setlist all tour, even if it synchs with performance art. Worth the entrance fee, definitely.

Kevin smears himself head to toe in shaving foam and leaps into the crowd. You see a hand flailing so you grab it to right him onto his feet and feel you've done your part. Go home happy.

"Do you think they will do an encore?" I heard an obviously largely housebound fellow attendee ask.

'Suffer For Fashion', immediately weighing in on a level above the entire regular set. 'I Was Never Young', holding the fort. Then (you know this already if you ever wanted to know, so there's no point in suspense, especially in a textual medium where there is no temporal block on you) Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Which they apparently no longer issue the lyrics to at birth. But I bellowed them nonetheless. Leapt around and knocked the guy-protecting-girlfriend and the I-need-to-get-this-on-camera-phone and the lets-do-live-song-by-song-analysis people out of their comfort zones a little I hope.

Haha

It was great. Insane, but great. Five members and four actors on stage, blasting it out. Crowd giving it straight back. If you don't have 'em, steal 'em. The encore, as usual with OM gigs, lifts the show and makes the whole thing seem that much more epic.

So fuck you, the everyone I know who went to the last one but didn't go this time. This was great, even if I think I nearly killed myself sprinting up Dame Street for the last bus because of it.

Old OM posts:
Fawning about Fauna
And about Skeletal Lamping
December 2007 in the Button Factory
The early 2007 show was before the blog, I forgot this


++

Catch-up: And you'd smile and say, "I like this song"

Went to London and spent a weekend in a penthouse apartment in Kensington with seven friends listening to Merriweather Post Pavillion. It's not like we didn't try to go out. We did. It just never worked. We nearly made it to a salsoul club, whatever that means. We did make it to an insane club that wasn't sure whether we were 'indie rock' enough to get in, despite the fact that the closest they came to indie rock all night inside was 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' by the Stooges, a drop in the gushing river of indifferentiable electro.

I bought records on Portobello Road and in Rough Trade. I bought clothes in (predictably) American Apparel. Took black cabs, saw Westminster, went the wrong way around the Circle line to get to where I was going. But the weekend was about Animal Collective. Every gap, while we were cooking or waking up or just hanging out, was filled with Merriweather Post Pavillion.

And then the weekend passed, and it was Monday the nineteenth of January and we went to the Koko in Camden to see Animal Collective.

This guy stood in our way for a while, singing Orwellian songs in a John Lydon-on-I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of here persona. Few support acts have been worse.


Then came Avey, Panda and Geologist. The set-list was as follows:

In The Flowers
Daily Routine
Also Frightened
New Song
Slippi
Weird unrecognisable version of Winter's Love
Guys Eyes
Summertime Clothes
Lion In A Coma
Brothersport
Banshee Beat
Chores
My Girls


The rainbow strip lights were going and it was the first Animal Collective gig I've ever been to that hasn't had majority new stuff being passed down from the improvisational gods on high. It was mostly pretty cathartic.

Things that were off:

Winter's Love's only recognisable bit was ONE BAR of the drum loop from it, during a 5 minute long improvisation that was apparently supposed to BE Winter's Love

I think the bass was missing from My Girls, which robbed it of some of its finality at the end

I have a feeling they missed synching the beat in Banshee Beat, ironically, but it was still great as just an Avey strumathon.


Things that were on:

Everything. The guts of Merriweather Post Pavillion, which is probably the most perfect album I can think of, and I've been thinking for about two months.

Slippi, being off the cuff as it is, freewheeling along. Chores, starting in ultra-slowed down, lamenty Panda Bear mode, but eventually kicking in to its full-on frenetic brilliance.

Songs like Also Frightened and Lion In A Coma leaping off the page and being counted even more than they are on the album.

Brothersport, being an incomparable live experience.



Side notes:

met a man who was talking about government laws and saying "that's right yeah" every four mumbles on the tube, who seemed to know what he was talking about.

Read in 'The London Paper' (a free Tube-rag) that 'Josh Dibb and co.' were playing the Koko, Josh Dibb being Deakin who has been on hiatus since just before the release of Strawberry Jam.

It was a great gig. I'm sorry this review has no logic or structure, but it was quite a long time ago.

+++

Wellllllllllll I got friends in low places.

High Places.

What they do is not so much performance as a sort of twisted midwifery to a very obscured and confused baby. Man playing very low-volume drum pads and a woodblock. Woman talking (not even backwards), or singing without enthusiasm. A table covered in wires acting as a barrier between uninterested band and uninterested crowd. There is no aspect of this that comes across better live than on record. In fact, the most impressive member of High Places, Sampler, would probably prefer not to tour at all.

The best thing High Places have ever done was appear on Bradford Cox's video guide to the Pitchfork festival. And I don't even like Bradford Cox. May this band go away soon, and may their mp3s languish unheard in the mysterious ether of a thousand hard drives till the Great Computer Virus of the Future removes them from recorded history.

No catchy bits. Even their "one good song" was drowned in its own self-conscious muck. This is a totem pole made of its own hype, and it should never be given the twelve euro tribute I foolishly gave it.

-

A delicate mix of sweat and menstrual blood.

I've been listening to Parenthetical Girls since their first album (((GRRRLS))) came out in 2004, or pretty soon after. Jamie Stewart produced half of it (Side A and Side B are the same songs with different producers), so I decided to download it and see what it was like, if only because I was in the first throes of Xiu Xiu excitement and I was riled up to hear anything that had their name associated with it.

It was camper than anything I was used to. There was something about the sincerity in the stripped pop layers that took me by surprise. It was too keyboard-heavy and close-focused to fit in with vaguely baroque pop bands I was into at the time (Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens), and not nearly life-affirming enough to line up alongside the sunny indie (Architecture in Helsinki, Polyphonic Spree). Songs like Love Connection (which ended up covered on Etiquette by CFTPA) seemed to have a sort of body poetry that was different to anything I'd heard before. I'll block-quote some, seeing as I set the precedent with the Why? post:

Chapped lips, tongue kiss, insert expletive
Fluids of a summer night
With slight duress, forced imperative
Find me quoting Donovan
The delicate mix of sweat and menstrual blood
Seeping into trampled grass

Zac Pennington is the kind of self-obsessed, sex-obsessed, hyper-camp pop experimentalist I can get on board with. Strangely enough though, four years and two more albums after I first heard (((GRRRLS))), I had never actually seen what he looked like. So when he appeared, thin as a rake and bejumpered in threadbare blue, I was... no, I wasn't taken aback at all. He looked exactly like I expected. First time that's ever happened.

The set the ( ) girls played was short, with no encore, but it was heavy on old material and there wasn't a lowlight in the bunch. The revolving cast of Guy In Tight T-Shirt, Red Jumper Man and Kind Of Cute Girl took up duties on various synths, glockenspiel, drums, gamelan singing bowls, autoharp or whatever else, while Zac sojourned into the crowd, illustrating his every perfectly-enuniciated word with a graceful extension of his thin arm.

Among the finer expressions of love and lust was his index finger to index finger measurement of you- can-guess-what during the line "I felt his size, close to a dozen times" from Unmentionables off this year's Entanglements.

The undoubted highlight, however, was the medley of Love Connection Pt. 1 and Love Connection Pt. 2*. This was called in by Guy In Tight T-Shirt and met with an "are you sure?" from Zac, but they carried through with it and it made my night. Further sweetness was added by the fact that they apparently rarely play either of the songs, nevermind back-to-back with no gap.

The homely, fire-placed atmosphere of the upstairs venue in Whelans added a lot to the experience, as did the impressive Former Soviet Republic in support, and all in all, the gig was as good as I could have hoped.

I've been incredibly lucky with gigs lately, but before you say "But Karl, EVERYTHING gets a positive review", whet yisser appetites for the next post. Where did I go to escape the weekend Whelans crowd? Stay tuned to find out.

++

*Love Connection Pt. 1 and 2 are on different albums, so it's not just like playing King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 1, 2 and 3 together. I hadn't even considered how they'd fit together until last night. Perfectly, as it turned out.

Lethal poison for the system

Full disclosure: before seeing Built To Spill perform it in its sprawling, magnificent entirety, I'd never head Perfect From Now On. I don't mean that I wasn't familiar enough with it, I mean I literally had never heard a note of the album, physical, digital or otherwise. How I could be so lax as to fail to prepare myself for the PFNO tour, I have no idea. But it happened.

Last time I saw Built To Spill was in McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, supported by Cat Power and Bob Mould from Hüsker Dü. The place, located in "romantic downtown Brooklyn" according to its website (it was a bit grimy), was roughly the equivalent of Marlay Park as a venue. And it was full, full of the kind of fist-pumping, soul-pouring fans that you get at Radiohead or Coldplay gigs there. The band played exactly that kind of set too, with such vastness and profundity that it seemed impossible that they'd ever have to play any lesser stage.

Two years later, Doug Martsch is literally within groping distance if I leaned, on the stage of Whelans. Whelans, the safety net for Saturday nights, the gig venue, the post-gig venue... It was almost like a culture shock, because of the magnitude of the associations I'd made for BtS in my head. Sort of profane.

Until the floating strains of Randy Described Eternity. The defiant resolution of I Would Hurt A Fly. It just snowballed, too. The band fed off the crowd, which led to the crowd feeding off the band, and the whole thing spiralled into one very loud, guitar-driven catharsis.

I suppose it might have been better if I'd been anticipating the next song like other people had, but for me it just seemed like a perfectly-measured set. I had some fun imagining that I was seeing this band for the first time, as a support act or at a festival or something. This "middle-aged farmer from Idaho" (thx Darragh, constant poet of the everyday), his middle-aged cronies playing essentially wanky guitar, with a cello in the background. The most unlikely thing ever, but it was great. Awe-inspiring at times.

Then the "encore", straight from the end of Perfect From Now On into Goin' Against Your Mind. That song is a gutfuck monster epic, and it had to be. Curfew at Whelans bumbling in to wreck things once more. It ended, and people shouted. "Carry The Zero", "Center of the Universe", "Big Dipper", etc. Not to be. Time's up, one more song.

Paper Planes.

Trippy.

+++



Video taken by Loreana Rushe about two places behind where I was standing at this, one of the best gigs of the year.

And your eyes are piss-holes in the snow.

"I'm just not used to being out and about this early on a Sunday. My body doesn't know what to do." - heard in conversation outside Twisted Pepper on Abbey Street whilst waiting for the fantastically devised stripped-down Why? matinee set, not so long after noon.

Thanks to the manoeuvres of LitSoc (who like Joni for his poetic lyrics), DURNS (whose RN stands for Rock Nostalgia, leading me to believe that they were drawn in by the MOR rock of Gemini Song), Analogue (because Bren was in a position to make the calls, and because Why? are our official collective ninth favourite band*) and Bodytonic (who I assume opened their new venue at a strange hour so that people would know it was there), this genuinely exciting prospect came to pass. There were probably somewhere a little above fifty people there, all seated, and they saw something pretty unique.

Are lyrics poetry? That can't be answered with a yes or a no because the definition of poetry isn't static, and the nature of lyrics is also pretty varying. If I was to be anal about the whole thing, I could mention that almost everything that pop-culture considers poetry is actually lyric poetry, from Shakespeare to Ginsberg. But I won't. I'll do it by experiment.

Here's
To inhaling crushed bones
through a dried up
white out pen
and riding the backwards racer
in hot June rain
in a matching blue and gold
plastic bag / poncho / raincoat.

It's a wooden coaster
with a medium hill height mean,
high hill to flat ground ratio
you know I'd sell my shingles
for a thimble dip of snow.
Back then I'd've sold my single
for a fingertip of glow.

That's the form of the first verse of Crushed Bones from the liner lyrics to Elephant Eyelash, by the way, I didn't just space it out so it'd look like that.

I personally think what Joni Wolf does is more lyrics-set-to-music than a contiguous rock and roll song type of thing. All of the lyrics (excepting maybe the few songs that are actually sung straight through) heave with internal rhyme, with perfect measurement and judgement so that there can always be a lot of syllables if there needs to be, without there ever being too many. These songs (they are definitely songs, even if you concede that they could constitute poetry) would stand alone. Take away the careful guitar and keyboards of Alopecia and Elephant Eyelash, or the bedroom fuzziness of Oaklandazulasylum and you would still have the skeleton of something genuinely excellent.

It might even be better.

Some of the time it was. The Fall of Mr. Fifths (off Alopecia) in particular came off amazingly, stripped of its organ and the cushion of reverb. The sight of Joni, microphone left on its stand, rhyming to the backing a single drum, conjures images of San Francisco beat gatherings to me. It's almost mesmeric.

I asked him awkwardly about this while I tried to jam the synth that I had to inexplicably provide back into its case after the gig had finished. He must do it often, I said. In exotic places like Oakland, coffee shop Anticon gigs must be the order of the day. He looked vaguely pitying and explained that he wasn't part of "that scene".

Another convenient imagined reality smashed. But really, that just made the Twisted Pepper set even more unique.

Some day, Those Geese, I will write an unreadable, 5,000 word post on Why? as poetry using academic standards. There's so much. The recurring obsession (or identification?) with Christ and Christianity in general. Bones, whether raped, snorted or inhabited. The bizarre images in general. It will be done. No it won't. Oh well.

++

*This statement is not true.
**This picture was nicked off the Analogue blog, and was taken, as far as I can tell from the Properties, by the magnificent ivebeentired, whoever that is. Nice picture, yo.

And your eyes are slits in bags of fat

Disclaimer/Acknowledgement: This gig was ages ago. I have the same excuses every blogger has, so I won't bore you with them.

Why? at Andrew's Lane Theatre. Where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah, here. But lack of imagination notwithstanding, it was great to get a second visit off Joni and crew on what is essentially the same tour. Bands (Of Montreal, Deerhoof, Animal Collective) seem to have started skipping us over again this winter. Even if we've started to bleep on the radar of bands like this, the second sweep through Europe generally heads straight to the UK without so much as a cursory glance at "the best crowd in the world".

On the evidence of this redux, however, it appears that good behaviour (i.e. loud cheering) has indeed yielded us the proverbial "nice things". Hurray.

The set was essentially the same as last time, possibly in a different order. It's amazing how good it was, given that fact. These songs in their live format don't seem like they could ever be old. The arrangements are tense, much closer than the occasionally too-clean productions on the album, and needle-point tight. The clacking snare-rim beat of Crushed Bones (opening track on Elephant Eyelash), strewn with daydreamy arpeggios, provides the perfect tensile canvas for Joni to sing over. Or rap over? Speak over? Sing-rap-recite.

It's hard to tell exactly what Joni is. There is definitely a literary character to what he does, almost like a novel full of fictionalised diary entries but with no clear conclusion. Musically, indie rock cannot fully claim him, because of the clear hip-hop influences, for example on the drums. But hip-hop doesn't want him, as I found out on a rap forum I was lurking on while trying to find Pharaohe Monch's album*. "Pussy-ass Jew boy bullshit", or something to that effect.

It obviously doesn't matter where he's categorised. That's a job for people like me on the midnight oil, and has no actual importance. The gig was (almost) as packed as last time, and the people there were (almost) as zealous as last time. And what was last time? I believe I concluded by literarily calling it "deadly" at the time. This was deadly too. Real atmosphere, real chemistry. But above all, great songs.

I'll be right back with more Why?

++

*the secondhand CD rack at ground level right in front of the counter in the new Freebird facing onto the Central Bank is THE source for every decent rap album since 1980.

**the picture is of Josiah Wolf, whose skill at playing glockenspiel and drums at the same time is beyond impressive***

***those two asterisks don't refer back to anything specific in the text.

Catch up

Port O'Brien were a tentative plus. More, in a slightly less familiar tone than is usually taken here, posted at Analogue. They seemed tired, and they didn't play Pigeonhold, but it was still pretty good. I went to Whelans with a guy I know but hadn't seen in ages, his Nordy girlfriend, Zebedee and Joshua. They plied me with free rider wine and we discussed how Thin Lizzy definitely aren't the best Irish band ever, despite what (assumably) Mighty Stef fans shouted during the set. Zeb thought Van Morrison was the best if he counts, and he didn't hate U2. I withheld my opinion so as not to be rude. They were mad for the Guinness.

The USB cable for my phone doesn't seem to be doing anything, so the era of the no-fi snap is dead and I'm back to stealing Flickr pictures from anyone whose Flickr I can find and Google Image searching "salmon of knowledge". Alas.

Why? was excellent if exactly the same as last time in Crawdaddy, and very much different but very interesting in the stripped down gig at Twisted Pepper. A review of both will be forthcoming.

It's that time of year to start thinking about a top 25. If anyone has any recommendations of things that they think are better than Vampire Weekend, Deerhoof, Of Montreal or Why?, tell me now while there's still breathing room.

New Analogue goes to print tomorrow with a 2,500 word Vampire Weekend interview (uaimse) and a similarly-sized Built To Spill piece from Darragh leading the troops to battle. This one appears to have been copy-edited hard, too, so prepare for new levels of free, mistake-free indie music journalism.

+

I see a salty message written in the eaves

Most of the time, I'm the kid. It's been like that for a long time, I don't know why. I was one of the oldest in my class all the way through school, but I ended up being the kid anyway. On my road, I made friends with people a year older than me, and I was always the kid. At school, when I was in Transition Year, I made friends with a couple of people in Sixth year and I was the kid in those relationships too. With Analogue and the people surrounding Analogue, I am a couple of years behind, so I can seem like the kid sometimes too, especially when I show up to interviews. The other night when I was playing a gig in Anseo, a woman was heard to say "he can't be older than fifteen" as I got behind the microphone. I'm the kid. It just ends up that way, I don't know why it is.

But last week, probably for the first time of my life, I felt old at a gig. At the age of twenty, I was suddenly the old curmudgeon, stuck in his ways with his headbanging and attempts at normal dancing. Around me were heaving swarms of underage girls being giddy about the band, and analogous swarms of underage boys trying to look cool in front of them. They pogoed. I tried to pogo too, but somehow, I was weighed down. I tried not to make a snide smile at their chants of "Ezra, Ezra" before the band started, but I couldn't help it. I tried to zone out everyone else, but extended arms with phones and cameras surrounded me and dragged me back to a world where fame is the thing and the fact of Vampire Weekend being on stage in the first place is two-thirds of the battle for enjoying your night.

Bah, humbug.

The band were a lot of fun though, I have to admit. They were feeding off the unselfconscious singing along (of the type I talked about before, with fists raised during lines about Peter Gabriel as if they were singing about world hunger), and putting the energy back into the show. The slightly more skeletal live approach worked really well, and songs that were skeletal to begin with, like Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, probably came off the best.

I can't pick out any weak moments in the set. They played everything off the album and one new song that sounded like Animal Collective ("I can see that, yeah" - bassist Chris Baio, upon being quizzed on this matter), and even included an ill-thought-out but nevertheless not-terrible Fleetwood Mac cover as an encore. They don't simply replicate the sound of one of the year's best albums, but they don't try to mess with the formula either, and anyone with half a funnybone couldn't have failed to enjoy this.

Oh, and a postscript to the bottle-blonde gentleman who felt it necessary to make a low-res digital video of most of the set over my head while simultaneously dancing... I can think of a website you might like.

+

Wash away what we create

So I also went to that Drowned In Sound show at Whelans too, thanks to the beneficence of my lovely girlfriend, who pitched exactly right on what I would want for a birthday present. I won't bore you with the details of my Odyssean trek to the venue, because I probably already did between bands, but just remember never to get a 38 bus anywhere ever if you still have the use of your extremities and your critical faculty.

The mess that is post-rich Ireland's transport infrastructure meant that I missed all but the last couple of songs by Times New Viking. Close watchers will know that I also missed Times New Viking last time they played because I was at The Mae Shi and they went on early. Guess why I missed them this time? They went on early.

What sort of promoter puts on "motherfuckin' Times New Viking" (Dean Allen Spunt, No Age) at 8 o'clock? I mean I made it to the venue at about twenty minutes past eight and I only saw the last two songs. The ticket said doors at 8. I have never been to a gig where the band starts at the time the doors were supposed to open, because logically, there would be no-one there at that time. This is apparently what happened last night. I wouldn't know, because I wasn't there. Fuck everything.

Anyway, next tack.

No Age were incredible, thankfully. It was my second time seeing them, but my first time indoors, and my first time with a respectful amount of album-listening done. Last time was more fun in the sense that the Dutch punks at Lowlands were moshing enough to make my wobbly headbanging seem okay. Last night my wobbly headbanging seemed to be shared by only two or three acquaintances and the members of Los Campesinos! who were in the crowd.

The show, though. Very, very loud. Intense. No Age have some really great songs. Teen Creeps, for example, has got to be one of the songs of the year.

Strum, strum, strum. Dididi-deh-do-do - NOISE. Washes and washes of noise. Two guys just being honest about it, playing a great song at a volume that cannot be ignored. There aren't many better moments in modern life than the heavy bit kicking in. And that's what No Age are all about.

They had some new stuff (I think) which was more directly rocking and less obfuscated. I enjoyed this. I would like to see No Age at a house-party (maybe the Hideaway House as Adam said in a comment below) or somewhere less self-conscious and less full of LC! fans. Because they've got energy in spades and it's a pity not many were sharing in the loud, loud glory of it.

As for Los Campesinos, I didn't like them. I've never liked them anyway, but they were never going to beat No Age. It's their own fault for picking such good support acts. Their lyrics are so blatantly poserish that I'm surprised anyone except teenage girls can stomach it. "I was listening to music and reading fiction at the same time" or whatever. I mean, what the fuck is that? They play like a major label band on Letterman or something. There's no heart to it. They're just trying to be clever, and their songs aren't particularly good. They're the opposite of No Age's honesty, in my eyes. If they didn't have vaguely different instrumentation I don't think anyone would ever have thought of them as separate from the NME continuum in the first place. Because they're not. Death to Los Campesinos.

Long live No Age.

Times New Viking I am sorry please don't split up before I see you.

+

Lowlands Notebooks - Sunday etc

Lykke Li:

magnetic personality - eclectic music - tendency towards hit or miss -banging single

+


MGMT:

songs all either "bleeeeep or faaar away" (thank you Katie) - limp - bad

-


Sigur Rós:

quiet loud fairytale thing - not half as bowled over as my friends - most of the set ordinary - regular gig, not theatre set-up as Oxegen 2006 - highlights did hit the nordic sublime

+


The Roots:

sore neck from jerking it and trying to dance to rap - unused to this - virtuouso instrumentalists - guitar/bass solos for twelve hours - rap as part of the music, not over the music - ultimate fun - genius festival closer

++

Lowlands Notebooks - Saturday etc

50 Jaar Nederpop (Dutch pop retrospective, see here):

bim bam bom, House For Saaaaaaaaaaaale, Heideroosjes singer, fullest main stage ever, loads of fun


Los Campesinos:

Pete Dohertwee - nothing there - no gap between fun and good music

-


British Sea Power:

dull, soft focus, 4/4 rubbish

-


Breeders:

halfway between sloppy Sleater-Kinney and less self-absorbed Cat Power, even if they were there first. not very good.

-


Iron and Wine:

Vote For Pedro t-shirt brigade vs. my Dublin jersey - unfolding and uncertain - jam sensibilities - virtuoso drummer - Woman King opener - a little too spacey

+


No Age:

bedroom noise - attack! - youth abandon punk

+


Diplo:

mix mix mix - combining rhythms - Soulja Boy and Lil Wayne and Paper planes - Baltimore to bhangra

+


Modeselektor:

boring

-

Lowlands Notebooks - Flaming Lips

pixellated, made of space

panda head

streamer rafter disaster

alien rainbow mess

future laser, retro box of light

squid gong

SHEETS OF LIQUID SKY

last party in the world

++

Dot's Ugly Cadence

So last night's gig then, put on by new Analogue Magazine Promotions/etc guy Daniel Gray in conjunction with Hefty Horse. I resigned my part in the casual comedy at about nine o'clock (it went well I thought) and then went for a short walk to buy a quarter of fizzy cola bottles before returning for Disconnect The Dots.

Their deal is mostly instrumental, with effects on the vocals so that they sort of become part of the music rather than on top of it. There is a core of really intelligent songwriting in what they do, and at various points they sounded to me like Sunny Day Real Estate, certain of the louder Smiths songs and High Places, but always with the sampler beeping time in the background. Between the mix, the guitar sound and certain moments of uncertainty, they may not have acquitted themselves quite perfectly, but I, knowing the pair of them but not knowing what their music would sound like, was quite impressed by some of their songs, particularly the Dan-on-guitar, Cáit-singing, no sampler one (which was the Sunny Day one) and the last one.

Ugly Megan headlined, and I'm still a big fan. They had toys and thumped acoustic guitar beats, and twee melodies to the hilt. I described all that stuff in the last entry I did about them so I won't do it again. What came across to me the most this time was how much they're into rap and rap culture. I don't know how I missed it before, I thought the Snoop cover was just one of those twee jokes. But no.

They did a cover of American Boy which was in fact better than the Snoop one by a fair bit, and one of the highlights of their set was a song that goes "I'd give you all the love that a pimp can give a ho, because you're my favourite ho, my favourite ho, fo sho". Over the twee-est Moldy Peaches strummy backing ever. Their "encore" was probably my favourite though. Intricate guitar-thumping beat that reminded me of The Caterpillar by the Cure.

After dumping my stuff in the apartment of someone I don't know (sorry!) I ended up at Cadence Weapon in Club NME, which was surprisingly empty. I hadn't heard much Cadence Weapon, but I was disappointed. The dancey beats and "jump!" parts do nothing for me. I was expecting a sort of MF Doom type thing for some reason (because people were calling him the saviour of rap occasionally + he's a nerd) but his actual lyrical skills are nowhere near as good. Nowhere near. I was also disappointed that he played mostly dancehall in his DJ set. So down with Cadence Weapon

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High White Deer

The ground's been covered by others already, and I've fallen into the bad habit of writing way too much about everything, so I'm going to do one sentence reviews of all the bands from the Future Days festival, which was a good night in general.

High Places - Their one good song was good, if just as muddy as everything else.
White Williams - Shite Williams
Deerhunter - I wanted to like them, but they did not grab me.
Dan Deacon - The best holiday entertainer ever, and my vote for world-wide funmaker.
Jape - Tried bit hard at the start, before busting out the perennially great Floating and sliding easily and brilliantly to the finishing line.

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I'd rather date Rwanda

According to some review I found while researching (putting "Stephen Malkmus" into Google and clicking everything for five pages) for the Analogue interview I did with him before his gig on Monday, Malkmus fans are divided into two camps. Those who like Face The Truth, and those who like Pig Lib. I want to preface this post by saying that I like both. I love Pavement, I like focused Malkmus a healthy amount, but I also genuinely enjoy the jam bits. So, unlike a lot of people I talked to after the gig, I wasn't disappointed or surprised that he went mostly with the strung out guitar jams. I was actually pretty happy.

Thing is, to my ears, Malkmus guitar-waffle never descends into pointlessness. He has said in interviews that you're not supposed to listen that closely to the instrumental breaks on Real Emotional Trash. But I think you can. Through all the solos in the live set (and there were solos in pretty much everything), my attention never wandered. It's not just fucking around! Seriously! It's what blues would be if shit, Record Collector magazine-reading, high school English teachers weren't choking it to death through reverence and simultaneous enjoyment of 70s classic rock. The Jicks sound fresh to me, and distinctive. The really great instrumental parts were the best part of the show.

Thing is, by playing a lot of really long songs, there's less time left to play some of the million excellent songs of average length in his catalogue. Pencil Rot? Jenny and the Ess-Dog? Also, by definition, Stephen Malkmus solo is hampered by the fact that half his audience at least is hoping every time he finishes a song that the next one is going to be Cut Your Hair. He even said "I need a hair cut" before one of his encore tunes (possibly Baby C'mon). Probably intentional, probably habitual.

He's not hung up on being a solo artist. He had no complaints about talking about Pavement as if it was still a real entity in the interview. He's just doing the jam-out thing right now, and it's probably just as fun to pretend he's going to play Cut Your Hair to him as it is to actually play Cut Your Hair. Still, he's a fucker for teasing. Really enjoyable show, nonetheless. I put one of my favourites off Real Emotional Trash, Gardenia, up in the muxtape you can find in the sidebar, if you're curious.

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In The Morning All I Could Do Was Sing

Duty called me to Tripod on Tuesday. Tapes 'n' Tapes, Sons and Daughters and Port O'Brien.

There was a time when I would have paid to see Tapes 'n' Tapes, but that time is not now. And I have no love for Sons and Daughters. So the only band I was interested in seeing was Port O'Brien. Which was convenient, because they were the ones I was interviewing.

It was only a short, first-of-three opening set in a Tripod that went from empty to half-full as it progressed. Not really the kind of thing that can give a true impression of a band, especially one like Port O'Brien who are quiet twice as often as they're loud and play a lot of soul-searching songs about the sea. It was good to see though.

The difference between Port O'Brien and every band that sails the ocean deep in their imagination is this: salmon fishing. Van Pierszalowski, who is the main singer and songwriter, is the son of a commercial salmon fisherman, and Van spends summers in Alaska with him. Being a skiff-man, whatever that is. Cambria Goodwin, who plays banjo (inaudible at Tripod but essential to the sound on record) and also sings, is a baker at a salmon cannery. When Port O'Brien write songs with nautical metaphors... they're not metaphors. Well, they are. But it's a level closer. It's like the difference between a Hollywood actor doing an Irish accent, and an actual Irish accent, sort of.

Relating to the gig specifically, I'll just say that even though the other three people in the band (Josh, Zebedee and Caleb) were straight out of Vetiver/a Californian medicinal marijuana supplier's in appearance (flares and beards, basically), there is a distinctive Arcade Fire vibe about their live show. Part of it's the chemistry between Van and Cambria. Part of it's the energy of certain songs of theirs, not as developed as Arcade Fire's by a long shot, but showing signs. I don't know what the rest of it is, it's just an instinctive thing on my part.

The gig didn't do them justice, because they were cut short and the circumstances weren't right. But if you follow up on one thing I say on this blog, make it this: click the Muxtape link on the sidebar, and listen to I Woke Up Today.

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Got up late, no room to breathe (Monday, pt. 2)

So The Mae Shi at Crawdaddy on Monday was really good. But the real reason I left the house on Monday was to go to Times New Viking. Whose new album I really like.

Long story short, there was a mix-up with times. We assumed the Mae Shi would be done early because they were a support act in a Pod venue where curfew is king.

And we assumed Times New Viking would start late. Because it was in Andrew's Lane, which has a theatre licence. And because of an anonymous tip-off (probably not anonymous, I just don't know who it was).

We left the Mae Shi at about 10.20, before they were finished. Thinking Times New Viking couldn't have started earlier than 10, and more than likely would be a little late.

Plus, promoters were pretty accommodating about Sunset Rubdown/No Age and Liars/Thurston Moore. And The Mae Shi and Times New Viking seem like they would have a fairly big crossover. So it would be okay.

Not so.

It was raining. We ran all the way down Harcourt St.

We got there.

"SHIT! Is it over?!"

"Yeah dude, you guys missed it", quoth the drummer from Times New Viking, smoking outside.

Fuck.

God gave me very specific instructions. (Monday pt. 1)

The Mae Shi are a band I hadn't heard before last Monday. For most of the gigs I review on this blog, I have about six months of fanboy excitement brewing up inside me hyping it up. Not this time.

Technically I was there courtesy of Crayonsmith via their manager Dave via Bobby. But I don't think much of Crayonsmith. I might have mentioned that before, because they do support 70% of all bands. If not though, I'm putting it out there now, I don't like their music. Most of it is begging for melody, and the ones that have decent tunes at the core are generally pushing a bit towards 2005 NME territory. I wouldn't have bothered mentioning that I don't like them, except that they're physically impossible to avoid, either live or in Irish music writing. Even us Analogue boys having been covering them. But it's not for me.

Mae Shi were on second, behind Noah and the Whale, who I have no interest in whatsoever. I was asking stupid questions ("Are they post-rock or what?") and making stupid claims ("They look like I won't like them.") for the whole of their lengthy set-up. They opened with I Get Almost Everything, from the crowd. They spent lots and lots of their time in the crowd.

Most of their stuff was really good. "Twee hardcore" was the label State luminary and aforementioned guestlist fixer Bobby gave them. Not too far wrong. It was as if that sort of ultra-serious flavourless US punk-hardcore had been squirted with gunge or something. Run To Your Grave is one I remember as standing out, even though I didn't get the album until after (maybe "get" in inverted commas would be more appropriate).

For a record that seems to be some sort of concept album about biblical judgment, executed over glitchy keyboards, incredibly catchy singalong choruses and bursts of hardcore, it's surprisingly cohesive and excellent. HLLLYH, it's called. It's infused with a punk-like communalist vibe, except with all the accessibility of someone like Danielson.

They engulfed the whole crowd in a sheet at one point. Everyone was pushing it up, singing along even if they didn't know the words. The energy was thick enough to bottle and sell. And they were (technically) a support band. Basically, as their press stuff says, The Mae Shi want you to love life as much as they do. A nice thing to experience.

Photo from Fuchsia's Flickr, more there.

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Within the fruit there are worms.

In my life, I've e-mailed Jamie Stewart a total of maybe four or five times, trying to impress on him how incredibly important it is that he come to Ireland to play. He's e-mailed back a few times too, but it was all polite, meaningless words mostly. Or at least no commitments. Not that I expected him to just jump into a helicopter because I e-mailed him or anything.

The point is that I was happy when Xiu Xiu announced. After three days of an exam-study-gig-(or Champion's League final)-sleep schedule, I was getting tired, but it was Xiu Xiu. Come on, like. I noted to my friend Goo that when we were at Why? in Andrew's Lane, which is a shed, it was packed out with enthusiastic people with angular haircuts, but that Whelans was only half full for Xiu Xiu? First time they've been here ever, and no-one turns up? For shame Dublin.

It was way louder than I was expected. Certain quarters have complained about Xiu Xiu being sort of self-aware drama, or "music as nightmare" - it's not something I necessarily agree with, in terms of their recorded output, but the gig was definitely down that aisle.

Most of the time they weren't playing melody, Jamie and Caralee were hitting something very hard, whether cymbal, bell or snare. Ches Smith was hitting things hards all the time he wasn't being silent. Devin Hoff's electric double-bass made everything that much more ominous in person than it comes across on record.

There were whispers and there were screams. There was no banter whatsoever, except for a couple of muted thank yous and a "this is our first time in Dublin" at the end. There was no encore. It was just an hour and a bit of blasting through Women As Lovers and choice cuts from earlier albums. Even poor Clowne Towne was at the receiving end of a no-nonsense belting, in the absence of Caralee's arpeggiating Mini-Moog thing on this tour.

It's hard to pick highlights, because it was more like a rehearsed art show than a rock gig. Everything is integral, and it works as a whole set, not as a list of songs. It's stupid to pick stuff out. BUT. I'm going to anyway. Clover off La Foret, with gamelan bells and pin-drop silences was really mesmeric. No Friend Oh! is just a good song. Master Of The Bump had a bizarre boudoir vibe. There weren't bad songs.

The complaint I could make is this: I know they were at the end of a tour, and they're not the most populist band in the world anyway, but a little personality could have gone a long way. I know Dublin orgasms any time someone pretends to like it more than elsewhere, and I'm not saying that, but some sort of acknowledgment that they were playing a real-life place and not just a date on a tour might have been nice.

Also, in case they ever come back:

Do not sing along to the hurried, whispered lines about rape and self-loathing.

Just a tip, take it or leave it.

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