Archive for the 'Performance' Category

Live Review: Supergrass at the Avalon, July 12, 2008

Supergrass @ Avalon
Photo by the author

Despite overseas success in their native U.K., Supergrass seemed like the punchline to a joke when they were first heard stateside in the mid-90s. With a flip album title, seemingly novelty single, cheeky facial hair and a derivative sound (insert Kinks, The Who, Faces and T. Rex references here), they were by all appearances a one-hit Brit-pop band who lacked the depth of peers such as Oasis and The Verve and the ferocity and seriousness of chart-ruling U.S. bands like Pearl Jam. Other than some left-leaning commercial airplay and college appreciation, critical radio support never materialized, and Supergrass seemed destined for obsolescence.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the budget bin: five albums, a greatest hits collection and 14 years later, Supergrass is still here. With the release of Diamond Hoo Ha, their newest and perhaps best-rounded effort, they continue to defy the expiration date that should have seen them to their grave right about the time Bill Clinton started scoping out interns. And judging by the young, young, very young audience that showed up to see them display their wares Saturday night at the Avalon, Supergrass has another 14 years ahead of them.

Did Supergrass play the obligatory “new stuff?” Yes, they did. Did they play highlights from their career otherwise, touching on just about all of their releases? They did that too. And the thing is, their material continues to deliver infection, energy and melody – pretty much what rock music was once all about. In fact, Supergrass sounds more vital, more timeless today than ever, particularly stacked up against “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which lumbered from the house P.A. like a dated Dr. Marten stage-dive just minutes before the band took the stage.

While Diamond Hoo Ha has found Supergrass returning to form after their gentler and somewhat failed last effort, Road To Rouen, it was unmistakably their back catalog that set flames to the Avalon. “Moving,” “Mary” and “Pumping On Your Stereo” from 1999’s near-perfect Supergrass hailed the largest responses of the night; similarly, “Sun Hits The Sky” and “Late In The Day” from In It For the Money had equal effect. To be sure, front man/guitarist Gaz Coombes need not have repeatedly admonished the audience for shouting out song titles (“We don’t take requests, and the next person who does that…will be removed” he warned jokingly) – because if you wanted to hear it, they were gonna play it.

other U.K. three-piece pop band, The Police (except better executed) — as well as the mandatory show-closer, “Caught By The Fuzz.” And though there’s nothing novel now about them playing that song, it might as well be a victory anthem considering the stakes against them when Supergrass started their career: at a time when heartfelt, fun and non-political music was so out of vogue, it was the song for them that launched a thousand riffs — and may we have one thousand more.




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Live Review: The Gutter Twins at The Roxy, July 10, 2008


(Photo by Sam Holden)

If only one thing could be said about former Afghan Whigs’ front man/current Twilight Singers’ front man/current Gutter Twins’ co-front man Greg Dulli, it’s that he’s consistently inconsistent.

Dulli – who’s made a career out of mining the darker side of the heart’s needs in the tiny hours — ranges from brilliant songwriter and producer to drunken mess with alarming regularity. To be certain, it requires a lot of a Dulli fan to remain committed to the man’s vision, particularly in a live setting, where frequent sloppiness abounds.

The Gutter Twins – the much-ballyhooed musical marriage of Dulli and former Screaming Trees front man/solo artist/Isobel Campbell (of Belle & Sebastian) collaborator Mark Lanegan — released their long-awaited album Saturnalia earlier this year to wide praise. Unfortunately, the live rendition of the Dulli/Lanegan equation has been found wanting – a generally stilted and meandering affair lacking the chemistry that’s made Saturnalia a repeat player and half-year best-of list contender as well as both the machismo these artists have proffered in the past.

Thursday night at the Roxy, however, Dulli, Lanegan and company managed to get it right. Going straight for the throat, they banged into their single “Idle Hands” with all the subtlety of sledgehammer and didn’t bother pausing for breath before following up with a top-shelf Twilight Singers’ number, “Bonnie Brae.” Such was the tone of the night. Rather than jerk off the audience with moody atmospherics, The Gutter Twins at long last delivered a show that rocked, and in doing so, treated both their material and the audience with sincerity.

As with most single-release artists, the shallow catalog of The Gutter Twins has made them rely on covers and material from their other careers to make a headlining set work. The difference this time was that it was their songs rather than the oddities that shone throughout. While set-list regulars “Live With Me” (a Massive Attack cover) and Lanegan’s “Methamphetamine Blues” blistered and moaned, it was their own “The Stations,” “God’s Children,” and “Seven Stories Underground” that made the show. Even the commonly bland “Bette Noir” – which sounds too much like Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” to be taken seriously – was welcome this night. Closing the set with a sexed-up version of “Front Street,” The Gutter Twins could have left the stage and not returned, as they did at the Avalon a few months ago. Instead, Dulli, who insisted earlier in the night he had “legs” and was “ready to play,” reappeared, beaming ear-to-ear as he led the way through “Papillon” for the start of their encore.

Hopefully, whatever stride The Gutter Twins seem to have found will remain with them for the duration. A little consistency – of this sort, anyway – would serve them well.


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Live Review: Liz Phair Performing “Exile In Guyville” In Its Entirety: The Fillmore, San Francisco June 23, 2008

Liz Phair - San Francisco 2008
Good from Phair, Phair from Good: Liz Phair at the Fillmore
photo by the author

To me, Liz Phair will always be that mousy girl with dishwater hair from the neighborhood – the one who was the first to start drinking and who always smelled faintly of cigarettes and tuna.

One day she started hanging out with your brothers instead of your sisters and soon enough she was also the first girl to wear holes in the knees of her jeans.

What she lacked in looks and likability she made up for by muscling her way round with affected confidence. As a result, the boys eventually wanted her, the girls eventually hated her and she became the girl that you couldn’t forget.

On the eve of the 15th year anniversary re-release of her landmark album, Exile In Guyville, Liz Phair took the stage at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium to play that album in its entirety to a capacity house of devotees.

Recently liberated from a contentious relationship with Capitol Records, Phair’s first emancipated move was to oversee the long-rumored (and presumably lucrative) re-release of Exile on her new label, Dave Matthews’ singer/songwriter-friendly ATO Records. Celebrating that occasion with a handful of “performing Exile in its entirety” shows around the country, Phair was met by an audience in anticipation of a very special show.

Dressed in daisy dukes, tank top, leather jacket and hideous leggings, Phair unceremoniously strapped on her trademark cream-colored Fender Mustang and dove into “6’1”” for what would be the start of a frank if somewhat uninspired journey through the album which made her career.

To that end, she exhibited a true-to-form live presentation of Exile. Backed by a more than capable anonymous three-piece band, Phair kept everything simple, never straying from the original material. Unfortunately, this included most of the warbling vocals and weak guitar playing she first demonstrated on record 15 years ago. Though most musicians make noticeable technical and performance improvements over a decade and a half, Phair maintains much of the original general lack of proficiency that has plagued her career and kept much of the mainstream at bay, despite frequent press notices that she’s since had vocal training and overcome her notorious stage fright.

Of course with Phair and specifically with Exile, it’s never been about the chops. She burst onto the scene in the 90s with a ready-to-please audience awaiting the unabashed honesty and vulnerability she was willing to display in her songs. Standing apart from the throngs of cutesy corporate chick rockers and unwashed flannel-clad angsters, her music-as-a-confessional approach was enough to see her through the rest of the decade.

So though live performing has never been Phair’s forte, the aforementioned “6’1”” as well as “Never Said” were predictably good, as those “hits” have been staples of Phair’s live set for years. Surprising was a heartfelt version of “Explain It To Me,” which she prefaced by telling everyone if they bought the album re-release they could find out who the song was about on the bonus DVD documentary. A likewise tender “Canary” followed.

A nothing-special version of “Fuck And Run” would have been anticlimactic as a show closer, but with almost half of the album to go, the no-show Phair was lucky to have an audience do the heavy lifting for her, their enthusiastic singing carrying the song about compromise and yearning that’s made her so many fans over the years.

Likewise disappointing was a sexless version of “Flower,” which lacked any of the sincerity and coyness that had originally made it more significant than the “blowjob queen” label it birthed for her. Afterward, she tagged it as “the dirtiest song ever” to which the audience whooped in return — but Phair ought to spend some time with her son on MySpace to see what’s happened in 15 years since she asked to bang her would-be paramour in a canine manner.

The gears were also audibly rusty on numbers such as “Soap Star Joe” and “Mesmerizing” but she managed to bring everything home with a truly electrifying rendition of “Stratford-On-Guy,” — clearly the show’s highlight — which received thunderous applause.

After much stamping and whistling from the crowd, Phair returned to the stage, not very sheepishly apologizing for have no more songs on Exile to play and for being unprepared to play anything else (note: she played her supposedly unprepared encore at the other Exile shows around the country). Nonetheless, she capably crept through her Whip-smart opener “Chopsticks,” and a new untitled number which targeted her former label, Capitol Records (with a chorus to the effect of “ding dong, the witch is dead”). She finally reigned in the night by amicably butchering a solo version of “Polyester Bride,” laughing along with the crowd as she fumbled through the chords.

Littering the night with anecdotes about near-squat living (apparently at one point having been able to use her toilet and see Polish construction workers look up at her from renovating the floor below) and ruminating on a failed relationship and listening to The Rolling Stone’s Exile On Mainstream “over and over, in only a way a girl could understand,” Phair kept the audience engaged on a personal level if not a musical one — and that has always been her greatest strength.

Like that neighborhood girl masking her insecurities and shortcomings, Phair has first made her career as her own best press agent, purveyor of context which allowed her to endear herself to a listless cult in need of an icon. It’s a shame with her the songs always come second, because when we get honest glimpses of Liz Phair, she can be one of the most beautiful girls in the world.


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Live Review: mr. Gnome, Knitting Factory, June 6

mr. Gnome photo by the author
Lawn and Garden Refugees: mr. Gnome at the Knitting Factory
photo by the author

Despite online coverage in Rolling Stone and Spin, being one of LA Weekly’s picks of the week and having their set pushed back to the 11:00 pm prime-time slot, Cleveland-based duo mr. Gnome was greeted by an anemic crowd of eight as they took the stage in the Knitting Factory’s small room last Friday.

Regardless of the turnout, the near-empty space was overwhelmed within moments by an unlikely marriage of tenebrous sonority and frenetic noise, fueled by blog-darling rock power couple Nicole Brielle (guitar, vocals) and Sam Meister (drums, keys and random off-mic vocals).

If you took that aborted fetus that PJ Harvey was whining about in “Down By The Water,” resuscitated it, then had it raised by wolves who listened to nothing but Tool, Black Sabbath and Lisa Germano, you’d be on the right track to understanding something about what mr. Gnome is up to, made all the more impressive when you factor that these two perform with all the proficiency ascribed by those artists despite purportedly taking up their respective instruments just a few years ago.

Touring in support of their recent release, Deliver This Creature, mr. Gnome ripped through “Pirates,” “Rabbit” and “Deliver This Creature,” addressing the material with the kind of subconscious insouciance that comes only from artists who have been touring and playing the same songs every night for weeks. A warren of tight twists, turns and investigations of dialectics, their music revved from whimper to cheese grater in zero seconds flat, never in danger of losing its full effect at any point during the night.

mr. Gnome is further a visual punch line, with the hulking Meister nearly dwarfing his kit and Brielle’s petite frame in constant danger of being overcome by her guitars. To this end, she utilized a step stool to great effect, teetering on its highest peak to careen like an errant willow over her larger half’s drum set, granting the couple as much possible proximity while providing an additional unbalanced tableau that matched in physical terms the music they created.

By the time they arrived at “Night Of The Crickets” — the closest thing mr. Gnome has to a hit in this post-broadcast age — their crowd had doubled in size to 16 (including people they were traveling with and members of other bands), none of whom seemed less than impressed with the performance, and rightly so.

The only thing mr. Gnome seems to be lacking is a booking agent who can get them into the correct venue on Los Angeles’ east side, where an undoubtedly larger, more receptive audience awaits. Until then, they remain one of the most intriguing new acts in music and one to watch.


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Live Review: The Cure, Shrine Auditorium, June 1

I had a girlfriend once, P_______, whose favorite band was The Cure. She listened to them incessantly in her car and on her little boombox, finding in them the perfect soundtrack for everything from getting groceries and doing pilates to cleaning the bathroom and yes – having a good cry by candlelight.

She also used to leave her apartment door unlocked and ask me to sneak in “sometime between three and four” in the morning and join her in bed, er, unexpectedly.

In a word, she was weird.

As a Cure fan, she made an indelible impression on me. Though I was an enthusiast long before and long after I met her, I always conjured a live event of theirs to be attended by a coven of similar-minded individuals, sort of a combination of Columbine High students with the suicide hotline on speed dial alongside generally disenfranchised people who found solace in Rimbaud, Wim Wenders films, wearing black and participating in live-action vampire role-playing scenarios. So even though I would frequently blast Mixed Up at top volume while cruising around in my scarred Mazda, making every effort to scare cops, jocks and small animals, I had no designs on actually joining other Cure fans for a communal experience.

Stupid me.

Taking advantage of a friend’s unusable tickets Sunday night, I finally was able to bear witness to what critics, associates and weird girlfriends have testified for years was one of the best live acts in rock. Far from the dour “I-hate-my-parents” population of 40-year-olds I was expecting, the audience was as diverse as a Saturday morning line at the DMV. While those clinging to their Goth stylings were not absent from the affair, they were by far the minority. More surprising was the young Hispanic population - perhaps taking a cue from their culture’s relatively recent Morrissey obsession – that gathered in large numbers for the proceedings.

Cramming all the best bits of video and lighting from their current arena tour into the tiny Shrine Auditorium, The Cure took the stage to mass adoration as a projection of an interstellar starscape slowly trawled behind them. Striking into the aptly coordinated “Out of this World,” Robert Smith & Co. started what would be a nearly three-hour journey through past and present creations lamentably synonymous with hairspray, mascara, lipstick and Anne Rice since the 1980s.

The Cure is too cool for a cell phone
The Cure: Too Much For A Mere Camera Phone

Smith, looking older but less bloated than in recent years, led his similarly stripped-down band (longtime mate Porl Thompson (guitar), Simon Gallup (bass) and Jason Cooper (drums)) into invigorated versions of “Pictures of You” and “Fascination Street” to remind The People exactly why they were there before setting off into less familiar territory. However, far from a “this is where we sit down during the new songs” concert, new Cure concoctions such as “Sleep When I’m Dead” played easily side-by-side with more established offerings – a true testament to the continued creative relevance and longevity of this band.

Having more in common with Led Zeppelin than Bauhaus, the rhythm section of Gallup and Cooper simply killed it all night, providing grit and bombast to songs formerly fit for pet funerals. The facelifts didn’t stop there; sans the dated the keyboards that helped make these songs famous, Smith and Thompson set flame to old numbers by covering most of those parts on their guitars. A ridiculous version of “In Between Days” served as more of a guitar clinic in case anyone was mistaken those simple one-note guitar lines Smith fancies most of the time meant he couldn’t shred.

Smith invoked his trademark feline yowl on occasion and generally seemed to have a good time, including giving the boot to an overzealous fan at the edge of the stage at one point, then commenting “that was even better than I dreamt” afterward.

After 30 + songs and two encores (the second of which included “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” and “Killing an Arab,” among others), The Cure sans Thompson returned to the stage one last time for “Faith,” into which Smith incorporated a happy birthday sentiment for Gallup before disappearing for good, leaving the audience tired but moony eyed with satisfaction.

As for that girlfriend of mine - well, things didn’t quite work out. Though we both liked The Cure, we didn’t have much else in common - I didn’t have daddy issues or think I was a reincarnated 18th century French aristocrat, for example. I came home one day to find she had vacated my apartment, emptying her drawer and leaving my roommate to sniff some discarded underwear of hers that didn’t make it into the plastic shopping bag of belongings she took when she left my life forever.

Come to think of it, he was a big Cure fan, too.




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LIVE REVIEW: Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s, The Echo, May 24

Richard Edwards of Margot and the Nuclear So & So's
King Richard: Richard Edwards of Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s

photo by the author

It was just a few years ago that Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s performed at Spaceland to a partially filled room with an even smaller attentive audience. Perhaps it was weariness from their dogged touring schedule, but though emphatically delivered, their set was a strained and awkward affair at best. After the show, dour and scruffy bandleader Richard Edwards was seen standing alone on a dark corner outside the club, looking more than a little lost.

How times have changed.

After rolling up to the Echo in a converted school bus painted Death Black, the group found themselves playing to a devoted, packed room Saturday night. Though the business of music might be damned, the internet in its unbridled glory has allowed vital groups like Margot to develop and be discovered by an audience they deserve, even in a haven for the jaded like L.A.

The octet (an anchor of guitars, bass, drums and keyboards supplemented by a troika of multi-instrumentalists adding violin, lap steel guitar, trumpet, trombone, French horn, miscellaneous percussion and other weirdness) delivered on all expectations, running through the bulk of their full-length debut, The Dust of Retreat, as well as several vinyl-only sides, internet favorites and songs from their upcoming (and hard-earned) Epic Records offering.

Starting the set with a haunting and immediately essential affair we can only assume is called “Carnival,” Edwards and company won the crowd instantly. After Edwards apologized for doing so, they played through two additional unfamiliar but equally compelling numbers before launching into “Vampires in Blue Dresses” for what would be the first of several crowd sing-a-longs. Other highlights included the one-two punch of “Skeleton Key” and “Quiet as a Mouse” as well as a mini-acoustic set featuring just Edwards and keyboardist/merch-bait Emily Watkins, performing the Indianapolis-specific-yet-oddly universal “Broadripple is Burning,” among others. Whether in the midst of cacophony or intimacy, Edwards and Watkins demonstrated proof of the best boy/girl vocals this side of the Pixies and Broken Social Scene throughout the night.

When the band started to wander off stage, clearly leaving the crowd wanting more, Edwards stopped and wryly offered: “I’m not going to leave and then come back on stage. That would make me feel ridiculous,” before leading the charge into a finale wherein he managed to spontaneously smile in spite of himself, as if were possible that he might actually be having fun.

If there was previously any doubt, an overrun merch table and fans lingering after the show must have signaled to Edwards and company that from now on, they have a home in Los Angeles.




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Enigmatic Artist Anhai Returns to the Stage


anhai

May 25, 2008
8:00 PM
1214 Queen Street West,
Toronto, Ontario
Cost : free

New Music from Anhai. A refreshing new Canadian sound with songs from Canada’s nature. Anhai creates a blend of Anishanabee (First Nations) and mixed world background emerges in an original popular alternative music format. Her songs are awakening people to a powerful voice from nature.

Anhai’s live performances have included collaborations with (Ani DiFranco’s drummer) Don Kerr, upright bass legend George Koller, and inventor of virtual reality (true story) Jared Lanier. A protegé of Bob Ezrin’s in her mid-teens, Anhai has matured into a unique and unrepeatable voice that evokes anything from Polly Jean Harvey to Diamanda Galas to Lisa Gerrard, but resembles none. A transformative performance not-to-be-missed.

Visit http://www.myspace.com/anhaimusic


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Project: Ribcage bootleg video at The Dragonfly

Project: Ribcage has released a new bootleg video from one of their legendary Hollywood performances - this one from The Dragonfly.


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My Bloody Valentine Returns With The Elixir

My Bloody Valentine
Announcements are percolating through the metaverse that positively seminal po-mo alternative rockers My Bloody Valentine are not only returning to the live concert stage, but in the process or recording a new album!

Kevin Shields, quoted in the January 2007 edition of NME stated: “I do feel that I will make another great record. We are 100 per cent going to make another My Bloody Valentine record unless we die or something.” Well don’t all artist hope and believe that, but how many do? To put this in context, MBV’s last record “Loveless” was released in 1991. The album took over two years to complete, and cost well over $100,000.00, bankrupting the band’s label. The next we heard from them was Kevin Shield’s original contributions to Sofia Coppolla’s “Lost In Translation” soundtrack.

For those of us who were permanently transformed/ruined by our first listen to Loveless, fifteen years is a long time to hold your breath. I have found the strangest things to tide me over in the meantime: live MBV concerts in PAL format that I bought on the streets of Chile. I staked out an indie concert in LA a few years ago listing Kevin Shields as the headliner only to discover that it was the name of a band that made noise-core in tribute to their heroes. I repeatedly cite them in interviews as a fundamental influence in all of my musical output, not so much in an auditory sense as in one that is philosophic. The other day, when LA’s Indie 103.1 radio played “Only Shallow” I nearly crashed my car. Despite the fact that people invoke the holy name of MBV as an influence the way film students cite Tarkovsky, catching direct glimpses of the band in the popular market is not unlike spotting Bigfoot in Yellowstone.

But now that is changing. My Bloody Valentine is set to headline the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in upstate New York the week of September 20th. The event will be “curated” by Kevin Shields himself, which means the lineup will astound and amaze and likely irrevocably transform a small legion of young listeners and aspiring indie music mavericks spawning a new generation of John Cage-minded experiments. According to The Daily Swarm the band’s long-time booking agent Frank Riley has confirmed that after a brief European tour, the reformed group will launch a U.S. tour, stopping at 6-8 cities.

In NME Shields went on to say “I’d feel really bad if I didn’t make another record. Like, ‘Shit, people only got the first two chapters, but the last bit is the best bit’.” Lord knows the indie world, the music world, needs an injection - despite the massive upsurge of indie output and its availability, the music is reflecting back on itself in a weird self-parodizing manner that threatens to gentrify the very definition of creative freedom into a certified and predictable genre in the manner that befell the term “Alternative.”

So, welcome back Kevin shields, and My Bloody Valentine, I hope you fuck shit up and good.



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Rattle and Hum HD-DVD

U2 - from Rattle and HumI was too young to recognize when I saw U2’s Rattle and Hum in theaters back in the early 90’s that it is shot by Jordan Cronenweth (the DP of Blade Runner fame), but revisiting it on HD-DVD - it is an amazing thing to behold. I consider this to be U2’s golden period - when they immersed themselves in roots American music and produced amazing tracks like Angel of Harlem, recorded at Sun Studios or employed a gospel choir to revisit With or Without You. A landmark music doc that merits at least one more look.

Oh btw, HD-DVD R.I.P.

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