VILLAGERS KICK OFF A BRIEF SIX- DATE U.S. TOUR JUNE 16 AT BROOKLYN’S KNITTING FACTORY
“What are you doing in Birmingham then?”
This inquiry — proffered with a certain amount of menace by a hard-accented, daunting piece of beef who likely makes a living as a heavy in Guy Ritchie flicks — is a fair question.
What exactly was I doing installed in a casino, just shy of five AM, in Birmingham, England?
Video of Conor J O’Brien sans band on Later with Jools Holland
Blinking my bloodshot eyes against the unkind light, I focus them across the room, where my faithful, if alcoholic-and-gambling-addicted meerkat, Thomás, was valiantly failing away whatever little money we had left to a tableful of Texas Hold’em clichés. It was all a little 2006 for me, but as a friendly prostitute told me earlier that evening, the only things Birmingham was good for were “rain, shopping and my pussy – none of which you can afford.” Given that state of affairs, casino living seemed an acceptable second prize.
I briefly consider telling my ham-fisted friend the actuality of my circumstances, which involve a whirlwind intercontinental trip in search of European financing with which to complete my passion project, Hardcastle and McCormick: The Movie*, which had suddenly and quite painfully taken residence in turnaround limbo back home. But in mentally recounting that misadventure, which cumulated with me snorting obscene amounts of vitamin B for an “agent” in an attempt to prove I could fake a line in order to get a part in an independent, low-budget film about a pizza boy and a lonely cougar housewife – which was a maximized effort to earn some money for the return trip to the United States of Goldman Sachs — I was suddenly blessed with the clarity to see that there was nothing to be gained here by telling the truth. Except maybe a beating.
“Got an aunt that lives here,” I mutter to the likely pugilist, noting the way the stitching of his shirt was straining against the bulk of flesh underneath.
He studies me the way a lion must while considering whether or not to disembowel a gazelle, then grunts in affirmation, improbably turning his attention back to the television above the gaming tables.
I feel like this is the second piece of luck I’ve had since landing on British soil. Just a few hours before, while scanning Birmingham’s weekly rag, I discovered that the cast of the hit Fox network TV series Glee was in town for a promotional performance at a place called Club Villagers, no doubt to muster foreign support for a franchise expansion a la The Office in reverse. So my current plan called for waiting out the rain by lightly gambling in the casino for the next 12 hours or so until it was time to go over to the venue and fake my way into the event by brandishing my dubious online press credentials. Certainly, being the only American journalist covering the overseas event would allow me to get some interview access with the cast of the show – especially with that dreamy Chris Colfer — which I planned to then parlay into a lead story on the holiest of holy hard news sites – E! Online – and earn some sorely needed cash for our plane ride home.
But watching as Thomás slides a majority slice of our diminishing pile of chips across the table after another losing hand, I’m starting to think a wet cardboard box on the street would have been cheaper for us than Plan A.
In point of fact, the next 12 hours pass uneventfully, with Thomás eventually battling his way back from the depths of debt to emerge the equivalent of $15 richer than when he started the night. By my calculations, between his winnings and the amount of comp drinks we’ve consumed, we emerge from the casino, right on schedule, in the neighborhood of $783 ahead the game.
Imagine my disdain then, to arrive at the show and learn that the cast of Glee was not in fact on tour and performing on a Tuesday night in Birmingham, England – but rather that the venue was called Glee Club and some Irish act named Villagers was playing instead.
It seemed a serious misinterpretation of the ad I had read some 19 hours earlier – perhaps due to all the vitamin B I had snorted – had led us astray. Far, far astray.
So long E! Online. Hello, Music Zeitgeist.
Glee Club was, at least on this night, set up for optimal performance reverence with a seated configuration, rather than the usual mess of bodies in a pile of general admission regret which birth most Music Zeitgeist reviews. The chairs could possibly have been an effort to camouflage weak ticket sales, but as one of them was available on the aisle fairly close to the stage, who was I to complain? If all else failed, once the lights went down, the venue’s seated arrangement would allow for two – hell, maybe even three – hours of sheltered sleep in near darkness.
No such luck.
No, our luck was much, much better.
From the time Villagers took the stage, a beautiful chaos reigned at Glee Club, to the degree that sleep was not possible – nor wanted.
For in Birmingham, just one week after the release of their debut full-length album, Becoming A Jackal, Villagers set about decimating their Glee Club audience with a barely controlled miasmatic deluge of dense, dark, 60’s-folk-influenced pop deliverance.
Fans of Jeff and Tim Buckley, The National, Damien Rice, Ours, Van Morrison, Tindersticks, Leonard Cohen, early Shannon Wright, Simon And Garfunkel, Radiohead and even Jens Lekman would do well to take note of Villagers as they begin their limited, six-date U.S. Tour June 16 at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn.
Though Villagers is effectively a nom de plume for frontman Conor J O’Brien’s solo indulgences, it would only be through the success of ignorance to refer to Villagers in a live setting as anything less than a full band effort. O’Brien himself is impressive enough, but it’s the live addition of drums, keys, bass, lead guitar and backing vocals which render Villagers a force to be reckoned with (even though my high school English teacher told me not to end sentences with prepositions).
Kicking things off with “The Meaning Of The Ritual,” O’Brien quietly strummed his tiny guitar and offered confessionally: “My love is selfish / and I bet that yours is too,” conjuring a beaten veteran fresh off the frontlines of Love, on leave to sagely offer advice to all us FNGs. But unlike the album version of “Ritual,” which builds slowly only to check out after three minutes, just when you think something might happen, the song on this night went from hymnal to apocalyptic, swelling into a wall of sound that would make Phil Spector want to kill (again). It certainly wasn’t the last time the set would see such a turn of events; a number of Becoming A Jackal’s songs were similarly ignited over the course of the evening with a pyromaniac’s delight.
In fact, the next three songs (“Home,” “Becoming A Jackal” and “That Day”) were equally played as if they were set-enders, undoubtedly leaving a number of audience members wondering how the show would end if this was how it was starting.
All of which was nothing compared to what Villagers had in store for us next.
“Pieces,” which is bound to become mix-tape fodder for the Twilight set, followed, and for a moment, it seemed as if the crowd might get a sonic reprieve. “Pieces” started off meekly enough, with a spread of 60’s string-and-piano schmaltz a la “Theme From A Summer Place,” while O’Brien weakly croaked out his vocal accompaniment: “For a long, long time / I’ve been in pieces.” Just a few moments later, the whole she-bang jumped the rails and erupted like Eyjafjallajökull all over again. It appeared that Villagers’ intent was to bring the building down upon themselves and the crowd alike with their offering, and in fact, around the time the song’s coda rolled around, I was nervously eyeing the emergency exit signs in case a quick escape was necessary. At that point, the only thing clarion in the seismic mess that emanated from the stage was O’Brien’s werewolf howling, still hair-raisingly audible over the shuddering of Glee Club’s foundation.
It Takes A Village...to create the carnage Villagers delivered at Glee Club June 1st (crime scene photo by author).
At that point, given that everyone in the room had broken a sweat, Villagers took things down several notches with the tender album-closer “To Be Counted Among Men” and the fun, folky frolic of “The Pact (I’ll Be Your Fever).” Showing they had yet another gear in their arsenal (or perhaps it was a bottle of NOS in their trunk), O’Brien took up residence behind the piano so Villagers could whip out Becoming A Jackal’s opener — the hypnotic-if-ghastly Grimm’s fairy tale-esque “I Saw The Dead.”
Wrapping up the main set, they took on “Down, Under The Sea,” off 2009’s The Hollow Kind EP, before ending things with a churning “Ship Of Promises.”
Unfortunately, the usual “hey maybe we’ll come back and play a few more songs” jerk-off followed, but on this occasion at least, the audience was demanding it, even if it was in their own “we’re seated but we will clap ardently if reservedly in appreciation for the fact that our minds have just been riven asunder by your musical stylings.”
“Set The Tigers Free” led off after the break, providing somewhat of a breather with its mellow Marty Balin’s “Hearts” by-way-of-Tindersticks vibe. Finally on its last legs, the set closed as Villagers played their 2009 debut single, “On A Sunlit Stage,” which is inexplicably unavailable on either their EP or full-length release. Of course, it wouldn’t have been Villagers if they played it straight; true to form that night, the song crescendo’d into a sonic tidal wave, which abruptly stopped, leaving a vast silence in the room before more ardent-if-reserved clapping began anew.
Though Becoming a Jackal is not yet a month old, it’s hard not to wonder what Villagers will do next, since their live set was significantly extra-dimensional compared to the album versions of the songs they performed. That’s not to take anything away from O’Brien, who wrote all the material on the record, played almost all the instruments and produced it to boot. But the fact is that having experienced Villagers live makes it tough to listen to BAJ knowing those ass-kicking incendiary devices and chorale singing elements present in the live set aren’t forthcoming.
For his part, O’Brien makes quite the compelling performer, his looks belying the furor he ably and suddenly wielded regularly throughout the set. He resembles the twee progeny of Elijah Wood and that other Conor – Oberst – rendered even more harmless-looking by his diminutive guitar, all of which provides him with the theatrical leverage to come off as an unexpected wolf in sheep’s clothing. Possessing a flair for the dramatic, he’d oftentimes scan the audience down his nose and out of the corner of his eye, offering something of an invitation or condemnation, depending on which of his words were fleeing his mouth as his eyes happened upon his victims. When things would really heat up, O’Brien would often stray from the mic and repeatedly murmur lyrics to himself with his eyes closed, as if under a spell.
Still, it appears he’s far from taking himself seriously, and further still from fitting any tortured artist stereotypes that might follow him around, given the nature of his music (with his dark and literary lyrics, O’Brien has much more in common with James Joyce than his weepy singer-songwriter contemporaries). In fact, he would affably, even goofily, address the crowd between songs in the set, noting on more than one occasion, for example, how the audience was “freaking [Villagers] out” for being polite and tame compared to the normal raucousness of their affairs.
But nice guy or not, one thing is for certain. O’Brien and his Villagers ravaged the audience at Glee Club on June 1st, and picked their bones clean.
Inventions of the digital age — internet, mobile phones and hybrid vehicles — certainly make living more convenient, but does any of it mean our lives are better? Do you really need that status update from your Uncle Joey in Fairbanks, AK? To have the office call you when you’re taking in a vista at the Grand Canyon? To know the government can track you into a a port-a-john at Lollapalooza via the GPS in your phone?
Instead, let’s consider regression.
Think back to a time before Goldman Sachs ran the economy, when Twitter was something dirty you tried to do to your girlfriend under the dining room table at dinner, and when Michael Jackson was still black.
If you wanted to hear new music, you listened to one of three radio stations or risked going into that shady-looking independent record store to hazard a conversation with that creepy guy behind the counter who had that funny, skunky-but-sweet odor you wouldn’t learn about until high school, which sort of reminded you of Uncle Joey from Fairbanks, AK
Weren’t things better then?
Judging by their set Tuesday night at the House of Blues in Anaheim, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club probably thinks so.
BRMC live at HOB Anaheim - photo by the author
For a band that’s built a career by wearing their influences on their sleeves, BRMC has notably improved over the last decade by increasingly boiling their music down to its most basic elements: guitar, bass, drums and voice. While they were quickly tarnished by the critics with (numerous, but mostly favorable) Velvet Underground and Jesus & Mary Chain comparisons upon the release of their debut, BRMC has nevertheless avoided charting a course set for originality. Which is to their credit, as the results have almost always been impressive, and quite honestly, given the cluttered, post-internet music landscape, refreshing.
If J&MC and Velvet Underground taught us anything, it was that it was perfectly fine to not really know how to play your instruments as long as you looked bored, acted cool, had bad hair and stole liberally from those before you. Drugs also helped. BRMC has since taught us that doing that and being adept musicians are not mutually exclusive. Having shed some of their shoegaze and psychedelic tendencies over the years, they have arrived at a place where — quite simply — they rock. They hard, they rock good and they rock often. And with every release, they seem to do fulfill that formula by doing more with less.
Such was the case Tuesday night, where for nearly two hours they demonstrated cuts from their freshly baked 2010 release, Beat The Devil’s Tattoo, and plundered their own vaults for a showing of some serious stomping, rootsy, garagey, no-frills rock ‘n’ fucking roll.
BRMC quite simply killed it with “Ain’t No Easy Way Out,” “Six Barrel Shotgun” and the title track to their latest longplayer. They found moments for quiet reflection as well, with bassist Robert Levon Beet and guitarist Peter Hayes taking solo turns during a mini-acoustic breather partway through the set, but only long enough for the crowd to adjust themselves before the pummeling began anew.
Their encore saw them level those gathered with “Shadow’s Keeper” and a matching bombastic light show — which could have triggered epilepsy in event the least photo-sensitive audience members had they not been subject to the ninety minute-plus raucous display that had come beforehand. Even a drunken audience member who was obnoxiously shouting to posses Peter’s nuts, and demanding he remove his pants for that purpose, was not enough to derail what as ultimately a “had to be there” performance before a packed house.
Nine years after their first (stateside) release, BRMC’s initial effort is now unquestionably considered a bonafide classic. And there’s no reason the same won’t be said for the rest of their catalogue, providing they stay away from such modern inventions as Autotune, electric keyboards and mainstream popularity.
Progress be damned.
Truffle Jones filed this report from his trailer on the set of Hardcastle and McCormick: The Movie
Following the comeback release of LP “Up from the Ground”, Los Angeles pop/rock outfit Madras was ironically halted as leader/singer Dan Luperini wrestled with minor but nagging health struggles that left him unable to sing. After a two year silence, the band popped up for a show at Hollywood’s Molly Malones on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 – where it seems Dan and his voice were on the mend. Dan managed to deliver the lead vocals for several songs, while some good friends guested as lead to fill out the rest of the show.
Dan Luperini of Madras at Molly Malone's Los Angeles.
In fact this eventuality led to some very exciting new collaborations for the band creating an evening evocative of a Thievery Corporation set. Swirling guitars, hummable melodies, unusual time signatures worked in concert with the different voices and styles of the guest singers to produce a completely reinvigorated and exciting fresh take of the amazing Madras canon.
But make no mistake, when Dan Luperini took over the singing duties for the last three numbers, he allayed any doubt that his wide vocal range is fully restored. The final number, “Go On” was particularly powerful with Luperini hitting some high notes with his dreamy, breathy, near-operatic voice while guitarist Marc Thomas laid down some improvised multi-layer guitar beds reminiscent of Dave Torn.
Here was the complete vocalist lineup:
Macain Treat
wide awake
hopeless
Aimee Lynn Chadwick
lullaby
great wide spinout
Singer Aimee Lynn Chadwick and drummer Ryan Brown
Sarah Brown
hollows
Marc Luperini
for keeps
Dan Luperini
wichita lineman (cover)
goodbye my love
go on
Madras is:
Ryan Brown – drums
Chinmoy Panigrahy – bass
Marc Thomas – guitar
Dan Luperini – guitar/vocals
Look for Madras to start showing up in the clubs again soon.
Due to heavy pre-Halloween traffic en route to Origami Records and an inexplicably stupid entry policy at the Bootleg Theatre, I managed to miss both L.A. performances by The Antlers last Thursday night. Lucky me, because that left a slot open on my dance card for Montreal’s Land Of Talk, who were playing at Spaceland that same evening.
Cymbal-ic gesture: Land Of Talk's Powell at Spaceland (photo by the author).
Land Of Talk appears to have more going for them that any indie band could hope for: their last full-length album was produced in part by shit-hot Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame, and was released in the States by Conor Oberst’s shit-hot Saddle Creek label. If that weren’t enough, singer Elizabeth Powell has done time as the female touring voice of shit-hot Broken Social Scene, joining the likes of shit-hot Amy Milan, Leslie Feist and Emily Haines. And in case you missed it the first time – Land Of Talk is from shit-hot Montreal.
With all that lather on them, it was surprising to find a less than half-filled room awaiting Land Of Talk’s performance shortly before midnight. Whether or not the rest of L.A.’s indie music fans had committed to one of the aforementioned events by The Antlers or the first of two nights by Built To Spill, or something else altogether, they sure as hell weren’t at Spaceland.
No matter, there was all that much more of Land Of Talk for those in attendance to enjoy.
Helmed by Powell – a former jazz student — Land Of Talk live is essentially a trio suffering through an identity crisis. The same way a schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder assumes various identities, which – no matter how disparate, are all of that person — a Land Of Talk show will find you being ushered through a slice of winsome pop that recalls The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler one moment and then ensconced in a frenzied inferno a la toenut. the next. It’s that manic-but-cohesive combination of pop sensibility melded with serious musical chops that puts LOT in a category all their own, justifiably immune to any comparisons with their geographically aligned colleagues Arcade Fire, The Dears, Stars or The Stills (none of whom should be compared to each other anyway). Put plainly, in the Land Of Talk, there aren’t any rules that say good songwriting must be restricted by musical simplicity.
It was momentarily concerning that “Some Are Lakes” – the sunny, summer-y pop gem that aired off LOT’s 2008 LP of the same name – arrived early in the set, as it is as close to anything the group has to an readily identifiable pop culture toehold. But any wonder whether that song’s appearance heralded an early peak to the night was quelled the moment Powell and company invited their tour manager/merch seller/van driver on stage to fill in on bass while bandmember Joe Yarmush slid over to man guitar, keys and other miscellany — setting the stage for Land Of Talk + 1 to blister through material from their latest release, the Fun and Laughter EP, including the stellar “Sixteen Asterisk” and “May You Never.”
While LOT’s smart songwriting could live many lives on its own, it’s with drummer Andrew Barr’s contributions that the group arrives at something completely combustible and unique. As a vocalist, Powell never comes across as anything less than sincere, but it’s Barr’s punctuation, quite literally, that cements her messages as more than anchorless fancy. For all her toil onstage with her high-strapped guitar and theatrical bluster, the risks she shares with Yarmush would be a bit much to take without the framework Barr provides for them on which to stretch their fabric. Whether bombastic or mellow, Land Of Talk collectively delivers compositions that simply exceed the service of the instruments creating them. Just as Powell is never merely singing her way through a song for the sake of it, Barr is always doing more than just keeping the beat. Again, not your average indie fare, and delightfully so.
But there’s really no point to trying to dissect what LOT is or how it works and why. By the end of the night, it was apparent that the appeal of LOT has little to do with complexity and everything to do with connectivity. Powell has a gift of expressing herself – her yearnings, disappointments, celebrations – in a way that resonates in tandem with the music she and her bandmates play. Land Of Talk never leaves the impression that their songs are mere constructs of words on top of music; instead, each song comes across as a very specific emotional delivery mechanism.
Whatever the case, know that what LOT does, they do well and did it exceptionally on Thursday night, despite that so few were there to receive their performance. There was a mutual appreciation between artist and audience from the get-go (Powell kept thanking them for coming out on a “Tuesday night,” very clearly suffering from Where The Hell Am I? Road Syndrome) which made for a blessed marriage. As she gave, the crowd gave in return, and so on until the conclusion of the show arrived like a pot boiling over with goodwill. Even after an encore vaguely sated the show’s handful of attendees, it was clear from the smiles on their impassioned faces that they didn’t care if anyone else in L.A. turned out to the event or not. In fact, they probably preferred that less people came, if only so Land Of Talk can remain their little secret for just a little while longer.
When Aimee Mann took the stage last Friday night at the Wiltern, it was with little fanfare and a lot of talking. Before she even played a note, she had offered the audience an unusual proposition: she would play “eight or nine” songs to start out the evening, and then turn over the reigns to the crowd, taking requests from them until she decided to call it a night. There was nothing at the time to indicate that “calling it a night” was going to be an event two hours and 15 minutes in the making.
What was ostensibly Mann’s last show of her then-current tour actually wound up being much more like a master class on songcraft and showmanship. As Mann was touring without the benefit of a full band, the evening’s focus was placed squarely on her voice and songs, rather than the dynamics and bombast which typically overcompensate for the same-ness that permeates the work of most singer-songwriters.
Truth be told, if Mann has any weakness, it is that very one – much of her oeuvre sounds interchangeable at first listen, particularly a lot of the work that followed in the wake of her essential Bachelor No. 2 / Magnolia soundtrack releases from the late 90s. Married to the right song, her voice delivers like guru’s advice, laden with truths that cut to the heart of matters. On the other hand, guided incorrectly, less savvy fare like Lost In Space‘s “Guys Like Me” comes to the fore. While many of Mann’s 90s female contemporaries made their mark bristling with anger and invectives, her trademark delivery has always been something far more sincere, albeit lazier in tone. And though there’s nothing inherently fallible about that quality, it does make it harder to hurdle songs that lack the strength of her best writing, particularly those on more recent releases.
Still, if Mann is anything, she’s consistent. Her output has regularly been composed of lyrically keen songs that smack of Beatles-esque melodic sensibilities. Compiling a “best of” from her catalogue would be a daunting task, and not just because of its quantity (six albums and the majority of a soundtrack, not counting ‘Til Tuesday releases). And on this night, with the audience working for her, there was an assurance that the set would be populated by the cream of Mann’s crop. After plowing through some deeper cuts from her various releases (such as the Lost In Space b-side “Nightmare Girl”) before engaging the audience’s whims, it was a foregone conclusion that the vox populi would call for more popular entries from her canon to balance out the show.
Though Mann made it clear early on she would entertain all suggestions, she also set parameters to the effect that she would limit any ‘Til Tuesday fare to two songs maximum and that she would allow herself two opt-outs for songs she didn’t feel like playing. Not like those guidelines limited the imagination of the audience – by the time she wound down the planned portion of her set, the stage was littered with requests. In a sense, it was after those requests were gathered into a hat for Mann’s random selection that the real show began.
Audience requests varied from Lost In Space’s “Invisible Ink” to Whatever’s “4th Of July” and Everything’s Different Now’s “The Other End (of theTelescope),” though to be fair, the requests as a whole were still anchored by the songs from Bachelor No. 2 and the Magnolia soundtrack which hadn’t been covered in the first half of the set, including “Just Like Anyone” and “Ghost World” (written as “Gost World,” on the request sheet, much to Mann’s delight). In fact, by the time the show ended, she had played almost all of the songs from those two releases, (though “Red Vines” and “Deathly” were two of the more notable exclusions).
This isn’t to say things were predictable – Mann was tickled by the appearance of The Forgotten Arm’s “That’s How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart” from the request hat, stating that it hadn’t been played once on the entire tour. And though she warned against anyone requesting songs that weren’t hers, like say – “Freebird” – more than one request along the lines of “Memories” from the musical Cats made it out of the hat before being comically discarded.
As an alumnus of L.A.’s vaudeville-like singer-songwriter haven, Largo, Mann was well-equipped to keep the audience entertained with lots of joking and banter between songs. And while she foretold various “trainwrecks” were in store for the night, particularly on the aforementioned “Invisible Ink” — which she apologized for beforehand — nary a stale note was to be found over the course of the show. Throughout, Mann and her band (a trio which expertly fleshed out her compositions with keyboards, lap steel and rhythm guitar) kept things interesting by varying the instrumentation on songs; Mann herself went so far as to occasionally play bass and recorder as well as accompany numbers with her right foot manipulating the high-hat cymbals from a drum kit. Again, none of these changes were “wacky” as much as they were fresh and complimentary to her voice and songs.
At around two hours into the show, having barely made a dent in the stack of paper that was nesting in the request hat, Mann turned over the final selections of the set to her band, who came up with “Freeway” from 2008’s @#%&*!Smilers, before they quickly overshadowed it with “Driving Sideways.”
After just a few moments, Mann and company returned to the stage and goofed through part of Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” as a make-good on a joke/reference to a request from an earlier tour stop. Then, even after two hours, things seemed to come to an all-too-quick ending as Mann broke out ‘Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” and the Harry Nilsson-penned “One” as the final numbers of her performance.
At a point when most acts would be done with their post-show deli trays, meet ‘n’ greets and be halfway into the hookers and blow, Mann and her band were still giving their all to the Wiltern audience. Regardless of her success or lack thereof as a chart-topper, there’s little wonder why Aimee Mann has persevered through her origins as an 80s pop idol, various major label woes and the insecurity that comes with becoming an independent artist. Having paid those dues, Mann certainly has earned her status as a headliner – which is a good thing, because she’s one tough act to follow.
When Aimee Mann took the stage last Friday night at the Wiltern, it was with little fanfare and a lot of talking. Before she even played a note, she had offered the audience an unusual proposition: she would play “eight or nine” songs to start out the evening, and then turn over the reigns to the crowd, taking requests from them until she decided to call it a night. There was nothing at the time to indicate that “calling it a night” was going to be an event two hours and 15 minutes in the making.
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