As RJR mentioned, I was detained in rehearsal and class much of Thursday. Our show was fantastic, it was an honour to play with Pete and J, who put on a fantastic live show. If any of you have the chance to attend one of their live shows, I think you will find it quite a treat. They come to the bay area pretty often, so keep your eyes and ears open, and you'll catch them. They have released a couple of records and (most recently) an EP, which are all quite nice - I may indulge in a review of their LP later - but even they pale in comparison to the stellar live performance. Really dynamic, really great. Highly recommended.
http://www.peteandj.com
-PTC
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Friday, November 9, 2007
Love Sufjan
Sufjan Stevens and Asthmatic Kitty are running perhaps the most genius promotion I've ever seen. Head over to http://asthmatickitty.com/main.php for the scoop. This joins a long line of Sufjan Christmas presents, including a number of holiday-themed EPs.
-RJR
-RJR
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Big concert night
I'm giving live music a third shot this week tonight. We'll see how it goes. If everything goes according to the script, I should be seeing James Taylor at Arco Arena later. Pretty neat guy, he was the first non-Beatle on Apple Records and in large part helped to invent the singer/songwriter genre as we know it. Sam Beam, Sufjan Stevens, and really anyone that's picked up an acoustic guitar owes him a nod.
I imagine my co-blogger is in rehearsal most of the day. Maybe he'll have something to say about his show later.
-RJR
I imagine my co-blogger is in rehearsal most of the day. Maybe he'll have something to say about his show later.
-RJR
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Spotlight On: Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos
In this piece (and subsequent ones like it), I'm going to try and expose an artist that far too few people know about. It's sort of like a "Best Music You've Never Heard" type of thing. Just for your own personal edification and betterment.
Today, I want to bring a band by the name of Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos into the spotlight. Despite an awkward mouthful of a name, they put out one of the finest records of 2006 (a good year for music, one which saw the releases of The Crane Wife, The Loon, and other records of that calibre), entitled The Dust of Retreat. In a recent conversation with RJR, he said it the best: never in recent memory has genre-hopping been executed so well, so seamlessly, and most importantly, so genuinely and convincingly. This 8-piece from Illinois are not just writing all different sorts of songs because they have short attention spans, it's because they have a variety of different things to say, and use genre as a malleable means of expression. From the psych-folk of "A Sea Chanty of Sorts," to the harder grind of "Quiet as a Mouse," to the bouncing indie-splashed-with-country "Vampires in Blue Dresses," the record boasts a diversity of sound that is unparalleled in recent memory. For a debut it is undeniably magnificent, it shows a band with enormous potential to travel brilliantly in a variety of different directions. Seriously, jump on this bandwagon before it becomes a bandwagon.
-PTC
Today, I want to bring a band by the name of Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos into the spotlight. Despite an awkward mouthful of a name, they put out one of the finest records of 2006 (a good year for music, one which saw the releases of The Crane Wife, The Loon, and other records of that calibre), entitled The Dust of Retreat. In a recent conversation with RJR, he said it the best: never in recent memory has genre-hopping been executed so well, so seamlessly, and most importantly, so genuinely and convincingly. This 8-piece from Illinois are not just writing all different sorts of songs because they have short attention spans, it's because they have a variety of different things to say, and use genre as a malleable means of expression. From the psych-folk of "A Sea Chanty of Sorts," to the harder grind of "Quiet as a Mouse," to the bouncing indie-splashed-with-country "Vampires in Blue Dresses," the record boasts a diversity of sound that is unparalleled in recent memory. For a debut it is undeniably magnificent, it shows a band with enormous potential to travel brilliantly in a variety of different directions. Seriously, jump on this bandwagon before it becomes a bandwagon.
-PTC
Take a deep breath
Conspicuous in its absence today is my report from The Hold Steady/Art Brut show. As I suspected before I left town, I wasn't able to get into the Mezzanine. As per their liquor license, they're not allowed to admit anyone under the age of majority. The story of how I went from being the 32nd person to get a ticket to a show at the Warfield to being turned away at the Mezzanine is one of corporate incompetence, and is all too indicative of how perverted the music industry has become.
Perhaps I wouldn't be so incensed if this had been the only show I had missed for a non-logistical reason. Last Thursday, a free ...Trail of Dead was advertised in Berkeley. What promised to be an excellent chance to see one of my favourite (and recently unsigned) turned out to be a vehicle for promotion of Dethklok, a fictional metal band appearing in a show on Cartoon Network. Rather than joining a smallish group of enthusiastic TOD fans (on a weekday afternoon, much like the free Girl Talk/Dan Deacon show at the same venue last month), I found myself several thousand deep in a line of devotees obviously in attendance for a (now headlining) fictional band. The ballroom used for the show filled up long before I approached the front of the line and by most accounts, TOD were all but booed off the stage. I hear tell that booths promoting mobile phones and a new video game were in-venue as well. All in all, a resounding success for independent music and original culture in general.
I'm willing to chock up last Thursday to one-off incompetence and the inevitable overconsumption of a free good (see Paully, Mark (1968) and Manning, Willard et al (1987) for excellent critiques of single-payer health care). But last night's show exposed the ugliness of the music industry, as the actors pulling the levers had the curtain pulled on them. The root problem with popular music is the lack of experimentation and malaise among listeners, but a problem common to both popular music and unpopular music and the its subset, independent music (pity the unpopular major label bands), is a misaligning of incentives. The existence of a music market is natural. People in general want to consume music and a subset of the same people are willing to provide music as artists. Voila, a market. A regrettable aspect of the last 100 years or so is the increasing separation between the populations of listeners and musicians. Fewer people now than in all of modern history play an instrument and a decreasing number experience live music in the home or even in their home town.
The failure of decentralised music markets has invited talent management, promoters, and ticket vendors to step in, often with skills leart in modeling, circuses, sport, and news media. Music has become, by and large, the charge of LiveNation, Clear Channel, and Ticketmaster, operating in an highly uncompetitive environment bringing all the trappings of monopoly:
-price discrimination (charging different customers different prices for the same good, think seating chart and presale)
-advertising (all those "helpful" e-mails, billboards)
-bundling (overcharging for a product by tying its sale to another, more desired product, the iTunes music store recently started offering Ticketmaster-branded presale tickets and other music stores have done it for a while)
All in an attempt to differentiate Usher from Robin Thicke from John Legend. The problem with music is not so much that it has become "a commodity to be bought and sold" as a Marxist critique rings, but that monopolies try to do the opposite, to make this or that artist special and dictate taste.
Independent music has managed to creep out from under UMG, Sony, and Clear Channel, fuelled by listeners willing to question dictated taste as well as technologies helping to disperse new ideas more quickly: the cassette tape (a tool of the Ayatollah Khomeini, sadly) the CD burner, the mp3, and (of course) the blog. Ticketmaster and LiveNation are striking back, judging by the communication breakdown/clusterfuck that was The Hold Steady show, as well as the presale bundles on the ITMS (including Led Zeppelin, "Communication Breakdown" ha), and the recent signing of Madonna to a music/live combination exclusive contract with LiveNation.
-RJR
Perhaps I wouldn't be so incensed if this had been the only show I had missed for a non-logistical reason. Last Thursday, a free ...Trail of Dead was advertised in Berkeley. What promised to be an excellent chance to see one of my favourite (and recently unsigned) turned out to be a vehicle for promotion of Dethklok, a fictional metal band appearing in a show on Cartoon Network. Rather than joining a smallish group of enthusiastic TOD fans (on a weekday afternoon, much like the free Girl Talk/Dan Deacon show at the same venue last month), I found myself several thousand deep in a line of devotees obviously in attendance for a (now headlining) fictional band. The ballroom used for the show filled up long before I approached the front of the line and by most accounts, TOD were all but booed off the stage. I hear tell that booths promoting mobile phones and a new video game were in-venue as well. All in all, a resounding success for independent music and original culture in general.
I'm willing to chock up last Thursday to one-off incompetence and the inevitable overconsumption of a free good (see Paully, Mark (1968) and Manning, Willard et al (1987) for excellent critiques of single-payer health care). But last night's show exposed the ugliness of the music industry, as the actors pulling the levers had the curtain pulled on them. The root problem with popular music is the lack of experimentation and malaise among listeners, but a problem common to both popular music and unpopular music and the its subset, independent music (pity the unpopular major label bands), is a misaligning of incentives. The existence of a music market is natural. People in general want to consume music and a subset of the same people are willing to provide music as artists. Voila, a market. A regrettable aspect of the last 100 years or so is the increasing separation between the populations of listeners and musicians. Fewer people now than in all of modern history play an instrument and a decreasing number experience live music in the home or even in their home town.
The failure of decentralised music markets has invited talent management, promoters, and ticket vendors to step in, often with skills leart in modeling, circuses, sport, and news media. Music has become, by and large, the charge of LiveNation, Clear Channel, and Ticketmaster, operating in an highly uncompetitive environment bringing all the trappings of monopoly:
-price discrimination (charging different customers different prices for the same good, think seating chart and presale)
-advertising (all those "helpful" e-mails, billboards)
-bundling (overcharging for a product by tying its sale to another, more desired product, the iTunes music store recently started offering Ticketmaster-branded presale tickets and other music stores have done it for a while)
All in an attempt to differentiate Usher from Robin Thicke from John Legend. The problem with music is not so much that it has become "a commodity to be bought and sold" as a Marxist critique rings, but that monopolies try to do the opposite, to make this or that artist special and dictate taste.
Independent music has managed to creep out from under UMG, Sony, and Clear Channel, fuelled by listeners willing to question dictated taste as well as technologies helping to disperse new ideas more quickly: the cassette tape (a tool of the Ayatollah Khomeini, sadly) the CD burner, the mp3, and (of course) the blog. Ticketmaster and LiveNation are striking back, judging by the communication breakdown/clusterfuck that was The Hold Steady show, as well as the presale bundles on the ITMS (including Led Zeppelin, "Communication Breakdown" ha), and the recent signing of Madonna to a music/live combination exclusive contract with LiveNation.
-RJR
Monday, November 5, 2007
Record Review: The Killers - "Sawdust"
I'll be honest. I really dug several parts of Hot Fuss and "When You Were Young" from Sam's Town. I was pretty interested in checking out this record, if only to see a little further into the mind of B Flow. Rather than give The Killers' b-sides collection a legitimate record a proper review, I'll give a track-by-track run-through, which I think fits this hodgepodge pretty well.
1. "Tranquilize"
An attempt to reconcile the Ian Curtis/Robert Smith and Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty feel of their two records, a la "When You Were Young", unfortunately using the worst elements of each. A strange sample of children chanting comes in the middle. In possibly the worst mismatch of talent and scope in years, Lou Reed shows up toward the end, bringing home the chorus one last time, presumably meaning to shoot it.
2. "Shadowplay"
Why must Brandon Flowers continue to deface excellent music? Ian Curtis spins. Who knows, though? Maybe the soccer moms and sorority girls buying this record will get turned on to Joy Division.
3. "All the Pretty Faces"
I've had a live bootleg of this song for a while now and actually like it quite a bit. Sort of New Prog-y in a way. The song in general fits Brandon Flowers' voice rather well.
4. "Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf"
Very transparently a cast-off from Sam's Town, it bets everything on a PG-13 reference rather than any kind of musicality, much like that "Uncle Johnny did cocaine" song.
5. "Sweet Talk"
I suppose this is pretty decent. Possibly better than some bits of Hot Fuss, making it somewhat better than anything from The Bravery or Kaiser Chiefs.
6. "Under the Gun"
This appeared on the special edition of Hot Fuss. That may be the most noteworthy thing about it.
7. "Where the White Boys Dance"
This is completely nonsensical.
8. "Show You How"
Flowers filtered through an old-timey filter is pretty disgraceful. Even from the most sophomoric of bands, this is getting pretty sophomoric.
9. "Move Away"
From the Spiderman 3 soundtrack. An excellent illustration of how The Killers, having reached the limit of their ability and creativity in a particular genre, move on to another. Still, this isn't too bad.
10. "Glamourous Indie Rock and Roll"
Another song from the limited edition of Hot Fuss. I can't really parse what he's trying to say about indie music here. I remember live, Flowers threw in "Fuck the Beatles" right before the "It's indie rock and roll for me" hook. The mix of irony and incompetence here is mind-boggling. The lyrics make no sense, there are so many disparate musical elements, I just have no idea.
11. "Who Let You Go"
This is one of the older songs on here, I think. It's kind of refreshing, given the reduction in reverb on the vocals and double-tracking on the guitar. The lyrics are simple, but at least they're coherent. The band seem to know their strengths here.
12. "The Ballad of Michael Valentine"
The final track from the special ed Hot Fuss, it seems to presage the garbage to come on Sam's Town in terms of the story song kind of thing.
13. "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town"
A faithful enough cover of a classic song, smacking a bit of political content, given our current "Asian war". Very nice and subtle, actually. I quite like this.
14. "Daddy's Eyes"
Seriously?
15. "Sam's Town (Abbey Road)"
Presumably cutting a song at Abbey Road lends more cred to a mediocre band. Instead, replacing rock instruments with orchestra in a pretty bad song just exposes the weakness of the lyrics and Flowers' voice.
16. "Romeo and Juliet (Abbey Road)"
Such a string of cliches, lyrically and musically. Possibly the worst vocal performance from a Top 40 band ever.
17. "Mr. Brightside (Thin White Duke)"
Taking a song with roughly 45 seconds of good ideas and stretching it to almost 9 minutes cannot be a good idea.
"Ruby", "Who Let You Go", and "All the Pretty Faces" really are excellent cuts, especially for the most casual of Killers listeners. All three have been around for a while, though. Sawdust appears to be commercialism beyond anything The Killers have tried thus far, even considering bringing in Tim Burton for that one video. Overall, really awful, but check those songs out, especially if you can get the bootleg of "Pretty Faces" with Brandon Flowers chatting at the beginning.
(3.0/10.0)
-RJR
Record Review: Iron and Wine - "The Shepherd's Dog"
Rating - 8.2 / 10.0
Sam Beam has never been renowned for his versatility. We could always count on him for a breathy, folksy finger-picking number or two, in the vein of "The [World Fucking Famous] Trapeze Swinger." And as impressed as I have been by his other records, I have to admit the prospect of listening to yet another 49 minutes and 45 seconds of that was quite a daunting one. So I was reticent in picking up "The Shepherd's Dog." I don't think I was alone in this sentiment, and I don't think I'm alone in saying that I was shocked by what I found.
As soon as I pressed play, "Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car" burst forth from the speakers. I had been expecting a barely audible guitar line, so I had the volume cranked, and my ears close to the speakers. What came my way, was a jangly, rockabilly beat that, in all honesty, surprised the hell out of me. And this was no one time trick. Beam forays fearlessly on this record into territory that his band has never explored before; more than half the tracks on this record sound nothing like the Iron and Wine that we all know, but Beam's voice is there, quietly confident as ever, only this time it is embedded in a plush mix, rife with "ooh"s, "aah"s, persistent, honky-tonk piano, and beating drums. The sitar/electric guitar introduction of "White Tooth Man" continues on this theme.
Lyrically, Beam is charting new territory here too. Where before, his lyrics could not escape their imminently pastoral quality, "The Shepherd's Dog" talks of "Plain-clothes cop[s] and beauty queen[s]". Darker themes pervade the whole album, and Beam's lyrics address more current concerns than ever before. Beam paints a bleak picture of our current condition, of how alarming it is to him that we are faced with deadly prospect of endless war, but how it is even more terrifying that nobody really seems to care: "Dreaming again of a city full of fathers in their army clothes / ... / All of us lost at the crosswalk waiting for the other to go / Didn't find a friend, but boy, I really bought a lot / Someone bet a dollar that my daddy wasn't coming home / Everybody bitching, 'there's nothing on the radio.'"
Sure, Beam stays true to his formula on a few (five of twelve) tracks on this record, the most obvious examples being "House by the Sea," "Innocent Bones," "Resurrection Fern," and "Peace Beneath the City." These songs feature gentle vocal lines floating over undulating guitar lines. But the energy from the other seven tracks carries over into these songs, injecting them with an urgency that Beam's other records never offered. Moreover, these tracks stand out more than they would have on a previous Iron and Wine record because of the stark contrast between them and the more upbeat tracks on the album. These slower numbers have more purpose here, and it makes for a more well-rounded, generally convincing work.
So there's a lot to absorb here. This is a record for believers and non-believers alike. If nothing else, this album discredits the criticism Beam has oft had levelled against him: that of being a caricature of the monotonous folk singer/songwriter. He has shown that he not only has the moxie to experiment, but also the chops to pull it off.
-PTC
The Hold Steady Tomorrow
Tomorrow night I'll be heading to The Mezzanine in SF for The Hold Steady w/ Art Brut and The Blood Arm. I should have pictures and comments related to the above posted as soon as physically possible.
-RJR
-RJR
Wilkommen
Welcome to Never Learned to Swim, our indie music blog.
As often as is feasible, we'll run features on the following:
-indie music news
-record reviews
-live show reviews
-"best of" lists
-et cetera
Thanks for dropping by. Reach us at neverlearnedblog (at) gmail (dot) com.
-RJR
As often as is feasible, we'll run features on the following:
-indie music news
-record reviews
-live show reviews
-"best of" lists
-et cetera
Thanks for dropping by. Reach us at neverlearnedblog (at) gmail (dot) com.
-RJR
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