I've never really considered myself to be interested in music videos, but I saw a bunch in the past 6 months or so that have really made an impression. So, figured I'd assemble them to kick off my couple weeks of a 2008 rundown. Kind of a random mix here, not sure how many of these are "official" or what, but good shit all around and good tunes taboot, of course. I'm sure there are plenty of masterpieces I've missed, so please enlighten.
Been a while... today's picture is courtesy of D. Nett @ the Post Standard...
So with the turn of the calendar, college hoops season is in full gear, so I am putting a stake in the ground to declare my enthusiasm for this year's Syracuse Orange squad. The picture you see above are the two cornerstones of the team, both freshman, and both incredibly exciting: Donte Green & Jonny Flynn. I'll be the first to tell you that sometimes the Cuse can be an unenjoyable group to root for that I root for nonetheless... but this year's team is a pure joy to watch. These two guys especially. I think these two combined are in the same league as Melo/McNamara were combined at the same stage, so we could see some interesting development over the course of the season. Enjoy it while you can, beauty in college hoops is fleeting.
And how talented, check out this video of Green sitting in with the pep band:
OK, here's the most sung song in the OTW household these days... watch this two times and just try not to have it stick itself in your head like some grabby Spidey hands:
Poll question: who would do best covering this song? I say The Bad Plus.
Sing along (it's inevitable, it's drawing you in, you have no choice, succomb):
Spiderman, Spiderman, Does whatever a spider can Spins a web, any size, Catches thieves just like flies Look Out! Here comes the Spiderman.
Is he strong? Listen bud, He's got radioactive blood. Can he swing from a thread Take a look overhead Hey, there There goes the Spiderman.
In the chill of night At the scene of a crime Like a streak of light He arrives just in time.
Spiderman, Spiderman Friendly neighborhood Spiderman Wealth and fame He's ignored Action is his reward.
To him, life is a great big bang up Whenever there's a hang up You'll find the Spider man.
Caught 4 shows in 2 days last week... review of some sort tomorrow (probably), but here's something to look at in the meantime. Above is a pic from Ratatat at Webster Hall last Wednesday -- the visuals were probably better than the music anyway.
And here's a typically shitty short video of one my favorite new musicians: St. Vincent from her set at the Mercury Lounge last Thursday. Of course, this doesn't do her justice as a whole, but gives you an idea at least:
There was an interesting article in last week's New York Times Magazine about designer dog breeds, a strange mathematics of genes where 1 + 1 = 3 and basset + beagle = bagel. Lately it seems like so many musical acts are trying to pull off the same magic and this was on display Friday night at the Bowery Ballroom. What was ostensibly a chance to check out Midlake and confirm that my lusting after their sound on their album The Trials of Van Occupanther was warrented turned into a 3-band mini-festival of stylistic mashup. The neverending calculus of subgenres and musical oneoffmanship provides for some interesting bedfellows. Each act trying to distill the strengths of one addend and add it to those of another. First up was The Czars whom, within 2 verses of their opening number, I pegged as the unlikely pairing of Billy Joel + Pink Floyd. These guys went the trendy route -- just a duo: piano/vocals with a guitarist accompanying behind him. These things can work and they can't, but it helps if you can sing and you can play and these two could do both. The vocals were particularly strong, and in a universe where that often isn't the case, it was noteworthy. Even when the songs were crammed to the legal limit of lyrical cliches (which was the case on more than one occasion), the power and earnestness of that voice was enough to get me past it. After a while, with some hit-or-miss attempts at humor in his words, I wasn't sure if the lameness was intentionally coy or what, but it didn't matter. With that end being held down with some surehandedness, the fate of the band's good-or-not verdict fell into the guitarists fingers. He was up to the task. This guy obviously took his guitar playing and his guitars very seriously -- watching him play, I saw many lonely hours in a dorm room getting intimate with his axe. But it paid off, especially in his use of effects which consisted mainly of heavy, heavy reverb or heavy, heavy distortion or both. This added some extra oomph to what otherwise might have been bearable but boring love songs. The first tune -- that one that had me feeling the Floyd -- was interesting in that he used an e-bow to get some wild out-there noises and was allowed some room to weave in a dreamy outro. The room was fractionally full and many early-risers were more interested in their conversation and drinks than the music. That goes without saying, of course, but what was kind of neat was the way the music seemed to invite in the din, almost making it a piece of furniture in the room. It was certainly the weakest set of the night, but that's not taking away anything from these guys, definitely worth checking out in some bar or as an opening act.
Post-Czars, I got into that "watch 'em set up the next act" act and tried to guess at what might be coming down the pike. But nothing prepared me for St Vincent (= Norah Jones + Jimmy Herring (seriously)). It's rare that I would become instantly smitten with a musician or band, but that happened after about 15 seconds of St Vincent which is an aka for Annie Clark, solo and in no need of accompaniment whatsoever. It was especially interesting to experience her cold right after my Cat Power experience on Monday. Everything that Cat Power wasn't (she was a whole lot of other things, but there as plenty she wasn't), St Vincent certainly was. Starting with her clothes -- an off-beat take on the quintessential little black dress -- right down to her sense of humor that was actually funny, occasionally hilariously so, both inside and out of her music [n.b. her myspace page lists the following influences: Sarah Silverman, Woody Allen, John/Alice Coltrane amongst others and under "Sounds like" avers "Hand claps and wry smiles"].
Oh yeah, and there was music. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say Ms. Clark was a virtuoso. She had a pair of big, beautiful Epiphone jazz guitars and she treated them both like her pet Labradoodles -- with love, affection and complete control. Fluttering fingerpicking up and down complicated jazzesque lines, she was dazzling to a note. She made sure we knew she was from Texas (or the "United States of Texas" as she called it) and yet her act was much more Paris on the Seine circa Roaring Twenties than Rio Grande turn of the 21st century. Her skills and style coming to fruit in the Lone Star State are about as likely as a finding a butterfly in Antarctic, but there you go. In fact, the EP that I had no choice but to plunk down a fiver for on the way home (she indicated that her full-length might be on its way this summer; already on my must-buy list) is called "Paris Is Burning."
Was it jazz-infused pop or pop-inflected jazz and does it matter? No it doesn't, St. Vincent was phenomenal. The set was one big grin from ear to ear whether she was crooning something sweet and soulful, ripping up some serious shredding on her guitar or moving over to a keyboard. There wasn't a clunker in the bunch. Somehow she fused a sardonic wit with serious chops without any jarring weirdness. She finished a rollicking revenge tale and moved over to her keyboard introducing the next song as "Marry Me" and then pointed out how that wasn't necessarily a strategic set pairing. The latter tune featured one of many memorable lyrics: "Marry me, John... let's do what Mary and Joseph did, without the... kid." Call her Annie, call her St. Vincent, she is the complete package was a total revelation to me. Her songwriting was both intricate and interesting and simple and start at once. I had to remind myself on several occasions how truly amazing her ability to sing and play two complementary yet complicated parts simultaneously was... which isn't to mention the specially miked wood block on which she whammed out an echoing rhythm on select numbers. I haven't enjoyed a musician utterly blind like this in who knows how long. I don't think I was alone, that chit-chat from the Czars set turned into nothing short of awed cooing between songs, a giddy kind of silence. You owe it to yourself to check her out, you'll either be just as smitten as I am or I question your taste in music and beyond.
So, here we are, two hours into the night, headliner yet to take the stage and it has already been $13 well spent. From the beautiful nakedness of St Vincent's solo stage the cozy stage was suddenly crammed tight with equipment, threatening to pop its top button and rip the inseam as a small battalion of roadies lugged piles of amplifiers and a phalanx of keyboards front and center. Now I had the opposite game to play: I knew what these guys sounded like, I'd obsessed over their CD for about a month straight and the melodies linger deep in my subconscious -- now I tried hard to figure out how they could bring that magic to the live stage. Would they be able to pull it off? Would the smiles of the night continue? The small touches of the set-up time -- the paper mache Occupanther mask from the album art was situated on one of the keyboard tables and a projector was set up with a drop-down screen appearing behind the stage -- indicated that it would.
The obvious question to ask, so many paragraphs into this interminable reviews is: what mixed breed is Midlake peddling? Is the algebra as easy as Midlake = Fleetwood Mac - Stevie Nicks or is there something deeper going on there? I've delved deep into the album and I watched them go America soft-rock poetic for a good 80 minutes Friday night and I really don't know, nor do I care. All I know is that they absolutely killed it, through and through, taking the daunting prospect of a sold out Bowery Ballroom (this while playing rooms fraction of the size in Philly and Boston on nights sandwiching this deep-winter Friday) and flipping it into a consummation.
Midlake is a quintet where everyone has a keyboard in front of them. The drummer's keyboard was of the laptop variety and controlled short videos and bizarro movie clips through the projector for each song. Pretty standard fare for a pop act these days, but a nice wrinkle nonetheless with their pre-modern dramatics that synched up with the music pretty well... there was even a homemade video or two in there which echoed the Flaming Lips in a way. The other four all spend legitimate periods of time laying down on a wide variety of keyboard tones, from the piano player sticking mostly to the piano to some deep, evil electronic bassishness from the bass player. The two guitar players did a nice mix and match between 6 & 12 strings, acoustic and electric. The point here being that the sound that was called for at each moment was achieved in a constant flow of pure pop precision. A heavy fraction of the show was taken from Van Occupanther, as you might expect, with probably the first 30-40 minutes being from the album. I wouldn't have had it any other way, especially with the skill in which they pulled it off. The stage presence particularly through this opening stretch seemed to indicate that achieving near-perfect renditions of the material was no easy task. The look on their faces, especially the front man, Tim Smith (I think he's the lead guy?), was almost one of sheer stress. It didn't show in their playing though. It's not that the songs are incredibly complex on their face, but they do have a certain level of subtlety that pretty much makes the sound -- without it, the music pretty much falls apart... something that didn't even come close to happening Friday night. As the set went on, though, they loosened up that top button and the guys seemed to open up a bit between songs. Like they withstood the initial onslaught and realized they were still in the game... not only in it, but winning it handily. We can *do* this. This middle section of the night opened up for some older material from their debut "Banman and Silvercork" -- including "Balloon Maker" and ""Some of Them Were Superstitious") as well as at least one in-progress new number, "Children of the Ground." These showed both a little prodding and malleability to that pastoral Midlake sound at the same time it revealed a tidy limit to where they were going. This was somewhat comforting -- Midlake's sound is self-contained and somewhat perfect in the universe they have carved out for it. These guys are virtuosos of a different sort -- they don't awe in technical mastery of an instrument, but rather excel as a band. There were no highlight moments, no "wow" stretches -- they nailed the material, "Roscoe," "Bandits" and the rest of them. Here's a very short taste of the "Head Home" that ended the set (I can't shoot more than a minute without feeling awkward, but this came out pretty good):
Lush, dense harmony -- three-part vocal harmony and sweet, pitch-perfect harmony of guitars, bass, keyboards and drums -- dig deep inward tunnels toward dreamlike otherworlds. Some bands thrive on gobbling up more and more of the musical spectrum with each step, a group like Midlake has quite an attractive patch of real estate and would do good by seeing what kind of homestead they can achieve therein. To listen to Midlake, on CD or live in concert, is to allow yourself to travel to a slightly alternate reality. The rich storytelling, the harmonizing acoustic guitars, the occasional spaced-out keyboard romp or raunchy electric guitar -- it evokes some of the more beautiful, (very old) Genesis [a personal preference]. This is the kind of music that requires listen after listen after listen -- it draws you in and becomes a part of you and thus the live show was a natural extension of the romance. I would be curious to hear the opinions of someone who went into the show cold. What is it like to walk in from the street and find these five guys on stage, doing nothing that spectacular or out of the ordinary and yet holding sway over hundreds of rapt devotees? For me, it was stumbling out onto Delancey slightly buzzed -- the happy feeling of a great meal and one too many glasses of wine, great music flowing through my veins warming me to immunity from the Saturday morning chill.
Well, I've name-checked Fleetwood Mac, America, Flaming Lips and Genesis, looks like we've got ourselves a lovable ole mutt on our hands. Listen to Midlake. Check out St. Vincent. Designer breeds and mutts all the same: big, fat, wet indiepop doggie kisses.
Made it to Union Hall for the first time last night for one of the unsung heroes of the NYC music scene: Ollabelle. It's rooms like these that make me weep for not living in Brooklyn any more and just getting old in general. It's the kind of room you could probably go to every night irregardless of who's playing. The venue is actually the basement for a too-hip-to-be-true bar which is set up like an old study or library... the kind of place where the men of yore would retire for cognac and cigars and plans for world domination after dinner. Bookshelves and cushy chairs are the norm here, except that this bar has a jukebox that is painfully Pitchfork-ready and indoor bocce courts in the back. The downstairs room is, in a word, intimate. The ceilings are a bit low and the sightlines are a bit obscured by the columns supporting all that boozing Brooklyn bourgeoisie upstairs and yet, still, there isn't much not to like about it. The throw-way-way-back vibe of the bar persists in the basement with a scolding portrait of a rather ugly woman (think female Robin Williams) oversees the stage which is at floor level.
In reality, there could be no more perfect venue for Ollabelle. Although the band came up in the East Village and did their penance in cozy rooms like The Living Room and what is now Banjo Jim's before that, Park Slope lives for bands like Ollabelle and vice versa. For the uninitiated, Ollabelle plays "roots" music. There really isn't a more apt term for what they do than that -- everything they play is rooted in the tradition of American music and is like a history of rock and roll. Their set leans heavily on gospel and spirituals as well as blues and country. Probably the most cited songwriter in the history of recorded music is "Traditional" and whether the songs are 100-year-old classics or, in fact Ollabelle originals, their entire set sounds like it was written by Mr Tradition. And yet, this music is never as alive as when this quintet is on stage. There is something wonderfully ergonomic about these guys, something unbelievably comfortable and natural about the way things fit together around them.
The simplest way to put it would be that they've got great harmony. Yes, their strength is undoubtedly their ability to sing in 2, 3, 4 and even 5-part harmonies. Each member of the group is a powerful vocalist in their own right and when they start joining up in this permutation or that, watch out! The second set of the night began with each song being lead by a different person on vocals, although , of course, everyone else joined in at some point and the whole show kind of moved on from there. So yeah, these guys can throw down with their voices, particularly the two ladies in front: Amy Helm (yes, that Helm) and Fiona McBain. These two could sing lyrics from "Joy of Cooking" and I'd call it a masterpiece, they're that good.
But the harmony comes from a lot more than just their singing. Aside from the occasional whirl from Glenn Patscha on the occasional keyboard solo (which were, as it so happens, the highlights of the show), there isn't a lot of shredding, per se, going on. Instead, the band makes takes a cue from their vocals and play their instruments like their voices, adding pieces to the whole, each guitar strum, drum beat and bass lick a lone ingredient added to the batter. As such, the sound energy emanating from the stage last night was intense. Songs would build so slowly and subtly that you wouldn't even notice that a slow, moving blues was growing into something much more powerful.
The whole show was utter harmonic convergence. The voices mesh perfectly with this "wall of sound" coming from the instruments. The sum of vocals and playing were totally aligned with the material, not to mention the room and the healthy early-weekday crowd. You've heard a lot of these songs before, either in Sunday School or covered by other bands. "Down By the Riverside" starts off in church and ends up cascading pure rock and roll over your ears. "John The Revelator" is a tight-knit mesh of sound rumbling over fantastic keyboards and bass guitar. Perhaps you've thought you've heard pretty darn good versions of "Nobody's Fault But Mine" before, but I assure you nothing could compare to the absolute preaching going on with Helm leading the charge.
That verge of piety and sexiness, of raw emotional energy and purity of soul -- that is where Ollabelle does its best work. Americana has never sounded so kick ass before -- this is the roots of rock and roll as well as rock and roll itself. Perhaps most suprisingly, this band can really groove when it wants to. Songs tend to flip over and allow the backbone of Patscha, Tony Leone on drums and Byron Isaacs on bass to take over. It's a dark kind of funky that gets you moving and yet, the music always seems to be uplifting: not dark and evil, dark and positive energy, if that's even possible.
Despite all these great harmonies top to bottom, I wouldn't necessarily categorize Ollabelle as tight. Thankfully, this translates into a wonderful looseness that kind of gives them some open-ended energy and a sort of fuzziness around the edges. It ain't perfect, but it works well in their own context. Everyone switches up on instruments with Helm mostly singing, but occasionally picking up a mandolin to plug some holes in that wall of sound. McBain plays guitars both acoustic and electric as well as bass as well as that wonderful, "more please!" voice. Perhaps the most appealing instrumentalist is Isaacs who plays mostly bass and then occasionally guitar and lap steel. It's that lap steel that really gets the double take. You know those guitars that are, like, double guitars? Well, Isaacs has a double-necked pedal steel: one for guitar playing and one for bass. I don't think I've ever seen a pedal steel bass before, but, lemme tell you something, it's awesome. It makes a quick appearance in my top 10 coolest instruments and will make it my mission to get more people playing one, so spread the word!!
Ollabelle is always all over town and so I'd urge you to check 'em out. This was the kind of show where you want to leave with CD's and t-shirts and whatever else you can to make sure these guys keep playing music. So, I picked up their newest release and will be sure to share when the time comes. For now, I'll give you a small taste of live Ollabelle and share this video taken of the awesome Tony Leone and handclap-driven "Before This Time"
The question of "which BBQ joint in NYC is the best" couldn't be a more subjective one, and I'm willing to hear arguments for a good handful of 'em, not to mention my own backyard. That being said, there is only one that I know of that serves up a mean plate of ribs with a side of world-class jazz. Or is that a mean plate of a sick-ass jazz with a side of pulled pork? Semantics aside, we are, of course, talking about Jazz Standard, which is essentially a top notch jazz club or the basement of Blue Smoke, depending on your point of view. In a few short years, this room has won a special place in my heart, not the least of reasons the fact that they have their own freakin' small-batch bourbon... which is quite, quite tasty OTR or neat. Nugget-rich calendar of A+ jazz, top flight booze selection and tasty, tasty cue.... what could be bad? PLUS, the ingenuity of no drink or food minimums -- it's like they're actually daring you to make it through a set without eating or drinking a thing. Plenty of room, great sightlines and sound, and we haven't even gotten to dessert yet. I don't get out as often as I used to and getting to a HQ jazz show is even tougher, but Dave Douglas with his nasty quintet of Uri Caine, James Genus, Clarence Penn and Donny McCaslin was enough to get me in for the early set last Wednesday. At the same time, we recently got a new camera as the old one was on its last legs (apparently 5-year-old digital cameras age are more obsolete than 8-track players at this point). So I lugged the thing along and hopefully wasn't too obnoxious as I finally got to play "that guy" at a show, playing with the settings and maybe grabbing something that is bandwidth-worthy in the process. Douglas is definitely one of those "you've got to see him at least once" kind of cats. As with nearly every jazz trumpet (or coronet) player out there, his sound is haunted by the presence of Miles Davis. Instead of running from that concept, though, he embraces it in a unique way. As was evident in his opening "Penelope" he is an astute student of Davis and finds inspiration in his sound. But he seems to go deeper than just imitation, he seems to find a song or maybe even just a lick and expounds until he's built an entire frame of reference around maybe just one Miles passage. "Penelope" is reminiscent of some of the slower, groovy "In A Silent Way" passages and then flips back and forth into something altogether funky.
This whole thing is supported tremendously by the presence of Uri Caine who is just a monstrous Rhodes player. Douglas is obviously the brains and spearhead of the band, but Caine is the linchpin, the hip that connects the torso of Dave and Donny to the rhythm section legs that make the music move. Uri is equally comfortably comping behind the horn players and then just taking off into stratospheric solos. He's equally adept on the piano, in the solo setting and with his own band, but perhaps my favorite Uri is the gentle groover on the Rhodes behind Dave Douglas. See below for a short snippet of ole Man Hands at his best (my first YouTube upload, btw, videos came out better than I would have expected, the other one I have of McCaslin is too big to upload here, sorry).
The whole set was fantastic. Dave's family was in the audience so there was a tune for his wife Susanna ("Painter's Way"), which did for "Oh Susanna" what "Penelope" did for Miles Davis; as well as a tune for who I would guess is his son, "Skeeterism." Anyway, I won't go on... just wanted to share. The final thing which I've already pointed out earlier this week is that Douglas uploaded all the sets from his week at the Standard for download. Only $7 for a nice set of music the next day. Seems like a no brainer to me, and I figure we'll be seeing a lot more musicians going this route in the near future. Of course, a whole bunch are already there. Hit Greenleaf Music (Dave's own label) if you're interested in checking any of these out. A little preview was in Friday's mix if you want a taste.
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