Concert Review: Islands + Active Child + Steel Phantoms (6/28)

I almost didn't go to this show.

Steel Phantoms
The friend I went with had a very good point: these guys could be huge in 5 years. They've only been together for one year, and this was their second show on their first tour. Nuts. The drummer from post-RTTS and Arm's Way, Aaron Harris, was the "frontman," which is always cool to see for a drummer. He's really good, as he showed during the Islands set, but he picked beats that were simpler and did their job (to make a weird reference, the band sounded like Arm's Way Islands with the crap cut away). Their guitarist had a lot of enthusiasm, the bassist was tight, and the keyboardist played fine and sang ok (bit off-tune in parts that needed more oomph). On record these guys are a lot better, with music that turns the gas on and moves within and beyond it, but the show felt like we were getting our bearings, trying to build something, like a workshop. The results were exciting, and some of the best of the night.

Active Child
One bassist and one harpist/keyboardist and one macbook with synth wails and 80's-style-drum-machines in the back. It was a weird show. Cool stuff included the harp, especially, which could be both a percussion/swell instrument and a very sharp melodic one, and the beautiful tenor harmonies between the two. They were on different energy levels, though; the bassist would be drinking water while the keyboardist was frantically trying to wrap up a tune. Not a good recipe when you're walking the line of "live music" in the first place. Not the most articulated act, but they're probably great on record.

Islands
Setlist from memory:
1) Switched On
2) Creeper
3) Devout
4) Vapours
5) Heartbeats
6) New Song #1
7) Whalebone
8) Tender Torture
9) New Song #2
10) Rough Gem
11) Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby
---
12) Swans

So Jamie fucked off again, this time not as nicely. He was at the Middle East gig I saw with them, back in the fall, and I had a few problems with that show: all the songs were downtempo, the musicianship seemed spotty, and people just weren't all that happy playing their instruments. But now the lineup is the Arm's Way crew, which would predispose the band to sound harder. Beyond that, though, they trusted this drummer to fill in the important spots, to follow the written and unwritten tides of the songs.

When the band first Switched On, Nick's vocals weren't coming through the mix. It seemed like the night was going to continue, as earlier: a bunch of people on stage trying stuff out, with only a tentative concept of a "band" between them. But when the mic worked, it was clear how much the songs relied not only on the words of his speech, but the tone and cadence; they wrapped up the tune nicely, and moved on to better things. Creeper was fucking steel, each "right from the start" feeling more frantic and more energetic. It was a perfect early song: give the drummer a song he knows and feels well, from an album filled with brazenly rough energy, and put it out in this new, tighter ensemble.

Their tightness and energy were clear, but with Devout they just radiated creativity. The song is filled with synth swells and drum machines that doesn't lend to a melodic synth and drummer and otherwise harder-rock (weird to say for synth-pop) instrumentation. They allowed the drummer to create these changes in intensity that turned one of the okay songs on Vapours into this near-anthemic automatic-ear-fucking machine. The riffs on Nick's guitar spun light all over the place.

A lot of the songs were unrecognizeable at first from their new treatment, or at least their feel, especially Heartbeats, a song about making electronic music, but the results were always positive. Whalebone was great. Tender Torture wasn't everything I wanted it to be, but it wasn't bad at all.

The two new songs were strange and fun. Unlike a lot of the songs that night, the first song didn't have the stops or cut-outs or clear changes in directions that others did; its main component was a distorted guitar riff, which chord changes on the chorus. It was also longer, and the lyrics were unintelligible, and of course we didn't know it! It worked, but not as well as the second, which sprung on and off its hard-rock with tightness and sensitivity, like a very small muscled dog.

Rough Gem, Whitney, and Swans were all fucking transcendent. Even though the crowd was small, enough of the diehards had come out for us to get excited at the thought of one of those earlier songs. Rough Gem wasn't introduced, so its starting swell gave the the chills. The bass and guitar took over the cello lines, the synth sounded even better, and that drummer just sent everything spilling over the top with both the irreverent joy of the video and the hard rock of the entire night. Because the song has so many distinct but related parts, the trip through it felt like an odyssey. It wasn't just that it sounded so much like the record; it sounded like everything the record had hoped for. Whitney was annouced as a crowd favorite, and the band really couldn't pull out the creepy looseness of the recording, so they tuned themselves down a bit and sent their energy out in other places: psychotically perfect fills, pregnant pauses, and a tendency to shove the rhythm of the vocals farther back in the measure, giving this playful anticipation to the crowd, who literally couldn't sing along with Nick until "open your eyes, look around you, fuck what you heard, you were lied to." Fun. Swans was played uber-down tempo and roughly at the Middle East, but...it was faster last night. The synth/piano did its job, with the player later switching into guitar for the hard rock portion. Just like Rough Gem this song felt like an odyssey, the parts impeccably played and tight (I was admiring the bass player the entire night, his devotion to the riffs was incredible). It felt good that a song about musical freedom from The Unicorns was done with a new drummer, with a new spirit. Words fail me on this one.

Album Playlist of the Half-Month 2 (6/15)

"Making Orange Things" by Venetian Snares + Speedrancher

Not as trial-by-fire-rage-transcendent as some people might tell you. The title track begins promising and turns into one of the worst beats Funk has ever let his hand touch in ownership. But the turns of invention come back strong: "Tushe Love"'s clarion call to pure sex dirty freakout beat insanity, "Unborn Baby"'s strong commentary and invention, "Cheatin'"'s strange dance of need, and the following need FUCKED with "Meta Abuse," the "Russell" tracks' hate and unpredictable rush, and my favorite: the mushed out washed out drugged up fucked over melodies of "Halfway" that would sound like classical if the style of the last 10 tracks hadn't forced this into this sad role. Wowie.

"Calla" by Calla

Crazy and wonderful noise/rock record, with pure creep and texture mixing with spot on drumwork and vocals. It's very deliberate music, and despite its many faces (the slow grasping clutch of Tarantula, the simple walking bliss of "Only Drowning Men"), it feels controlled, like, well, an album. A connected album of half-noise music that really does focus on its noise is a special thing, and it's well-done to boot.

"The Book of Heads" by John Zorn

Oh I dunno. It's avant-garde and I can enjoy it for that. I wouldn't say there's a progression, but I can enjoy it for its inventiveness and commentary.

"Blind Light" by Anton Fier

Hear the Bjork on "Blind Light," it's title track, feeling like the explosion of "Pluto," and a lot of other similarities are there: dance influences, out-there female focus, noise and swelling motives, and a not-insignificant amount of artistry. But the album feels distended in its own trip-hop self, straddling over tracks the line between ambient chillout triphop and...well, music. Bass work is fantastic.

"Bjork Gudmondsdottir" by Bjork

After I stopped freaking out from how little Bjork was once upon a time, I got to enjoy the ups and downs of this heavily mixed (true) Debut. "Musastaginn" is pure cleverness and genius; I hear both some Sugarcubes songs and "Venus as a Boy" in it. "Arabadrengurinn" is also good, with punchy harmonies and a lot of wonderful dance flow. It feels like both a regurgitation of its time and a quiet prelude to Bjork's later work, and that explanation makes it easy to blame the album's many flops and pointless gestures on its time. But no, she's figuring it out. Good on her. It's the question posed by "Alta Mira": can she ever write beautiful music that isn't trite? Yes. Yes yes yes.

"As the Eternal Cowboy" by Against Me!

For me, the album flips between the epic and the not bad but forgettable. T.S.R., Sink Florida Sink, Potatos Rice and Bread, and Cavalier Eternal definitely stick along for the ride, and none of the other songs are bad or memorable. The only song I get frustrated on is "Raised Fists" It's a belabored point without any reward to it.

"Moonglow" Venetian Snares

Both of the venetian snares albums were heavily out of alphabetical order, but I wanted to revisit them. The A-side of this caught me immediately with its flashy jazz-punk tone, but in a lot of ways that flash is so important: these two songs are Funk confining himself to a certain vocabulary and being as creative as possible within it. And it isn't even something really self-indulgent like songs of fucking his then girlfriend, it's these wildly mixing beats and swells that appeal to more than just the beatnik than me. This Bitter Earth, especially, has this near-symphonic quality as its descending themes and samples swirl inwardly around the drums, sax, and most importantly the negative space. Restraint, something that Funk usually doesn't deal in, or only when there's an assured freakout later, lives here. It's a magical shot.

Quick Thoughts on those Two New Arcade Fire Single

If that is starting Suburbs I will be so happy, but...I hate the double-tracked vocals and slow vocal phrasing right now. The bassline feels ugly, just going along on its own. It...this is arcade fire's new direction, I follow, but I'm not getting the same sense of invention that I did before. It feels like a radio bite. When the drums re-enter around 2:25 I feel them, but then I lose them again. The songs on Funeral took the entire track to reach their climax, but never lost their strong energy, which derived from simple parts mixing in complex and beautiful ways. On first listen this song lay down on the table, took its clothes off, and screamed at me for a bit, and then fell off.
On second listen the groove feels more like a baptism. I guess the simplicity of it is jarring me. The instrumentation is like a punk band with a synthesizer, that's part of what throws me off. Still, this feels too processed to me, it's swells and falls back on its noise, not the spirit that was so clear on the last two LPs. Black Mirror, by contrast, swelled in slowly and then hit you over the head with its power. I'm not sure this more...sideways, punky, radio-conscious, simple startup really speaks to me like I was hoping it to. This is the first time I've had any concerns about the new LP. I'm liking the song more as it goes on, especially that breakdown has a lot to it. I'm just...concerned.

This is also different, more punky and radio in its production, but this is more welcoming in its lyrics. There's more going on under its simple groove; the bassline doesn't feel flaccid or pudgy (...), with the other parts with it. The disco stuff seems weird at first, but that four-on-the-floor drumbeat was always present in their music. This makes a lot more sense to me as a sequel to the rest of their music: innovative, creative in its themes and entrances, and powerful. I still don't "get" the production style, which feels blown out in ways that even Neon Bible wasn't. This electropop vocabulary will take more getting used to. Regine's interjections bring me right back to Funeral, eeee. I just realized part of the problem is my bass-heavy speakers, but still that last buildup didn't have everything I expected it to.

Again, though, this I can give more of a chance than that first track. Also, this album seems to be able music a lot, so the level of commentary about music by enacting either what they're hoping for or fighting against is important.

Overall, I hope I'm able to change enough to appreciate this promise.

Some Things I'd Like to Try

Infinite Jam. An idea I had for a while. Get a space with a crapload of different instruments and tech, and have there be music constantly, all the time. Songs and jams spinning around a wildly varying roster. I'd imagine it'd require a group of 20 musicians subbing in and out, and needs money for rent and food for the performers. Rules: instruments must be playing at all times, although stop-time is fine in context; the constant repetition of a certain figure might help the band talk about the music while it goes on, but that shouldn't go on for too long; always 2 people at the setup at any given time. I just read an article about Victor Wooden's style of learning, and this seems like an embodiment of that: practice feeling, not strictly playing something sensible. Practice trusting and evolving with people. Moreover I like the feeling of gathering a bunch of people together in an insane and taxing project as this, and turning it into pure communication, or telepathy across sounds.

Word Album. Oh, I know it's been done, to make symphonies or sounds out of words spelled with the musical alphabet. Even when those words are shaped into poetry. But the concept still fascinates me, as just another screen through which creativity is distilled. I think it'd be best if the album wasn't explicitly said to have this characteristic, because it's not meant to be a gimmick that gets it published. It's just a method to experiment with.

A Pop Drummer's Companion to John Zorn's 'The Book of Heads'. I don't know a lot about the record, but John Zorn released this crazy album for a solo guitar with all sorts of effects and gimmicks across 35 etudes. Listening to it felt like a view askance at the history of pop and guitar music, trying to filter through its traditions with free improv and a touch of humor. Because of its commentary and the yawningly open use of space, it would be interesting to score a companion to it for rock drum kit, matching the guitar's free improv with snippets and stabs at grooves.

Live Performing. I'd love to try playing at venues, seriously. I can certainly play discrete songs, but my favorite thing to do for people is to string a lot of songs together in some sort of epic soundtrack art-rock thing, and end violently. A lot of the songs I'd like to cover (below) have those capabilities. Other ideas I've had included playing piano with a bass drum and hihat at my feet, or to try looped clarinet (Accidents and Halfway Up The Stairs of Mucus would really lend to that).

[Solo Piano] Gloomy Sunday by Rezső Seress, also known as the Hungarian Suicide Song (bullshit publicity ploy...). It was hard to find the sheet music until I searched the name in Hungarian and got a pretty hi-def scan of it (to be given to whomever wants it). I got into this through the Venetian Snares adaptation of the Billie Holiday cover, both of which are beautiful. It's haunting music, I'd like to play with the score a bit.

[Snippet] Take a Bow by Muse is something I've played with as an exercise. The chords could be good for something.

[Snippet] Hey Dad by Owen Pallett. Aarrrgggh, love those chords so much.

[Solo Piano] Flare Gun by Owen Pallett, arr. Matt Winkworth for Piano and voice. Matt over at the fanforums made this arrangement, which is really just an adaptation, since the things is goddamn impossible, but quite impressive. If I'm ever good enough to handle the jumps, it could be a powerhouse.

[Solo Piano] The Miner Becomes Forgetful by Owen Pallett. There's a bit of a piano score adaptation from the fan forums, but I really want to see if I can turn a solo piano piece out of it. The hardest part will be arranging the violin line in the chorus to intersect and move past the rhythm part...and those damn chords at the end.

[Solo Piano] Bucky Little Wing by Islands is my favorite party cover. Rollicking and simple. The version I play is slightly adapted to add some depth to the sound, filled on record by doowops and rain sounds. In some ways, not worth the time, but so much fun.

[Solo Piano] Sulk by Radiohead. I use this in worships a lot, my adaptation has morphing arpeggios in the left hand and octaves, occasionally spiked with a third or a sixth to deepen the sound. I could never fold in the chorus part, though, and so what I play now is usually just a vamp. I'd like to change that.

[Solo Piano] Paranoid Android by Radiohead is something I often segue into from another song I do, an original. I only ever do the middle section, never a verse or the descending bridge, but the bridge especially should turn into an arrangement.

[Solo Piano / Ensemble] Vito's Ordination Song by Sufjan Stevens. This song gets me on the simplicity of the chord structure, the genius of the parallel-fifths-unresolved-leading-tone-horn-line, and the parallel sixths of the vocal harmony ("rest in my arms"). I use both of these things for worship preludes, but I'd love to turn it into an actual arrangement.

[Solo Piano (2 clarinets?)] Flint by Sufjan Stevens fits into all the other cyclic Gm stuff that I do, and adds a really wonderful melody. Great for segues.

[Ensemble (bass, 2 clarinet, drums, voice)] Winter is Coming by Radicalface. I tried covering this for my senior project, but the result, for two clarinets, drums, voice, and bass, was just awful awful awful. Out of tune and without point or depth. I want to try a song with a melodic bass guitar pattern, but it requires a good amount of thought to balance out the sound. The finished product excites me.


[Ensemble (drums, piano...?)] Contrarian by Future of the Left. I want to do an ensemble cover to this strangely tender tune which caps off a punk/indie album.

[Ensemble (kit + 2x clarinet] All the Children Are Dead by Venetian Snares. My dream is to take the moaning bass, snare, and hihat as given, and condense the other effects into toms and things, and put it under two clarinets to scream out the melody.

[Ensemble (Clarinet Quartet] Halfway Up The Stairs of Mucus by Venetian Snares. The song has so much power in rising out of the muck of its own beats, and these really elegaic melodies spiral out of that. In some ways it'd be a crime to remove them without some noise, which is why if I scored it for clarinet quartet, I'd have some noise action going on one of the horns.