These Days of Grey Summer

A few musical-related things that excited me have started to happen, or are sorta nearing the realm of completion and finality.

I found my old Casio Portatone, a sampling keyboard which I first learned how to plan on. As a sampler it's a pretty primitive tool, and I'm none to happy with it, but with the flute setting on it doctored a bit, it could sound like a legitimate synthesizer. Using a 4 mm cable and a converter I can actually feed it into the DP-01 and record it, which will feature heavily in my next project. There are also adorable little midi-drumbeats to play with.

I am out of classes, and for my senior project I am making an album. By time, half and half covers and originals. Covers are: "He Poos Clouds and "This Lamb Sells Condos" by Owen Pallett, both for piano and voice; "Accidents" by Arcade Fire, for clarinet quartet; "Like Someone In Love," the arrangement performed by Bjork on Debut, for piano and voice; "Woody Guthrie's America" by Akron/Family, for piano, clarinet, voice, bass, drums, flutes and recorders; "Martha My Dear" by the Beatles for piano, clarinet and voice; "The Fragrance of Dark Coffee" by Iwadare from Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban 3 for piano and sampled voices; and "Winter is Coming" by Radicalface for bass guitar, two clarinets, drums, and voice. Should be "done" May 25th...um...

I have finished my run of spring concerts, especially dense this month with Ben Folds, Evelyn Evelyn, Owen Pallett, and Jonsi, with Neutral Uke Hotel tonight for fun. I fell out of the habit of writing about music because I was worrying about too much else, but I'll be posting for the latter four pretty soon.

I am performing the entirety of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op. 26 (Theme and 5 Variations) early next month. I'm freaking out a little, especially since I haven't gotten into a good practice rhythm like I thought I would. I'm in control of the notes for the most part, so I think it should turn out alright...but when you forget to practice for a week...I have purchased a dayplanner and hopefully I can pick things up.

I'm online! My version of "Woody Guthrie's America" is the first cut of the Northeast division of WGA v.2. It's more of a demo than anything, and I'm redoing it for the album above.

Stupid little status updates remind bored musicians to keep to what keeps them on.

Concert Review: Jonsi + Death Vessel (5/5)

This concert...

Death Vessel was a great opener. He's the kind of performer that is better suited to a seated venue, but I think he did a great job keeping his energy going. He took a sort of bluesy "1-5-1-5" "I'm playing every sixteenth note" kind of rambling folk and really used silence and very good voice leading (across such simple chords!) to...call out emotions. Not evoke them, and not portray them, but to call their names in the crowd, have them stand up and stare outward, as a slightly confused yet strangely willing performer, as the spotlight shines on them and fades. Someone told me that his songs were all pretty similar, and I guess to a certain extent you could make the claim. Despite that, I enjoyed how deep he got into each soundworld he created, how chords seemed to spiral out of each other seamlessly like water, or like the crazy videography from later in the show.

Jonsi was nothing I ever expected. I hadn't listened to Go (the SE was waiting for me when I got home) at all, and all I knew was to expect the similar energy behind Gobbledygook. On the surface, the show was simple. A set of loose soundscapes with limited percussion, and a set of heavy drum songs. Below the levels, though, things were vibrantly changing. The brilliant videography was the first clue. The main structure was two scrims facing the audience, each with a bunch of projectors, with a window-like structure in between them. The linking structure was that beginning piece of paper with the animals on it, but what spiraled out of it worked between screens, without screens, with and without proper color, without shape and form. Lines and essences spiraling together in a dance of life so articulated, not just an empty platitude but an illustration of a point so heavy that the morphing forms it took seemed all new, special...just as the songs did.

First off, the five-fold deep bow at the end, like stage performers, was completely deserved. The sense of a wandering life was articulated by these five performers across...10 instruments? Main microphone, looping microphone, keyboard, vibes/crazy I'm going to drag two violin bows across this thing, other super weirdo key device, tiny upright piano, two drum kits, bass, guitar, acoustic guitar and ukelele, little lightup pad which controls swell....they all had these skills, although I think Alex did the most wandering, sagan bless his tiny head. There was generally a designated two guitars and drums and Jonsi, with Alex finding his place.

All of them did their work to meld sound together. The bassist worked mostly with the little lightup thingie, and he was responsible for the outisde shell of the song, the sheen which along with Jonsi's typical bowed les paul (no-showing at this show) is sorta the trademark of their sound. Both the bass and the guitar were heavily looped and pedaled over themselves, and that guitarist spent his time on the keyboards as well. He drew the links between that huge outer shell, I felt, drawing connections across textures to leave a space for the others. Alex elaborated on those tightly-strung lights, across his keyboards or strange devices, taking those threads together for a web. Jonsi was the heartbeat from every end of this, using his role as melody-maker very very responsibly and team-orientedly. The drummer, though...this man created these fantastic flashes of light, refracting and reflecting every other part back out of the whole. It wasn't just the incredibly loud HOB bass speaker I was sitting next to, it was the force of his ability to tie everything together and shoot it at you until it explodes in your heart. Right in your fucking heart.

I can't even get into the technicalities of the show, partially because it was almost a week ago now, and partially because it was so mind blowing that I was too busy dry sobbing. Grow Till Tall, though...I can't wait until I can hear it in a special place. Like an attic room with a slanted tiled ceiling, surrounded by bookshelves and piles of multicolored clothing, scarves arcing over the room, small glow in the dark stars and galaxies and sheep thrown into relief by a blacklight, quilts and pillows dusting a sprawling mattress. That kind of place.

I am forever smitten. Thank you a thousand times, Jonsi. Love, your friend Alyssa.

Concert Review: Owen Pallett + Snowblink, 4/20

I saw my first Owen Pallett concert on November 22th 2009, and followed that almost exactly three months later on February 20th 2010, and long before I left I had tickets to see another show three months later, on April 20th 2010. Now some peace, right? No more plans, right? Except I get home and the Montreal festival I was already planning to go to for Arcade Fire will also be hosted the fabulous Mr. Pallett and the impeccable Thomas Gill on August 1st 2010...about three months and two weeks from the last one. I feel blessed.

There were a few funny circumstances surrounding the show. Supposedly Owen and Thomas slept for four hours and then drove up seven hours to get here. They played on the 15th in Washington and the 18th at Coachella, and then supposedly went to Palm Springs (where your ears change?) and then came up here. They talked about it like they were starting fresh, even though many of the elements from the earlier shows, including some of the highlights of this one for me, are becoming a pretty rigid order. Hell, Owen appears to be repeating some of his banter, like the stuff while Don't Stop On My Account begins or "We're only going to play new songs now, because they're better." which is a total lie in two ways. Also...Owen chose to have it inside. The ICA has a fine inside venue, but fuck they have a wonderful platform overlooking the ocean that's great for concerts (Black Moth Super Rainbow aaaa). I believe I saw Owen reading some sort of book while I wandered around (or assessed the perimeter)...and Thomas got there 45 minutes before doors, and came through the main entrance past all of us waiting in line. Hmm hmm! Glad they're still selling scores, too. Aaaaaanyway.

Snowblink actually showed up on a reddit discussion of alt-country groups. I don't know if I would go that far, but they definitely aren't just your hippie folk vibe, if the Michael Jackson cover didn't tip you off. I loved the power of the sound without percussion at all. They were the kind of band that would make no sense for a standing venue, but are also maybe a bit too much for a sitting venue. No drums to rouse the crowd, but clearly so much spirit rising through their music. I liked the atmopsheric additions, but it sounded best when they were just straight-ahead groovin'.

Ok ok ok ok ok so: on the back of my copy of Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man lies the setlist and a few frenzied scribbles (I can't read these...):

E is for Estranged was as good as I've heard it...I always compare it to the rather scratchy and tuneless intro to the FM4 Recording in Vienna, but that's an unfair bar to set. This is the Dream of Win and Regine was really the taking-off point for Owen, with him shouting over an especially boisterous bass. In a lot of ways this was a high-point of the show, since Owen seemed confident and renewed in himself. But my favorite moment came during Scandal at the Parkade, a once-rare track now a cornerstone of the setlist. "Tight as all hell," I wrote, and I remember all of his lines coming together across the song. Instead of cabbages and butter, the forums finally got some insight here:

All that they know'd of cottages, cottages buttoned 'em down, buttoned 'em down.
Once they got into cottages, cottages buttoned 'em down, buttoned 'em down.

It felt like a piece in the style of Has a Good Home, i.e. somewhat written to be looped in the first place, and thus not having the occasional redundancies or difficulties that the looping has (such as the lack of a contrasting section and extra pickup measure in Many Lives -> 49 MP ), and yet so so so so so so modern, to be almost included on Heartland. Anyway to hear it was just... and even though he's been playing it more often, I felt intensely blessed when he started off on That's When the Audience Died. Definitely my favorite song from Has a Good Home, with it's lashing web of intersecting melodies, and I got a wish come true as well: Thomas accompanied, walking in halfway through in his semi-tranced way. His guitar accompaniment made a much wider sound, adding to the climax near the end of the song, and giving Owen more freedom to adventure outward into confidence and excitement. This setlist has become the prototype for the rest of his shows, and especially after Coachella and the island break, it felt like a coming home.

"Pitchfork called it a slam dunk." "Shut up. I've never heard of that site."

Midnight Directives was one of those "new songs" that they said they'd play because they were "better." They did a fine job. Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine was a strange performance, but I don't exactly remember why. Thomas' percussion was more creative than usual, I think. The Great Elsewhere rose from the muck, and it was mostly spot on, but I remember some cracks starting to appear in the face of things. The nervousness continued with Lewis Takes Action which, although the performance was fine, Owen forgot his "wurlitzer version of his voice," which he cutely added back before the encore as a leading tone. I love that he's adaptable like that, but certain things do seem to shake him. The song had a new intro that bewildered me, but I loved it dearly. Thomas left, and...

...and then there was a little monologue about prerecorded songs, and I knew we were going to be the third or so audience to enjoy Don't Stop on My Account. Even though he and Thomas (!!!) are apparently going into the studio pretty soon, I doubt anything will come of this in time...it sounds like the kind of thing like "wouldn't it be cool if we had a huge drum machine part under all this?" Thomas came in part way. Like a lot of the music of Arcade Fire and Radicalface, the whole song pivots around that 4-on the floor, here used to more poppy and bouncy effect. It was a really fun result, but it's the poppiest I've ever heard Owen, and I'm not sure I'm a fan. He followed it with He Poos Clouds, which is always tight and well-memorized, making both a sincere and arresting performance. No looping, I think? It's just belt it out, and also a chance for Owen to gather himself in comfortable territory.

"What are you drinking?" "Harpoon IPA Pale Ale. Thomas got he hooked on it." *cheers* "Oh, is that a local thing?" "How do you like Boston?" "It's nice! When I was first here I only liked the architecture."

Welcome back Thomas to a really delightful version of Flare Gun segueing to The Butcher. They followed it with a really really really especially specially done Many Lives -> 49 MP. They closed with Lewis Takes Off His Shirt. The song was especially interesting to me because I heard how Thomas was changing the way he used percussion (Wilbur: no snare click; Outremont: all snare click; ICA: some snare click) to keep the beat moving. He reserved the good stuff for the end (I think he called it a "piece of work").

The encore was kind of sad. It was a botched version of This Lamb Sells Condos, which fell apart once or twice, and Owen didn't have the graces to not launch into a short monologue about it. I chatted up Thomas after, and he said he wasn't satisfied with it as a whole, especially as a jumping off point to the rest of the tour. As a fan I loved it, and the whole venue was with me I think. The strong moments of a band who knows themselves and their set really well can't be overshadowed by mixups and fuckups, and I do not feel cheated in any way shape or form. Plus, I heard three songs I'd been dying to hear, and strong performances of many others. How can I go wrong?

I'm worried that the Osheaga setlist is going to suck, like the Coachella setlist did. But I think the performance will still be vibrantly spot-on. Long Live Owen and Thomas.

Concert Review: Muse + Silversun Pickups 3/6

I say there are two paradigms which concerts find themselves in between: physically energized and musically energized.

The musically energized concerts revolve around the emotional arc of the pieces, the dynamic range of the songs, the attention to form and detail and control. The participants are seated, and most audience members sit and listen (or stand, even, although that's more uncommon) to the conflicts and resolutions presented on stage. They live through it, in it, wrapping their minds notes by note over the conclusions that a piece represents, statements and questions and the eternal striving to express.

The physically energized concerts orbit around the physical involvement from the crowd, the force and frenzied power of the songs, attention to the crowd's energy and how to compliment it, and lots and lots of movement. Standing participants get into moshes of various kinds, or just sway around like some form of lava. If you're far enough into the spirit, you get into a place of ecstasy in the meaning and power behind a single motion, a single gesture to a neighbor. "Just give me a scene where the music is free, and the beer is not the life of the party, and there's no need to shit-talk or impress, 'cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon." is the ideal.

The Flaming Lips are a perfect example of how fucking magical it is when a band can straddle the two. You can have a heartwrenching version of "Taps" to commemorate the loss of life in Baghdad, to immediately segue into a song about "We got the power now, motherfuckers it's where it belongs." You can start with Race for the Prize, which despite its amazing energy manages to be tacit vocally during its chorus, and follow it with applause-driven, slow-and-plaintive-ballad versions of hit songs. Fucking nuts.

Muse aren't that great. In my opinion their new record sucks more than the rest of their catalog, but if you can get behind the irony of 3 upper-middle-class guys from Devon singing about social unrest and third eyes (especially since concerts are the closest thing we have to a Two-Minute's Hate, festivals a Hate Week, in their power to transport and warp) you can revel in all sorts of very very pure energy. That's just their record that puts them so far in the Physically Energized column, but their live shows play on that tenfold.

Silversun Pickups, who opened, didn't strike me that much. Their drummer was solid in what he could do, and so kept a wonderfully steady backbeat, but I learned how to play those licks, those exact amen-break like riffs, in Freshman year. Because he drummed open-handed, the ride was appropriated to the crash position, and the crash was set up in the ride position...6 feet off the ground. He could reach it, sure, but all it allowed him to do was a few flamboyant stick tricks. Beyond him, the keyboard player was good when I could hear him, which was never. I liked the bassist a lot. The guitarist's strum work seemed all-or-nothing: either straight 16ths or sparse hits. Despite all that, they had a very sincere and grateful bent on stage, and so they did their job and played their set and got off. That feeling was helped along a great deal by the lead guitarist, who was swaying his axe back and forth, playing with climax using an echo pedal, and saying "very" about 60 times in "thank you very ... very much" I didn't enjoy their act much, especially when the drummer decided to be the last one to go off, but hell it was fun, and I appreciated them.

As I figure it, the golden age of Muse touring was post- Black Holes and Revelations. They were comfortable enough to reach far back into their catalogue, to start (and NOT end) a show with the bombastic glory of Knights of Cydonia, and then kill everyone with Take a Bow at the end. For a lot of reasons the Resistance album had a large amount of control over the show, which means LESS AWESOME but still cool energy. Setlist from the fanforums:

1. Uprising
2. Resistance
3. New Born
4. Map of the Problematique
5. Supermassive Black Hole
6. Guiding Light
7. Interlude + Hysteria
8. Nishe
9. United States of Eurasia
10. Feeling Good
11. Helsinki Jam
12. Undisclosed Desires
13. Starlight
14. Plug In Baby
15. Time Is Running Out
16. Unnatural Selection
Encore
17. Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
18. Stockholm Syndrome
19. Man with a Harmonica intro + Knights of Cydonia

So Resistance tracks make up about 37% of the show, and most of the rest are either greatest stadium hits from a few years back, or instrumental jams from various sources. My main problem with the setlist is the lack of tension. The only song that really held the crowd hostage was the Exogenesis performance, which was brilliantly done...far too late. We were theirs long before that. None of the quieter songs from earlier albums to create tension and release, just BASH BASH BASH loud song loud song loud song. As a crowd we could take it, and we felt well-handled, but they've lost their touch so clear after Black holes and Revelations, to really take us on a journey somewhere...not playing a bunch of songs in an arena.

Not much else, I guess. What a shitty venue, most of all.

Concert Review: Secret Society 2/25

Apparently, buying furniture gives you passes to the Regattabar, one of the best Jazz clubs in Boston...and even more mind-blowingly, tickets there only cost $20. For the kind of shit they got comin' in there...we were looking through acts like Trombone Shorty, and they attract a lot of talent. It's amazingly cheap! But Shorty got canceled, so we decided to go to a different show, that of Secret Society. A very special performance in a lot of ways.

The band themselves is a collective of about 20 people. Pianist, electric/upright bassist, drummer/percussionist, guitarist, 6 horns, 3 trombonists, 6 or 7 reed players, and one conductor. The size was such that may have led, at least slightly, to a big-band style, but instead they functioned as a Jazz orchestra. That's in part because of the composing style which was, obviously, composed; although there were (beautiful) improvisations, most of what occured was heavily scripted intersection of lines. It had to be; that was extraordinarily complex music.

Two songs in common time the entire night, the rest ranging from 7 to 9 to (I think) 19. Ridiculous! And it's not like you could throw the chord sheets in front of the group. What chords? These players were working from full scores, highly impressive oversized tomes, each with heavily dense and contrasting lines. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music, very raw and well orchestrated, but definitely not typical Jazz fare. It teetered on the edge of musical jargon sometimes: stuff that only musicians could appreciate and had little value as art. But you could get the arc of it.

They add fun bits of history into their work, which are explained by their conductor/composer/"ringleader". A nice discussion on fear and the fate of the inner of Mars' moon (and possible Martian Rings) led to Phobos, whereas a discussion on the most influential secret society led into Jacobin Club. A human rights discussion about unjust and unwarranted detainment resulted in Habeus Corpus, whereas Obsidian Flow was named because... "it sounds cool." Redeye (sleep deprivation), Zeno (Zeno of Elea) and Tranist (Fung Wah buses) all worked in there as well. I have less to say about the tracks themselves, which were long and fascinating and musically brilliant. I guess the group dynamic is more what stuck out at me.

In the first place, the ringleader is a creepy man. Darcy James Argue is sorta hunched over and unkempt with a fire in his eyes. He leads his anecdotes while looking off into the distance, and indulging in awkward tangents. He simply doesn't have the charisma to be a center of the group; yet he is an amazing genius. A couple of friends must've gotten together and started a small collective, which eventually grew into 20. These people are musicians for the sake of their art and the prospect of this amazing art.

The soloists who played (at one point, two at a time) had to work themselves into the grand structure of the ringleader's music, while at the same time playing the role of a contrasting soloist. Players stopped playing, sure...but usually to switch instruments. There was always some line working under, and although the fantastic drummer smoothed the edges and kept the form together, the soloists had an incredibly tough job. That they demonstrated their own genius within and without the genius of the piece amazed me the most. Virtuosic both in technique and in sense of melody.

I don't have a lot more to say about the group, I was kind of tired at the time. In sum: their album is really good.

Oh, and I saw John Pizzarelli play a few days later. What a badass.

Concert Review: Owen Pallett + Diamond Rings, 2/20

So this is the concert where I verified that I am, in fact, a fangirl. Yes I could make the excuse about me turning 18 and being a Senior and wanting to do something wild and fun, but really, there is no rational reason for spending a 14-hour round trip out of the country to see a concert, especially when I got there two hours before doors, especially since I saw the guy 3 months earlier almost to the day, and was seeing him again 2 months later to the day, especially since I was sick at the time. What can I say; I love what Owen Pallett does.

It's only after listening to it so many times that I've been able to appreciate the differences between Heartland and the live shows he does. The guy has progressed from the (mostly) solo or looped or layered violin for Has a Good Home, to the centrally string quartet and also some other orchestrated stuff on He Poos Clouds, to a fully orchestrated fully realized concept album for Heartland...and yet his shows, though expanding slightly with the addition of the stellar and sweet Thomas Gill, are still really in the spirit of Has A Good Home's elegiac construction of a song before your eyes. Thomas has the harder role of the two, I believe, since he has to accompany that spirit, and he doesn't get the chance to redo his mistakes over the loop like Owen (often) does. He has to mold himself around Owen's presence, both because Owen is the songwriter, and because Owen has that looping privilege. It's Owen's force out there. In this particular show, Thomas played the snare clicks on Lewis Takes Off His Shirt, something which only happened on-album and which I've never heard recorded live before. Just that little bit of independence really changed what that song did, what it felt like.

So we can listen to the St. Kitts orchestra all we like, and hear the contours of what he's made for people to perform for him, but when we're live we hear what he does for himself. I was privileged to buy the Heartland Orchestra Scorebook, which is in limited edition of 300 and too heavy to bring on tours, so is shipping for $80 rather than the normal price of $40, and the performers were given an absurd among of independence. That opening, swirling mass of strings at the beginning of Tryst With Mephistopheles? Improvised: "ponticello, play around with this motif, no player the same". The subtle creeping around on Keep the Dog Quiet? Improvised: "with loose bow / ponticello, durations of trills improvised" . On Lewis Takes Action: "arco / with lots of air / turn to random pitches, descend and die away" Every song as at least a few glissandos, in voice or violin or otherwise.The wailing to start off E is for Estranged walks the line between a trill and "like a wide vibrato." Owen can't control any of that, but he controls everything in his live shows. So they become a lot more personal, since he's not just speaking through an orchestra. That would explain why he's never recorded Honour the Dead or Else: too intimate, requires too much of his own spirit.

Anyway, let's jump in. After spending 2 hours waiting for doors, talking to a Junior from McGill and a crazy lady named Sheila, and 1 hour waiting for the opener, here we go:

Diamond Rings

I had listened to "All Yr Songs" quite a bit beforehand, but I didn't know anything else he was going to play. His shows walk the line between musicianship and performance. He sets up his beats and bass beforehand, and then either sings, sings and plays guitar, or sings and plays keyboard over what he has. Usually that kind of stuff makes me uncomfortable: I feel like musician really isn't, xe isn't displaying per talent or anything. But...god, the guy at such Charisma. He clearly put effort into getting everything ready, choreographing himself, and plus he was just...so energetic! Dressed in his denim jacket, zebra-print chaps/leggings, purple socks and sneakers, with all sorts of sparkles and makeup, he was able to be over-the-top dramatic without killing his dignity. He's a pretty good player with a great, great ear for melody, so even his sometimes awkward piano playing yielded exciting results. He's a fine guitarist, as well. Great, great, great voice, very deep and uses it well. I guess what it made me think of was a 90's throwback: synthesizers and purple sneakers and raising two fingers to rhyme with "too" or "to" and falling over when saying how he's "losing balance." Lotsa fun.

Owen Pallett (and Thomas Gill)

The setlist is via Scarychips, a member of the fan forums who was also in attendance, and who decided not to say hello to me even though he recognized me and I was pretty sure who he was, and didn't feel like asking people if they were scared of chips or something. Anyway, he was a sweetheart and posted this:

Théâtre Outremont, Montréal - February 20th.

1. Love Song to an Empty Room
2. Midnight Directives
3. This Lamb Sells Condos
4. Flare Gun
5. The Butcher
6. Many Lives > 49 MP
7. Took You Two Years To Win My Heart
8. E Is For Estranged
9. This Is the Dream of Win and Régine
10. Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine
11. The Great Elsewhere
12. Honour the Dead or Else
13. Lewis Takes Action
14. Lewis Takes Off His Shirt.
Encore #1:
15. The Man With No Ankles
16. Fantasy
Encore#2:
17. He Poos Clouds.

That's right, motherfuckers. Two encores.

Love Song To an Empty Room is a track I'd never heard before, although I'd heard he'd been playing that, as well as Independence is No Solution, The Arctic Circle, That's When the Audience Died, and even Better than Worse. We didn't get any of those, but we did get a slew of rarer/unrecorded cuts like this one. Much less a song than a swelling feat of choreographed accompaniment.

I love when Owen starts stuff with Midnight Directives. It's a baptism on-album, and off album it starts with that incredibly impressive run of pizzicato. The shift into This Lamb Sells Condos was a bit atypical, since he usually goes there from The Great Elsewhere, but I liked it. I feel badass that I can play everything he does now. His arrangement is a bit strange, in that the incredibly noticeable melody line that starts off the live reciording has to wait until after the first voice. That's one of the consequences of the looping style: you have to set up your accompaniment first sometimes, and then fill in melody and bass later. But the freedoms it gives you are wild and clear, and it was put to great use much later in Two Years. Back to chronology: Flare Gun and the Butcher were fine, as always, and that segue always works very well. I was kind of dropping off from fatigue at this point. What I was constantly noticing, however, is how Thomas interacts with what's going on. He's spasming, walking around the stage, inserting percussion hits where randomly appropriate. What he's doing is pretty scripted, I think, but he takes and approaches it with a hugely profound amount of sincerity and devotion.

Many Lives > 49 MP demonstrates two things about the performers: Owen Pallett is a melodic genius to be able to a craft a song which has a progression and emotional arc to it even though it's essentially a single melody line with some minimal bass later on; and Thomas Gill is an extraordinary skilled guitarist.

Took You Two Years to Win My Heart: it was requested back in Vienna last August, and Owen responded with a medium-length monologue about how she was "walking on his cookies." I thought it would never see the light of this decade, but wow. Raw and solo, it was a glorious performance. Thomas left, which is interesting; there are spots where accompaniments would've added a new dynamic. But most of his earlier material was intended, and is then played unaccompanied. That doesn't mean he doesn't add stuff to it: just as the improvisings he does over That's When the Audience Died instead of glissing up to the final note, Owen was taking more liberties with rhythm. It was also cool to see what he did at the end: cascade down and hold the notes for a little bit, record and repeat so it goes down further, and repeat that twice more until it sounds like four strings playing 2 note chords. Eeeee.

E is for Estranged was really the turning point for me in the concert. I actually felt myself falling asleep a bit, just letting the arcing melody lull me off. It was a beautiful and tender performance, and Owen managed to get some actual tone out of his strumming this time, which pleased me. This is the Dream of Win and Regine: he fucking nailed it. No messups on those octaves. Absolutely beautiful and energetic, wildly intimate too. Keep the Dog Quiet + Mt. Alpentine I've never understood why he chooses to keep the backbeat of Dog while Alpentine comes on. It creates some nice tension, I suppose, and I guess since Alpentine requires a certain..."suspension of disbelief," as it's not as jarring as it tries to be, especially on album. Do I really need to talk about The Great Elsewhere? Most amazing song on-album is religious live. Augh.

Honour the Dead or Else was wild on so many levels. Since Owen didn't have to do all the percussion himself, he got to do his violin-drumming parts (which is amazing, btw) but leave the bulk of the work to Mr. Gill. Better balance. The build off of "selfish selfish sleepy boy" gets better every time I listen to it, and it was the moment where I snapped and started really enjoying myself. Very well-executed.

Lewis Takes Action is not my favorite of his songs, but the live version appeals a lot more than the album version. Thomas always pulls out these really killer harmonies, which for some reason sound a lot clearer than those on-album. We knew that Lewis Takes Off His Shirt was coming up eventually, but what he gave us was something quite special: snare clicks. As someone who really knows Owen's live routine pretty well, that was jarring...and extraordinarily sexy, driving the spirit along.

The Man With No Ankles was slated and then removed from Heartland, and Owen played it solo. Highlighting moment: "Woahoahoahoahoh!" Fantasy, which followed, comes out of Owen's past, and it's a strange choice otherwise; no other song has that pop glitz to it. The two worked marvelously with it, as if they were satanically happy to be playing pop for a moment, just reveling in how "sweet" it all was. Maybe there was a note of irony in there too: RIP Final Fantasy. After a riotous round of applause, a second encore came though (the third I've seen: legally by Arcade Fire and illegally by State Radio), of He Poos Clouds. Solo. Oh dear, yes. He doesn't do the atonality on the second verse but keeps to the main lick. It's a remarkable song to play solo, in that the climax at the end of the "chorus" section ("move him with my...") has to be played first entirely unaccompanied, and then with maybe a little bit of harmonic power. It's a song that can't just ride on the dissonance of the chord or the volume of the player, it requires a very intent amount of control which Owen pulled off wonderfully as I struck an imaginary piano. Oh dear.

In sum: Owen has a sister?

Stuff I've Been Spinning / The Hope of Being Spun

I've been trying to get out of my Arcade Fire/Bjork/Owen Pallett/Sufjan Stevens loop that tends to take up 2/3 of my listening time. I've been listening to a conveniently (or mostly) alphabetical set of albums:

Venetian Snares - Rossz Csillag Alatt Született

Kaki King - ...Until We Felt Red

Incredible String Band - 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion

Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own

Beach House - Teen Dream

Bela Fleck - Flight of the Cosmic Hippo

The Venetian Snares is positively religious, I got addicted to Gloomy Sunday from the cover of the Billie Holiday cover. I'd listened to the Kaki King before and was unimpressed, but it's become a much more emotionally intense experience. She knows how to craft a compelling emotional arc, even if her musicanship can be kind of boring. "You Don't Have to Be Afraid" is one of the more beautiful things the last decade saw, I think. Incredible String Band is a new favorite: musically loose, yeah, and not always deliberate, sure, but very spirited, narratively fun, and if you're able to wade through the mess of twanging: well-thought and well-imagined music. The Basia Bulat seems to be blah generic folk...reminded me of Goldfrapp's 7th Tree, but it deserves another listen. Same with the Beach House, which had a lot of interesting licks...it's probably more headphone music. But oh god, Bela Fleck. So worldly. So 80s.

I had one of those "7 hours of recording and mixing - > 150 seconds of music" moments with the Akron/Family contest: cover this song and we'll try to find a gig in your area. It sounds ok, and the two people who I know listened to it have given me positive reviews. Vocals (badly recorded; not the proper mic, and too far from the mic), flute and clarinet doubling vocals, drums and melodic bass, piano (could stand out more), and backup winds (two ocarinas and a recorder; say it with me: awww!). Now that I realize we have 2, count them 2, micraphones, I'm thinking of rerecording my piano with more...deliberate (read: loud) recording. My only two songs that actually exist are my Song for Kevin and Song for Rachel, the rest are idle musings which could be turn into songs. There's also a medley of my own stuff that I want to do with accompaniment...and shitloads of covers. Lots to do! I've especially been digging into my Beethoven and working on a new Owen Pallett cover from Matt Winkelworth the genius transcriber. Flare Gun!

And stuff!