Concert Review: Arcade Fire + Young Galaxy (8/1)

Young Galaxy

I was distracted with my letters, but I liked this band. It takes balls to start off your set with an expansive rock ballad, and it is with balls that they hopped around their country, post-rock, punk, and country-influenced tunes. Rhythmically they were fantastic, with an ambitious but solid drummer meshing with a great bassist and one of the few people who realize its not easy to play tambourine, and do it well anyway. Their harmonies were sweet as well, although the sweetness almost took away from how hard they were, wrapping it in puffy thirds, fourths, and fifths. Regardless they were a great energy-boost for the evening, with some nice character on stage. Worth checking out in a few months.

Arcade Fire

Setlist:

1) Ready to Start

2) Month of May

3) Neighborhood #2 (Laika)

4) No Cars Go

5) Haiti

6) Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

7) We Used to Wait

8) Intervention

9) Modern Man

10) The Suburbs

11) Deep Blue

12) Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)

13) Rebellion (Lies)

14) Half Light II (No Celebration)

15) Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

---

16) Keep the Car Running

17) Wake Up

A quick inventory over that setlist reveals a lot. Almost all of their established live heavy hitters are played, taking up 9 songs; 4 of the songs were the pre-released singles, making, and what's left are three tracks that not enough people knew. It's perfect: be everything people remember or are used to in the band, walk onto sort-of-covered material to start and restart the set, and fill in with interesting material to look forward to on the record. Not many risks, but then Arcade Fire doesn't have to take many risks: the audience trusts them to come back, to tolerate even the new stuff: "sorry to confuse you with all these new songs," Win blurted at one point. I don't blame them, either. I'm not sure whether it was me and my memory of what an AF set should be circa 2007, or the audience's knowledge and enthusiasm for the material they knew, or the grooves that hadn't yet been worn into the new songs to make them their own, (or maybe the weight of a strict, vanilla, corporatized venue) but some electricity was lost during the middle part of that set. I wouldn't say there were any real quiet moments, but moments that were more "shuffle" or "tango" than "jump at a rock concert."

Wisely, Ready to Start was placed at the beginning. It rocks hard, has a strong synth melody on the high-end and a frantic and clear chorus. We all went nuts for it, and felt its guidance into the rest of the set, and we knew it, as we did Month of May. Or at least enough of us did to regenerate the electricity. Or maybe they felt better about it. Anyway, MoM balanced out the baroque arena rock with some baroque...punk, I guess. Just as RTS was accessible for its subject, MoM was accessible for that punk styling, for its repetitions and frantic syncopated lyrics.

But they knew what we wanted, and so they drew out the drums, and as the applause and excitement petered away the vague outlines of Neighborhood #2 (Laika) appeared, at which point shit hit the fan. I do think that the group does the old songs better, that they are spaces in which they know the contours and can vault boldly into the sky with all of their enthusiasm, as they did on the opening tunes but with less...comfort? Maybe what I'm critiquing is the new flavor of The Suburbs, that I see in these tunes, with their shufflesteps and slower builds and lack of catharsis (by the way, I lost my pitchfork bet :< ) in arcingly glistening statements in favor of the quiet and common modernity that forms a slow black choking inevitable tide over us. "The last kiss on the coffin of youth . . . the hard drink after a day's work" . . . and now the family, 10 years later, remembering their parents? The fact that The Suburbs takes the subject matter of Funeral from a different perspective freshened, I think, the approach to the old material. Anyway, it kicked ass and blew everyone's mind, cementing in us the expectation of a machine-gun heavy-hitter kind of night. Disco and all.

And so the culmination of the Arcade Fire style, the ultimate (and penultimate) cry of Neon Bible, the old song which was made new, with a bridge that contained one of the few rhythmless moments of the entire night, with two of the most powerful and extended crescendos in all of music, the one, the only, No Cars Go? Similarly, with the call of the horns, light flashes and fist pumps and abandoned shouting, we found trust. The group played it slightly downtempo but no less powerfully. It takes power to drag the thrill of an opening out for 4 songs, and they certainly managed.

Haiti was one of the top moments of the night. Cascading past a four-on-the-floor bass-drum, the rhythm and melody manage to hit every sixteenth note without sounding frantic, creating two levels of access: the melody's elegaic loss made only more compelling by Regine's impassioned stylings, and the rhythm's frantic, cycling need. The wordless and spoken parts seemed new and surprising, unexpected tunnels through the face of the song into new territory of improv and excitement. This band reps their care for Haiti a thousand times over, and it was a real gift to hear that in their music. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), which apparently does take after the Tracy Kidder book, had a similar wealth of spirit but was entirely new, entirely different. It grabbed less quickly than the other tunes, but it had a certain glisten to it, a fascinated transluscence which the simple scalar melodies and happy chord patterns only lended to. Subtle, definitely subtle. But Regine was screaming, so it was accessible. And, oh right, beautiful.

We Used to Wait was probably the lowest energy moment of the night, which was kind of a shock after the grab of the last two songs. It was a "tango" sort of song, with a brooding that didn't really take off. Shuffling around to it, though, you could feel the space they were crafting. In the background were shots of various papers and letters which, I assume, belonged to Alvino Rey, grandfather to Win and Will. Is his memory accessible to an audience, beyond the rarity of "My Buddy" and a vague link in the musical chain to AF? Maybe. As with this song and the others, the album as got to get known first.

Intervention was just lovely. The musicianship was a bit rough, notably on the marimba, but whatever. The spirit was everywhere. Also special to hear was not the LP-style full-force organ, or the demo-style acoustic guitar, but a strong mix of the two. With a better soundsystem that could absolutely destroy, but instead a certain sensitivity got lost in the sweep of the drums. Ah well. I wish I could say more about Modern Man, and later Deep Blue, and even later Half Light II (No Celebration), but I really don't remember.

However, The Suburbs shines brightly. One of the things I loved about the tune is how the darkness slowly chokes it, through layers that are added, rhythms that are changed, melodies which flare off, by degrees you enter a more anxious, even desperate space, but always quietly, always. Of course that effect is hard to replicate live, but even so, there was less punch last night, less sureness, less power into that downbeat stomp on the chorus and less soaring off into a new verse rife with more loss every word.

Which wasn't permanent, of course. Because there is only one other thing as exciting to me as the promise of the groove Neighborhood #3 (Power Out). A tune like that couldn't exist on The Suburbs; it's too simple in its statements, too complex in its weavings, too orange in hue (?), too young. Maybe the youngest song on Funeral in its supernova frantic pathos-laden punch. Or maybe not. But only one other thing can move my body like that, can hit so deeply the face of what this band has meant to me like that song. I can't say anything less personal about it.

And the other thing is a drumfreakout which morphs, little by little, into the realization that they're about to play Rebellion (Lies) and you should already moving. It fits the arena amazingly well, and while not as intimate as some of the earlier tracks, in its firey grandeur and towering irony (Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies!) it's immediately there for everyone. Shit continued to hit the fan. More fist-pumps per second seconds, more voice cracks per note on a wordless melody, more feet left the ground per song than anything else.

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), though...it was not arena rock. It had a dancing power that people went nuts with, and came in second on the voice cracks per note sung, yeah. It was infinitely personal, tender and young even after its composition 6? 7? 8? years ago. The Arcade Fire returns and manages, like no other song on the set, to pack in all of their many-layered pathos. A cosmic Sfogliatella. Their loss and their optimism in equal and magnetically charged parts drawing towards each other in their stage presence, their musicianship...I'm descending, but if you've seen them live, you get it. They just touch you and it's nice. And in LP3-era AF, they only get better at it.

I was pleasantly surprised with the choice of Keep the Car Running, and even more surprised with how they pushed at it, letting it breathe on the "when it's coming" parts, a brave move for an encore. The density just shot up on those choruses as the drums doubled the beat and the vocals shout, and that was done with such care. Goodness.

I'm tired, but Wake Up was Wake Up. It was the world and distant arena rock and shimmering sentiment. It was magnificently performed and also just had to happen. There is no way that this song, this set, this band is done budding over this tour. The later, the better.

Looking back, the show feels in part contrived, a deliberate attempt by the band to limit themselves and what they said on stage by planning it so carefully, fitting it with the necessities of an (shiver) arena band still kicking off their new-album tour. But what can you do at the Pavilion, on the second show of a long tour of a new disc? Personally it didn't matter at the time. Everybody, it seemed, felt welcomed enough to clap along when they felt like it, and not let the band decide. Me, I fucked up my elbow and my knee and my voice and the attitudes of a few haters behind me and it doesn't matter. That was, if I dare, the wildest, deepest show I've ever seen.

I Made A Demo

This was for my senior project, a 5-week endeavor marked mostly by the transition from classes to no classes, grades to no grades, work to a nearly guaranteed pass, and lots and lots of time we still had to spend going back to school to do fucking...whatever. So the work, while meant and conceived and lengthwise an album, is more of a fuckoff demo, with a bit of good shit goin' on. Part of me wants to do it again, but it's a stab, an attempt, with a few good things that I want to take elsewhere. But yeah, Owen Pallett covers only sound good live, Woody Guthrie America covers cannot be done under stress, and you need to plan your shit for 7 minute songs. Tracklisting, with my favorites bolded. Enjoy "Stabs." Heavy critique appreciated.

1) "Prelude (to Shitty Days)" by Alyssa
2) "He Poos Clouds" by Owen Pallett, arr. Matt Winkworth
3) "Martha My Dear" by Lennon/McCartney, arr. Alyssa
4) "Woody Guthrie's America" by Akron/Family, arr. Alyssa
5) "Accidents" by Arcade Fire, arr. Alyssa (better version here)

6) "Shampoo, Fresh Laundry, and Sweat (for Blu)" by Alyssa
7) "The Fragrance of Dark Coffee" by Noriyuki Iwadare, arr. Alyssa, feat. Bekah, Jack, and Mia
8) "Like Someone in Love" by Van Heusen, inspired by Bjork and Jerry Englebach, feat. LEFCS
9) "This Lamb Sells Condos" by Owen Pallett, arr. Owen Pallett
10) "The Tyrrany of Lists" by Alyssa
11) "We All Have to Save a Little Love For Ourselves (for Kevin)" by Alyssa

Link

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.

Suburbs/Month of May and Album Playlist of the Half-Month

I'll start with the small news:

Just like I've had the same playlist stuck on the "Now Playing" thing on my Zune , I like to switch it up every so often...like every half-month. So I'll pick a random point in the alphabet and harp on it, giving short thoughts or longer ones maybe baby.

This week:

Wilco: "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

My dad was the first one to get me into this group/album, so my first memories of it are from a few long car rides, and listening to orange-tan colored rock music tinged with something I couldn't recognize. Second was drumming on "Jesus, Etc." and not realizing it was from this album, and then I started getting into it again. For the last instrumental concert of the year I played drums on "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" with 6 kids from the Jazz Band...it was hard, but really special. The entire album is easy to listen to but hard to pick apart, not only lyrically but in musical motifs beyond the trite "music/noise." What I feel in it, though is a hotel filled with resting anticipations and wishes, trying to free themselves and taking weirdly-lighted trips out into the "real world."

Wrecked Machines: "Worried World"

It's...good trance? I didn't give it too many listens but I felt like I was listening to something more artful than a lot of dance music can do for me.

Dosh: "Wolves and Wishes"

Probably the favorite stuff on the playlist. I first got suggested it asking around on /mu/ for music that used music boxes, and heard it again at a religious conference. Some of the rhythms and energy remind me of Akron/Family, or some of the hip but none of the hop of Avalanches, or none of the catharsis and all of the energy of Explosions in the Sky. Hooah. Beautiful rambling instrumental music, I could dance to this for ages.

Patrick Wolf: "Wind in the Wires"

I'm not a fan. I enjoyed it at first when I was able to follow the drama of it. And it's all about drama, the kind of suspension of disbelief that an album about Gypsy Kings and the Shadowsea and all sorts of fantasy characters to take place. But really, once you take all the sexy club-style bass out of "Libertine" (which I had to do, on the train), what I'm getting is a lyrically freewheeling musically dry set of stuff. Like, listen to Tristan with the bass low. That's what the album is for me, funky but dead. Then set the bass way up and rock out to it.

The Unicorns: "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?"

I think there are only two songs in the world that are perfect, fully perfect, that nothing could be done to them to make them better. "Tuff Ghost" is one of them ("Swans (Life After Death)" is the other, heheh). I either see this album as a half-assed concept album or a pretentiously thrown-together set of songs trying to be about death, but some of the songs just kill. What's weird about it is that even though I feel the album's concept teeters a lot, the songs are so strange in form (the abrupt ending of "I Don't Wanna Die" or the long unbalanced jam of "Child Star") that they lean on each other a lot to make sense, so there is a flow. I'm overharshing the concept, too, it's not that...argh....I guess just like Islands' first album, this is really about making music, musical death and creative death and life, and I should just feel the flow. And I do. Oh I do. You can't cause I'm already dead.

Lunar: "Wall of Sound"

Is it sad that I can say that this is one of those "classical/electronica bands who don't do much for publicity and release all their music online for free" and not be alone? A lot of their music feels tired, especially when the instrumentation strives to give the music a "classical feel" in an otherwise techno song. But in terms of soundscapes and crafting...pillars of sound...they do a nice job. Some of the songs have creative strokes of real weight, too. It does happen. Just...overproduced blagh.

OK OK OK BUT NOW even though the news has broken ARCADE FIRE'S NEW SINGLE TIME.

The first thing that identifies The Suburbs as an AF song is the rolling saloon-style piano chords over the bass and drums, with maybe a distant wail of strings, in an airy sort of production style that you can't mistake from Neon Bible. More archetypes in the lyrics: suburbs, driving, mother, bombs, lost feelings, kids, family. And the suburbs! Didn't we spend a whole album on that one?

Stuff's different, though. In Funeral AF did all they could to show the reasons to paint and reject these suburbs, from the dysfunctional relationships to war and loneliness and lots of driving and water and leaving places. In coming back to this topic, though, we're breaking through the stark and wildly colorful funeral picture into something even stranger: the dead body of youth, after it left. We're exploring what Neon Bible seemed to have so strongly left behind, to travel into realms of political commentary and loss in an ocean of negative media influence.

Instead we're right into the memories, not the present or the future but the past.Moving in your mom's van, what Funeral implied is now facing us in The Suburbs: we can't escape this past, and even if the feelings go past the memories stay and kids are still screaming screaming screaming. Who knows what it means now. It was all about the childhood gestures of drawing lines between us and them, screaming and yelling, getting hard, and getting bored with it all. Did it mean anything? Ever? The loss of Funeral was the idea and meaning of youth, but surfacing from the hard-life torment of Neon Bible, they look back and the loss has mutated into something else. Something else. Something else. Still screaming.

That's exciting fucking territory to travel to. What excites me even more is that even though AF released the title track of the work, we know from Neon Bible that the title track is only an exposition, a quick look into what an album is doing. I'm not sure that there are musical frontiers here, but it reminds me most of a slowed-down verison of "Poupee de Cire / Poupee de Son" cover from the Split 7" with LCD Soundsystem. Maybe some of "Cold Wind," actually a whole lot of "Cold Wind." Usually Arcade Fire songs can be thought as pure crescendos from A to B, but with this cut the beat's always on the same, and what gets added is a bit more melancholy. The descending electric guitar, synth wails, and strings that lay suspended in the air crying out under the harsher electric bass and (really well done) drums. Acoustic guitar thoughout is a great touch, adding a folky touch. The piano always plays the same progression diatonically, but it morphs it into more spaces...the weirdo major turn earlier in the song becomes a morning pedal point, drilling drilling drilling already past already past. The song breaks maybe a lit of mold, but mostly it takes everything Arcade Fire has done so well and puts it into a 5 minute romp/funeral march. Maturity is here, and also a lot of confusion.

If Month of May had xylophone in it, you could tell it was an Arcade Fire song. I...I can't even...not right now...maybe later...