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...

Concert Review: Flobots (5/25) and other things

Hey! So this show wasn't just Flobots, but I didn't get to catch the openers. I have no experience with the group beyond "Handlebars," and had never been up to Allston, or specifically to Harper's Ferry. It's a beautiful hole-in-the-wall with, yes, cheap beer, which is apparently why a lot of people were there. But the whole setup was casual, with no biggie ticket check even though they were a little on the pricey side ($20?). Dedicated to the band? Maybe 150. But that made it all the so much bigger.

I know shit about Flobots, but that stopped me. Stopped nobody; you could feel people gravitating in off their barstools to be here. Musically I'm into what they do, I guess. Start with: a very tight drummer, who knows when to kick on and kick off, and how to throw in double-time on the snare and hihats to funk up a beat without derailing it. The jittering mass of their songs couldn't have gone along without their bassist, who not only was tight, but creative and clearly into it. The violist did some beautiful work, with her vibrato and attention to tone, but she wasn't always able to get beyond her role and character as "contrast." Especially in a show without horns, you need to find ways to add melody, and she could've been more outgoing and stabilized some of the grooves. The guitarist was a huge geek, but I loved him dearly. Both as frontmen and as skilled musicians, though, the two rappers stole the show.

I think of rap as three things only: rhythm, tone, and beat, in order of importance. I'm going to use Busdriver's solo on Islands' "Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone" to illustrate what I'm talking about. Rhythm and cadence are just the same as in drumming; I think that any good rap line should be able to double as a snare solo on drums. Finding ways to find those cracks in the song where offbeats, syncopation, or (favorite!) triplet runs push it forward. Here's what I'm talking about, to the right: it holds up on its own, just as music.

The manipulation of those rhythmic elements and motives has to be married to the tools of poetic words: rhymes, masculine and feminine lines, assonance, consonance, all of those simple tools of language. Sounds need to link to other sounds: in rhyme with another, in contrast with a line before it, in a pun that links back to another syllable. You can listen to rap like it's scatting.

I'm worst with the meaning. Even if that "Whalebone" song doesn't really say much that's sensible (or audible), you get the main themes pretty clearly and cleverly: being lost in a swirling realm of media, fame and fantasy, corruption, etc. Good rap can rally even if it's not specific; it can paint a picture through association, not literal words. I'm a sucker for instrumental music, but the power of a Flobots song couldn't be the same with out its lift. Decyphering their lyrics in real time was a treat, "Panacea for the Poison" especially, but everything! "Drop the debt and legalize weed" called to the crowd as much as the music behind it did, and both of them were amazing at all three things.

The two rapper added their interplay to the mix. They pushed each other in their friendly yet intense trading of lines, they spoke together and varied their tone to vaunt the whole song up, they melded their personalities against the characters that every other performer was in and blew it up with a word. Chain reactions across the floor. It was beautiful.

They wanted you to put your hands in the air and you put your hands in the air not because you felt like you had to but because you wanted to because together you could do something really exciting. They gave you messages scaled to a human level: not "overturn the Arizona immigration law now" or "equal rights for people of all sexualities and gender-identities now" or "troops out now", but prayers, wishes, conversations, and questions, meant to open our soul to what really matters: "standing up in a room. that's when change happens. Stand up, stand up, stand up..."

Kate Miller-Heidke's "Curiouser," and Concert with Ben Folds (April)

I picked up the album to your left during her tour with Ben Folds, a concert that I was very abruptly and very happily invited to at the House of Blues. More on that in a bit. In a bit of boredom, I threw a few albums together in a now playing list wtih this on it (also including Evelyn Evelyn's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" track which continues to blow my mind and The Avalanches' "Since I Left You" which is just perfect to play for friends and is not well known despite being lauded a thousand times over by Kitchfork and Antony's "The Crying Light" which is just too self-indulgently melancholy for me right now and Sufjan Steven's "The BQE," which continues to FUCK MY BRAIN but anyway). I've gotten a few chances to listen through it and I guess I'd like to say some things about it.

The album is a vein of gold. There's so much clear strength and power, and yet impure or...unrefined wouldn't be the right word, since the album's production sheen is flawless.

Despite her trademark voice abilities, I'm disappointed with the melodies she uses, which range from the unimaginative ("I Like You Better When You're Not Around") to the trite ("Caught in the Crowd"). Yet as an instrument weaving in with other, it gains an incredible amount of power ("God's Gift To Women"), catchyness ("Can't Shake It" and "Motorscooter"), and just presentation effect ("Politics in Space") . I say without irony that she would make an incredible backup or group singer, as I even saw with Ben Folds on "You Don't Know Me."

Lyrically, the album is very mixed. Her style tends to torrent along a theme or a rhyme scheme, and the effect is either stunning or falls flat on its face in a magical explosion of trite pop (..."Caught in the Crowd"...) . She's never just saying things, but she does get caught up in how smart she's doing, maybe? Or less venemously, getting caught up in the momentum that you get when you have a really good riff you like, or a pattern, and just throw it out as much as you can because you're excited. A lot of great excitement, and honesty and clarity, I don't feel bullshitted. But at the same time...I wish she listened to fewer of her pop bands and heard the songs the sex pistols made. She could focus more on energy and less on her really nice articifice.

In terms of grooves...again, mixed. There's a lot of invention going about, especially in chord progressions, song forms, and choice of instruments. But she gets caught up in it, despite all artful manipulations, and certain songs are just doomed to fail (..."Caught in the Crowd"...ok, another example: "Last Day on Earth"). But sometimes she's spot-fucking on, and the groove aligns with the words and the melody doesn't detract and and and and and the results are fireworks, "Politics in Space" and "God's Gift to Women" and "Can't Shake It" (my copy of the album also has "Words" and "Are You Fucking Kidding Me," both of which are mindblowing and were played live).

And live? She tours with an acoustic guitarist and uses a keyboard occasionally. And I think that's AMAZING. Without the tools to create a full pop artifice, she strips down the the pure energy and focuses on her strengths: insane torrents of words, radical manipulation of tone and pitch, inventive and surprising song structures over focused grooves. Kind of like Amanda Palmer touring vs. Amanda Palmer recording these days.

To sum up: I would love a panel of very, very deliberate artists and musicians and arrangers to come together and listen to this over and over, and put out a cover album of it. Mean title for it? "We Make Kate Miller-Heidke Songs Better Than Kate Miller-Heidke Can." Nice title? "We Tap Into the Inspiration and Genius of Kate Miller-Heidke."

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.