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!

Piano / Stuff I'm Sad I'm Missing / Fucking Martha

Just worked through the theme and first variation of Beethoven's Sonata 12. Part of the reason I love Beethoven so much is those "what the fuck" moments: "Stacked fifths over here?" "Stacked fourths over there!?" "How long must you wait before throwing in accidentals and why do they make so much sense?" "Ocatves of Eb to D, then E, then F, G, Ab...in Eb major?" "This chord contains the top three notes of the Schoenberg chord..." "Is that a d diminished flat 9 over F!?! Passing dissonances my ass!" And yet even after plunking through a few sight-reads, it all finds its context in place. Fun stuff, although I kind of wanted to try for the tempest...heheh.

Because of a really really cool solo daytrip up to Montreal to see the big OP on Feb 20th, and a following rather expensive ticket to see Muse on Mar 6th, and a trip with friends soon after, I can't really justify any new concerts until like midapril. Which sucks, because so many good acts are coming through, even to the 18+ shows that I'll be able to head to now:

1/15 - Drug Rug
1/17 - Camper van Beethoven
1/27 - Of Montreal
2/10-11 - Magnetic Fields
2/13 - Tegan and Sara
2/18 - Editors
3/11 - Balkan Beat Box
2/20 - Fucked Up
3/27 - Spoon
3/27 - Toro y Moi (for $9, I'd do it, guy was sick on the Islands tour)
3/31 - Japandroids
3/31 - Miike Snow
4/3 - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
4/4 - Wilco
4/10 - Xiu Xiu
4/17 - Kaki King (eep)

1963
Aaaand Coakley is ruining everything because Brown knows how to appeal to the 30- and 40-somethings who were barely alive when Kennedy got elected, never had a sense of legacy about the Kennedy family, and are more pissed about their lost job or home than anything else. Fuck me.

Listening to Arcade Fire is both a Euphamism and a Literal Truth

And I'm avoiding Funeral like the plague because I only listen to that once a year, and I might break down entirely if I hear it. So I'm going through Neon Bible, Us Kids Know EP, Christmas EP, just finished a Glastonbury show...I'll queue up the White Session and the early Demo, and then play my rather large and redundant b-sides playlist ("brazil!").

I'm partway through a lyrical analysis post, and I'm really behind on a bunch of mixtapes. Gotta keep up, Aly.

Content: what I condsider to be my Arcade Fire "discography" (I never could find those rarer Neighborhood tracks:

LPs:

Funeral
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Neighborhood #3 (Power out)
Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)
Crown of Love
Wake Up
Haiti
Rebellion (Lies)
In the Backseat

Neon Bible
Black Mirror
Keep the Car Running
Neon Bible
Intervention
Black Wave/Bad Vibrations
Ocean of Noise
The Well and the Lighthouse
(Antichrist Television Blues)
Windowsill
No Cars Go
My Body is a Cage

EPs / Singles:

Us Kids Know
Old Flame
I'm Sleeping in a Submarine
No Cars Go
The Woodlands National Anthem
My Heart is an Apple
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Vampire/Forest Fire

The Arcade Fire + LCD Soundsystem Tour 7"
Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son (Serge Gainsbourg cover)

Rebellion (Lies)
Rebellion (Lies)
Brazil

Neighborhood #3
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) (Album Version)
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) (Alternate Take)

Keep the Car Running
Keep the Car Running
Broken Window

Christmas EP
Chestnuts Roasting
Oh Holy Night
Jinglebell Rock
A Very Arcade Xmas
It Clouded Fully (Brendan)
The Spartans (Brendan)
In the Attic (Boston)
Asleep at the Wheel
Old Flame
Submarine
In the Backseat
Headlights

Older Demos

2001 Demo (Boston?)
Winter for a Year
My Mind is a Freeway
Accidents
Goodnight Boy
Asleep at the Wheel
In the Attic
Can't Let Go of You
You Tried to Turn Away my Fears
Instrumental
The Great Arcade Fire

Demo Tape
Sonata
The Flood
Winter for A Year

Soundtracks

Six Feet Under Sountrack
Cold Wind

Assorted Collections

B-Sides (Collection)
Brazil (Live)
Virgin Mary Highway (Live)
Burning Bridges, Breaking Hearts (Live)
Asleep at the Wheel
Surf City Eastern Block (Live)
Alligator Mine (Live)
William Pierce (Live)
Cars and Telephones
Intervention (Live)
Intervention (Studio)

Covers (Collection)
Maps (Live Lounge)(Live)
Age of Consent (New Order)(Live)
Born on a Train (Magnetic Fields)(Live)
Guns of Brixton
Five Years (Bowie)(Live)
State Trooper (Springsteen)(Live)
Naive Melody (Talking Heads)(studio)
Naive Melody (Talking Heads(live)
Heroes (Bowie)

Live Shows

Download Festival 2005 (Live '05)
Intro
Wake Up
Laika
No Cars Go
Haiti
I'm Sleeping in a Submarine
State Trooper
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Power Out
Rebellion (Lies)
In the Backseat

Emo's in Austin, Texas (Live in '05)
Wake Up
Laika
No Cars Go
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Power Out
Rebellion (Lies)
Born on a Train (Magnetic Fields Cover)
7 Kettles
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Naive Melody
Haiti
In the Backseat

KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic ('05)
Intro
Wake Up
7 Kettles
Vampire/Forest Fire
(Interview)
Intervention
Born on a Train (Magnetic Fields Cover)
In the Back Seat
Outro

White Sessions ('05)
Intro
Wake Up
Laika
No Cars Go
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Power out
Rebellion (Lies)
7 Kettles
Crown of Love
Tunnels
Outro

Live at the Orpheum Theater, Boston (Live in '07)
Black Mirror
No Cars Go
Haiti
In The Backseat
Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)
My Body Is A Cage
Windowsill
The Well and The Lighthouse
Ocean of Noise
Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)
(Antichrist Television Blues)
Keep The Car Running
Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)
Intervention
Neon Bible

Live at T.T. the Bear's, Cambridge (Live in '04)
Wake Up
Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
Une Annee Sans Lumiere
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) / Rebellion (Lies)
Naive Melody (Talking Heads)
Haiti
Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Burning Bridges, Breaking Hearts
Crown of Love
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
No Cars Go
In the Backseat

Missing

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnles)
My Buddy (Alvino Rey Orchestra)(also available on the single for Neighborhood #2)

Intervention B/W Ocean of Noise
Intervention
Ocean of Noise (Calexo)

No Cars Go
No Cars Go
Surf City Eastern Bloc

Live EP with Davoid Bowie (iTunes release)
...

The Box (score)

Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?
Neighborhood #5 (Hockey)

Concert Review: Amanda Palmer with the Boston Pops

Sappy Yew Beer, everybody. I spent last night at the Pops with my ladyfriend. Amanda had played a show there in the past which my friend David saw, and he said it was amazing. Having been one of the folks who had tickets to her cancelled House of Blues show, we got express notice and a place in the VIP party. So after traversing Boston trying to keep warm in the parades, we made our way to symphony hall. Hoorah!

It was fun enough just sitting in line, waiting for people. The draw that Amanda has is intense and so deliciously eclectic. The goth idiom, the victorian idiom, the steampunk idiom, the fuck-organized-society idiom, and the do-crazy-shit-and-be-beautiful-and-creative idiom all melded together smoothly. Thankfully people got dressed up this time (as was not the case at shows of the Onion Cellar, for example), and so it was nice looking at the crossdressers and the subtle cosplayers and the generally wild and expressive folks in semi-formal, semi-distorted attire (the only full tuxes I saw were on those of the female sex). And that was all just the public! Amanda had all sorts of crazy art acts hopping about, including a coin operated cabaret act, a crazy rock group or two, and others. There was a surprisingly number of the fur-coated regular concertgoers as well, and even more surprisingly, I think only a small number of them walked out in the end. All of this was covered in a healthy dosage of party hats, noisemakers, and general badassery.

Amanda played two ukulele songs with Miss Tess' band at the VIP thingie, which was great to see. Musically it wasn't mindblowing, but she's a fine player, and more importantly she was clearly far, far, FAR into the "let's have a joyous paaaaaarty!" kind of place of mind. So it served to get me pumped up.

Pops went on at 10. I didn't realize that "a night at the pops with amanda palmer" meant "40 minutes of the pops, a 10 minute film, and then an hour of amanda," but they did a fine job. I've always likened the pops to a very serious prostitute who thinks he's an artist; that being said, if they are a very skilled prostitute. Their renditions of "The Imperial March," "Mack the Knife," "All That Jazz," "A Fifth of Beethoven," 3 tunes from Carmen, and an absolutely impeccable and heart-wrenching rendition of Bjork's "Overture" (to Dancer in the Dark, and with lyrics called "New Day," but never "Selmasongs," Keith). And then it was done. The songs were festive in nature, had a bit of nice flourish, and functions just as the pre-show festivities had: riling up and entertaining.

At around 11:00, a film directed by Neil Gaiman (five feet away from whom I was twice that night...I love that he's dating Amanda, they're perfect) came on, Statuesque. It's under the "10 Minute Tales" name, and a bunch of "illegal" (read: unlicensed) copies are floating around the internet (to Amanda's joy) to see. A fine piece of filmwork, Amanda does as fine a job as she did in With The Needle That Sings In Her Heart (such a good fucking show: pics and stream) and some of the highest resolution jam I have ever seen. More than one of the folks in that crowd had done living statue work before, and the theme was all a part of the anarchic creativity of that night. Niel gave a really heartwarming New Years wish all about dangerous dreams and unexpected invention and ambitious creativity (as well as kindness and wisdom, ha...a few moments later I got called a fag by some ruffled fiftysomething). So we were all in our "WILD THOUGHTS AND URGE TO MAKE ORGIASTIC CREATION" mode when Amanda popped on.

Started with Missed Me, beginning with the orchestra building it (and everybody going nuts) while Amanda readied herself in the back. In the recording, after she finishes a vocal progression ("If you...that must mean...etc.") there's a high minor second before the piano and drums jolt back into action. On each and every one of those (and a few other moments), a musician from the crowd (trumpeter, violinist, guy with duck beak, trombonist in the first balcony, and then Keith Lockhart with a moocow) started chasing Amanda around, and then she started leading them on. It was all very very sexual, which I think was mostly for the good. Amanda knows the shock value of sexuality, and so she plays shoes essentially in her underwear; I wish she was more expressive with her view of her body than just shock, but it really gave the air a spark. Song continued, all around well done. Very good showwomanship, fine playing.

Amanda's been talking about her Tchaikovsky piece for the pops that she'd been planning, and I didn't expect her to add any theatrics. But she had some guy's cell phone ring, made him come up and pretend to me not in the know, and then hop into full swing while she danced around. The piece did make clear her musical limitations. She is not a subtle pianist. She is a highly expressive musician, but she doesn't seem to have very many shades between piano and forte. Nevertheless, she and her slightly inebriated self (there was a small table with wine glasses and champagne on it...a good running gag) did a fine job. Interestingly, I know the man who was going to teach her that piece, and who was going to be the man in the crowd.

The same entrance to "A Fifth of Beethoven" served as the entrance (again, to riotous applause) for Coin-Operated Boy. The arrangement felt a bit contrived, but the percussion was very very good, as it was the entire night (even if the slight echo of symphony hall wasn't made for hihats). Amanda and Keith were on good enough terms that she messed around with the cues for the hits at the end of the bridge: "I....want.........a, I!...........want a I want....a...I.....want.....a...................coin-operated boy." During the record skip part, she had Keith give her a glass of champagne. Mr. Lockhart really is the sanity of the pops, and only between his collaboration with Amanda did the energy keep going while the players, bemused, played their parts.

Gets fuzzy from here, but somewhere in the mix was Astronaut, Runs in the Family, Farewell (or some song or other from Cabaret), Hurt (an amazing NIN cover), Poker Face (aided by the ladies from The Slutcracker and mixed in with a poststructuralist academic discussion of the implications of the song: "Has Lady Gaga, in attempting to free herself from the ties to femininity and its requisite habits and presentation, trapped herself in the poststructuralist chains of fame and its necessities?"), a late night night countdown to We Are the Champions (with a touch of bombastically joyous irony...turns out the countdown was actually at 11:58, but nobody cared), and a pretty ok version of Leeds United. Everything was punctuated by Amanda's lack of clothing, lack of propriety, and lack of sobriety. Champagne was imbibed and the new year was described.

To sum up: faux-fur coats with fake baby heads whose eyes were fake baby heads whose eyes where pudgy baby hands. That was my night.