Dirty Projectors’ Kick the Llama’s Ass?
By Brian | June 30, 2009
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Two Nights at the Black Cat Backstage
By Brian | June 29, 2009
This post is appallingly overdue, but timeliness has never been one of my strong suits as a blogger. I had the pleasure of catching two shows at the Black Cat Backstage, the intimate little space behind the Red Room Bar. Monday two weeks ago found me at the Laura Gibson & Musée Mécanique show. MM, the opener, completely flummoxed me with their densely layered gypsy folk. The band combines the Wilsonesque harmonies of Grizzly Bear with the complex folk melodies of Beirut. And I was very pleasantly surprised when Micah Rabwin and Sean Ogilvie of MM returned to the stage as Laura Gibson’s band.
Gibson is a delight in concert. Hers is a talent hearkens to a gentler time and place, her lyrics introspective yet abstract. Alone, her sound is austere, and the dim light of the stage frames her in darkness. She sings almost reticently, as if she’s afraid the heavens will come crashing down if she opens her mouth and really belts one out. Micah and Sean flesh out her sound, while at the same time retaining a level of intimacy with the crowd. I couldn’t imagine watching her sing with a full 3 or 4 piece band; I feel like something would be lost in translation. And pardon the poor quality of the pictures. I seemingly didn’t contact the right person at Hush Records for a photo pass, so I was relegated to my trust point and shoot for the night.
After the set, Gibson and her bandmates came out to meet the audience. They were every bit as charming in person as they were onstage, gracious and thoughful. And I hope they took my suggestion to see Maya Lin’s exhibit at the Corcoran the following day.
Laura Gibson & Sean Ogilvie
Wednesday found me returning to a surprisingly full house for Telekinesis, a one-man outfit fleshed out to a full touring band. The one man in question is Michael Benjamin Lerner, a wunderkind drummer from the Pacific Northwest who draws obvious comparisons to Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard. Adding fuel to that fire is the fact that DCFC’s Chris Walla produced Lerner’s debut, Telekinesis! Opening for Lerner was An Horse, an energetic duo from Brisbane who reminded me of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as interpreted by Viva Voce. They make an ungodly amount of sound for two people, not unlike classic Local H, and surprising considering both members of the band probably don’t outweigh Local H’s Joe Daniels.
An Horse's Kate Cooper
My concertgoing friend and I had a chuckle as we doubted most of the people in the audience knew the headliner was standing in their midst. I introduced myself to Michael at his merchandise table, and mentioned to him that I had a photo pass from a publicist at Merge Records. I told him I’d be the guy in front snapping photos, and I’d try to be as unobtrusive as possible. He chuckled and told me I could be as obtrusive as I wanted to be. He still seemed really awed by all the attention and the publicity, thankful that he had caught a little lightning in a bottle.
His set was concise but dynamic, including most of the songs from the album, a couple of tracks from the Coast of Carolina EP, and a cover of the Kinks’ “House in the Country”. Lerner was a kaleidoscopic dervish onstage, dispelling any skepticism I had that he could sing and drum as energetically live as he did on the album.
Two nights, two amazing shows, one rather poorly lit little venue, the start of a good musical week.
Photos courtesy of the UnQualified One
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Where I’ve Been….
By Brian | June 5, 2009
A friend mentioned to me lately that she doesn’t understand how I’ve managed to make it the last few months, and then commented that she guessed that I had no choice. In that, she was partly correct. One always has a choice, whether a good one or not. Another friend mentioned that she didn’t push me to talk, that she knew that I would talk in my own time and in my own fashion. I suppose I do that, as well. The memory isn’t so painful that I can’t fondly reminisce, although the absence remains surreal to me. No phone calls while walking to a friend’s house, recounting ad nauseum what was for lunch today, or what the neighbor said. No talk of a visit in a few months that might or might not materialize. No more, nothing, ever. My world went dark.
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Gimme Sympathy – Metric
By Brian | May 19, 2009
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A Tale of Two Concerts – My Gato Negro Weekend
By Brian | May 7, 2009
I had the pleasure of seeing not one, but two, shows at the Black Cat this past weekend. Saturday night saw me in attendance at the Noah & the Whale show. This Twickenham quartet is like a Wes Anderson movie set to music – witty, inscrutable, yet oddly charming. This shouldn’t be surprising, as the lads are big fans of Wes Anderson, and draw the inspiration from director Noah Baumbach and his movie The Squid and the Whale (a film Anderson produced). They played many of the tracks off their debut album, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, offering particularly spirited renditions of their songs “Rocks and Daggers” and “5 Years Time”. The latter song benefited from the backup vocals of opening artist Anni Rossi. The band also showcased several tracks from their forthcoming albums, decidedly darker and less folky tracks that seemingly derived their origin in the implosion of lead vocalist Charlie Fink’s relationship. Although I was disappointed their encore wasn’t longer, I couldn’t help but chuckle by their song selection, a cover of the The Smiths‘ “Girlfriend in a Coma”.
Sunday night was an abrupt about-face with the Cursive show. This Nebraska post-hardcore outfit aren’t afraid to show their softer side, and featured a cello player at one point in their lineup, but they bring a thunderous edge to bear on their albums and in their live shows. Touring in support of their new album Mama, I’m Swollen, the band ruminate on the human condition, issues of morality and the existential angst of modern life. Frontman Tim Kasher meditates lyrically on whether civilization has improved our lot or simply altered our routine and sublimated our more primitive instincts for upward mobility and enlightenment. On the album’s first single, “From the Hips”, he sings, “Don’t want to mumble what I’m trying to say / I want to scream if from my foaming mouth / Shoot out the lights and ride away”. With “Caveman”, a rollicking, honky tonk-inflected number, Kasher launches a broadside against American materialism and the socio-economic Darwinism of our capitalist ways. In the refrain he howls “The taller we become the more dollars we can grab from that highest branch / And then step on your back given the chance”. This set displayed every facet of the considerable musical charms of the band and their new album, blending their post-punk cred and country-tinged roots with their proggier and more experimental impulses.
Photos courtesy of the Unqualified One
Special thanks to Amanda Pitts of Cobra Camanda Publicity for arranging the photo pass to the Cursive show (shhhh, I didn’t have one for the NATW show)
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Dispatches from the wilderness
By Brian | April 23, 2009
I never cease to be amazed at how quickly time passes when I am not having fun. It’s been a month since I last checked in. While I’ve made the resolution to write on multiple occasions, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The crux of my blog was a mix of righteous anger and cynical humor at the injustices and indignities of life in these modern United States. Politically, I got what I wanted, with the Christofascists swept out of town and back to their dominions in Texas and Wyoming. Here’s hoping the unprecedented assault on civil liberties ended on January 20th.
What else is there? Music? I’m still listening to a lot of that, sharing my finds with friends, writing for MetroMusicScene, and scanning the wonderful music pages over at NPR.
What about grief? Yeah, there’s still that. Death is one of those unfortunate circumstances that does not get more tolerable with repetition. Coupled with that specter hanging over my head is a recent romantic setback I suffered. Generally speaking I have two rules with respect to blogging – 1) I do not talk about my job, and 2) I do not discuss my personal life. On the latter front, I’ve been injudicious in the past, inured to the havoc my words can wreak because I’m immune to them. I hurt someone in my past with a few words and a flippant turn of phrase, and I don’t want to do that again. I just cannot fathom people’s motivations, even my own, and why they sometimes do the things they do. I will go on the record as saying I am a first-class idiot when it comes to love & romance, and I’m public enemy #1 in that fertile universe that exists solely inside my skull. Despite the healthy self-flaggelation I’ve been administering, I wouldn’t change a thing. I took a chance, and I didn’t succeed.
This post is a work in progress, and may be edited when my brain is a little less sodden with sleep.
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Hello, hello, hello…is there anybody in there?
By Brian | March 24, 2009
Brian here….or rather, the Unqualified One…I’ve been on an unintentionally extended hiatus these last few, er, several months. Why? And where did I go? From the beginning of this experiment, I vowed to do my best to not “turn this into some sort of pseudo-anonymous, slightly exhibitionist online psychiatrist’s couch”. The rancor of the presidential election wore on me, as did my general unhappiness with my job. It was no longer fun to simply spew vitriol onto the Web.
I haven’t been completely inactive. I’m a fairly active Twitterer, and I contribute occasionally to MetroMusicScene (or at least occasionally enough to warrant a press pass to the Bloc Party/Longwave show). I’m still actively seeking out new music or music that’s new to me, and I’m insanely jealous of the great coverage NPR provided from SXSW (the highlight of which, in my opinion, was calling Justin Hawkins’ new band Hot Lips “ridiculous preening jackassery”).
As those readers who know me well do know, my father passed away last month. His health in general had been a huge draw on my energy, and his sudden passing sapped what little I had left. I’ve been working my way through Megan O’Rourke’s excellent series on grief on Slate, and just generally working through things in my own time and at my own pace (which is to say not at all). His passing was sudden, and it came on the heels of a weeklong trip to Costa Rica, so I didn’t even have much of a chance to interact with him in those final days. After watching my mother spend the last 4+ months of her life in a hospital, I was grateful that he didn’t suffer the same fate, although I’m still in a bit of a state of shock at not having had a chance to say goodbye.
So where does that leave the blog? Honestly, I don’t know. Some days I feel like my old self, other days simply a shade of that person. I feel like I still have a lot to say, but I’ve always found blogging to be time and effort-intensive. I’ll be around, perhaps more like my old self, perhaps taking the blog in a new direction. What I certainly won’t do is to turn this into my personal self-help journal.
Topics: Red Sea Pedestrian, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Is this still the party that appeals to the better angels of our nature?
By Brian | December 2, 2008
Sadly, I have to say it is no longer. The party of Lincoln is one without a moral or intellectual conscience, remaining rooted in their festive bacchanals of anti-intellectualism and fundamentalist rancor. Lewis Black perhaps said it best when he said the difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties was one of bad ideas versus no ideas. In desperate times, I’ll always take the former over the latter.
I’m not sure where the hell I was going with this post when I started it, but it’s obvious now that very little in the way of additional comment is necessary. I did my part to defeat the politics of personal destruction, to turn back the racist and rabidly anti-intellectual voters who couldn’t bear to see a man named Obama elected President because of his race or because of the ethnic or cultural origins of his name.
Topics: The Strength of Many | No Comments »
You can’t arrange them by penis
By Brian | December 2, 2008
Topics: Nature Cannot Be Fooled | No Comments »
John McCain would like nothing more than to continue the failed Bush economic policies
By Brian | September 10, 2008
Topics: The Strength of Many | No Comments »