Little Tybee

This beautifully photographed video has some "Dude, I Was There!" moments, especially the footage from The Goat Farm, but actually traces the development of Atlanta's Little Tybee's new album, For Distant Viewing, from initial conception to album release party.

Nine Inch Nails

So at this point you're probably wondering, "What would a concert from Nine Inch Nails comeback tour look like in South Korea from halfway back in the audience?"  Well, wonder no more, because we now have a  videographic answer to your question.

I like Nine Inch Nails - I bought their first album when it first came out in 1989 - but they're a band I'll probably never see live as they tend to only play big venues like Philips Arena in Atlanta, places I refuse to patronize for a number of reasons (bad acoustics, seats far from the stage, overpriced tickets, extremely young audiences, et cet., ad nauseum).  The only way I can imagine ever seeing them live would be if our paths happened to cross at some festival or another.

But this does look like a lot of fun.  And for what it's worth, Disappointed, the second song in the clip above, appears to be a new NIN number.

The Head and the Heart Cover Iron Maiden In the Desert

This looks like some crazed, Carlos Castanada-influenced experiment in the desert, but its probably just one of the reasons that Seattle boys should be wary of getting too much sun when in the Southwest.

This September, I'll be seeing The Head and the Heart perform in Portland's beautiful Pioneer Courthouse Square during MFNW, and then again in November at the relatively near-by Buckhead Theater.  Thao and the Get Down Stay Down will be opening for them on both dates.  

But between now and then, or at least between now and Bumbershoot on Labor Day weekend, there really isn't much on the musical horizon.  This may not be a drought year, at least for weather (far from it!), but it's close to a summer-long drought in musical terms, with only a few, scattered oases of sound (Cayucas, Kisses).  Maybe its the incentive I need to save my pennies for the Northwest and for Rocktober after that.

Rocktober 2013 - First Announcement

As I speculated last May, Junip have picked up an Atlanta date to coincide with their Austin City Limits set in October, and will be playing Terminal West on October 7 (Rocktober, baby!).  I've already got my ticket, even though I have no idea what's going on in that video.

It's still very early, but the Rocktober lineup for 2013 is already looking pretty strong, with the following dates:

September 30 - Local Natives, Masquerade

October 1 - Boy, Terminal West

October 2 - Fidlar, Drunken Unicorn
October 3 - Those Darlins, The Earl

October 4 - Aimee Mann, Variety Playhouse

October 5 - Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Terminal West

October 7 - Junip, Terminal West

October 8 - Wavves & King Tuff, Masquerade

October 10 - Menomena & The Helio Sequence, Terminal West

October 11 - Mount Kimbie, The Loft
October 13 - Von Grey, Terminal West

October 15 - Noah and the Whale & LP, Variety Playhouse

October 16 - Hanni El Khatib, The Earl

October 17 - Atlas Genius & Family of the Year, Center Stage

October 21 - The Moondoggies, The Earl

October 24 - Neko Case, Buckhead Theater

October 26 - Neutral Milk Hotel, Tabernacle

October 27 - Delorean, Masquerade

October 28 - Crystal Stilts, The Earl 

Of course, more dates are still forthcoming (529 hasn't posted any October shows yet), but even if nothing more is announced, this is already shaping up to be the best Rocktober yet.

Kisses at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta, July 25, 2013

Last night, LA's Kisses headlined a very satisfying show at The Drunken Unicorn, but the real revelation of the evening was the terrific set by a new (to me at least) band, Atlanta's Palace Wolves.

Palace Wolves were formed last year by songwriters Ryan Pace (guitars, keys, vocals) and Shannon Small (guitars, keys, vocals), along with Matt Katis (keys, programming).  Last May, they released their first EP, simply called 12 for the year they started.  I don't know how many gigs they've played prior to last night (their web site indicates they've played at least 5 sets before, all at the Unicorn), but if they continue to perform the way they did, word of mouth should quickly propel them to the upper echelons of the local music scene, if not onto the national stage. 

Here's standout song The Desert from 12, which ably demonstrates the band's skills:

You can stream the entire EP at their Soundcloud page, or download the individual songs.

Sealions' singer Joey Patino even gave them a special shout out during his set, much more than the usual "How about that opener, huh?"  I can't recall his exact words, but he expressed his own sincere pleasure at hearing Palace Wolves great set.

Not that Sealions didn't themselves deliver a terrific follow-up set.  We've seen Sealions a couple times before, back in October 2010 opening up for Metric at The Tabernacle and in March 2012 at The Goat Farm for the Atlanta Film Festival's Sound + Vision event ("Dude-I-Was-There!" video below).  As usual, last night they performed a satisfyingly loud set of slightly psychedelic guitar rock with touches of dream pop.

The headliners were LA's Kisses.

Kisses are Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson, and to say that their sound is anything less than sunny, happy, and delightfully summery would miss the mark.  These guys would make Cayucas sound introverted and mopey by comparison.

Naturally, the entire audience was up and dancing throughout the set, or at the very least swaying in place, and one particularly exuberant couple at the front of the stage set the tone for the rest of us, and even got Zinzi dancing along up on stage. Meanwhile, Jesse projected an extremely likable and engaging stage persona, and I don't think there was a person in the audience who wasn't won over well before the end of their set.

This was the band's first East Cast tour and first time playing in Atlanta, and they weren't sure what to expect.  Jesse asked for the air conditioning to be turned down, a rare request for a Southern California band in Georgia and one you'll never hear at the sweaty Masquerade or even The Earl.  They also weren't sure how they'd be received, so they played their usual encore song to close their set, and then were a little nonplussed when they were called back for an encore and had nothing else prepared. They managed to come up with something, though, a relatively longer song that nicely built up to a hip-shaking finale.  

So, three good sets by three good bands, and the discovery of one new band worth getting enthusiastic about.  Not bad for a Thursday night.

Today Is July 25

Today is July 25 and it's the last birthday of this sixth decade of my existence.  In recognition of my birth 59 years ago in Mineola, New York and of an early childhood of idyllic summer weekends spent on Fire Island, and since this blog started with the music of Thurston Moore, I wanted to share the following written by Moore last July 25:

Today is July 25 and it's my birthday. I'm 54. This song is called Frank O'Hara Hit. And it's by this band I started called Chelsea Light Moving. Right now we're whipping around Europe playing some summer love-cry gigs. I wanted to release this song by the end of July because it's a meditation on that month through history in events that define a lot of what mytho-romanticizes my heart, both broken and blessed at the moment. 

On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band delivered to rock n' roll the dissident soul of folk music and poetry. For many it was already a viable meeting but Dylan set it on fire for the world to see. And he was famously cursed and booed by the gatekeepers of old ways wariness. The song he sang was Phantom Engineer (later titled It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry). 

On July 24, 1966, the NYC poet Frank O'Hara was struck by a dune buggy while hanging out on Fire Island, and died the next day. O'Hara knew poetry in all it's formalist glory and like John Cage's ear to music liberated it for writers for an unending time. In his essay Personism: A Manifesto (published in Leroi Jones' Yugen magazine in 1961) he writes, "I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep'...As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it." 

On July 26, 1943, Mick Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England and would become the 20th century's erotic pinup for the unsafety of teeny bop girls everywhere preaching the gospel soaked blues of African-American music that their parents were most likely frightened to death of. His skill in getting it and keeping it together and continuing to honor the magic that rocks the fuck out when Howlin' Wolf hit the mic is what inspires every tantalizing facet of real rock n' roll. 

On July 29, 1966, our hero Bobby Dylan crashed his motorbike while taking it for a spin in Woodstock He had just recorded three lightning rod LPs (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde), a book of writing (Tarantula) and was taking a breather between a just finished nine month world tour (where he was facing audiences half pissed at his "Judas!" betrayal of folk purity) and readying for sixty-four American gigs booked by money hog Albert Grossman. He was amphetamine skinny and breathing high-octane annunciation. He returned to us a man in control of his image and he provocatively crushed celebrity underfoot like a shitty Marlboro. 

Let us kiss our lovers gently in July as the lathered sunrays of August take us into contemplation and a sweet trust to a future we will always fight for. In rock n roll, soul, tenderness and piety. 

Thurston Moore,
Commune di Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Italy
July 25, 2012

CocoRosie

I've already bought my tickets to CocoRosie's November 5 show at Variety Playhouse.  This is a band I've been wanting to see ever since Lemonade from 2010's Grey Oceans, a song which still inexplicably brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

In related news, Low have announced that they've cancelled their September 6 show at Atlanta's Terminal West for undisclosed reasons.  I wasn't planning on going as I will be out of town that day seeing Dan Deacon and Animal Collective in Portland's beautiful Pioneer Courthouse Square, followed by Wooden Indian Burial Ground and Unknown Mortal Orchestra at the club Branx and a late-night set by Prefuse 73 at Holocene, so suck it, Low.  

Seriously, I would have gone to Low otherwise, and it's a shame they're dropping Atlanta (Nashville, too) from their tour.

Fanfarlo

So you didn't download the Fanfarlo song, did you?  Your loss. But to take away a little of the sting, here's a video of Myth of Myself.

Feistodon

Leslie Feist and Mastodon, because, why not?

New Low Video. . . OMG!

Twin Sister's Andrea Estella to Star in Veronica Mars Movie

Andrea Estella with Twin Sister at The Earl, August 17, 2010

Andrea Estella with Twin Sister at 529, June 4, 2011

Andrea Estella with Twin Sister at The Earl, January 25, 2012

The Veronica Mars Movie, which was funded through a Kickstarter campaign, is currently due for release sometime in 2014. This week, news broke that actress Leighton Meester has dropped out of the film due to scheduling conflicts and has been replaced by Andrea Estella, the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, Twin Sister.

Creator/director Rob Thomas says his reasoning for casting Estella was because the role of Carrie Bishop, the character she will be playing, requires someone who can sing. Thomas was a fan of the band, and saw Estella as a perfect fit. In an e-mail, Thomas said:

One of the reasons I wanted Leighton, beyond her talent/beauty/history in the show, was that we needed a performer who could sing in this important role. Once it became evident that we couldn’t make Leighton’s schedule work, I decided to cast someone from a band I already wanted in the movie.

This will be Estella’s film debut. As a fan of the band, I've always been amazed at the different looks Estella brings to the stage on each occasion she's played in Atlanta, so a theatrical role should suit her well. I’m hoping all the best for her. 

The film will also feature two songs from Twin Sister.

Myth of Myself (A Ruse To Exploit Our Weakness)

"What is this thing that lives inside of me? I can't look directly in my eyes without using in a mirror. I can't bite my own teeth. And I can't meet the 'I' that makes me 'me'." - Alan Watts

Fanfarlo have released the first song from their forthcoming third album, stating "Myth of Myself is a rallying cry to (wo)man the barricades against the individual and all those who would have us believe this ruse. It is also the first song from our forthcoming third album, a record that in its own playfully serious/seriously playful way looks at human evolution and the weirdness of being this thing we call a person."

You can download the track Myth of Myself here.

My Life As Music, Part II: 1960 - 1963

Granted this video is from 1968, but it perfectly encapsulates the sound of early 60s pop music from February 3, 1959, the infamous "day the music died," to February 9, 1964, when The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.

In a sad and tragic post-script to this story, Roy Estrada, the singer in the video, was jailed last year on charges of child molestation. 

Ivan & Alyosha

Here's Seattle's Ivan & Alyosha performing in Santa Monica at KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic.  

Talk of faith and exalted things is rare in indie rock today.  But Ivan & Alyosha takes their names from a scene in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov where the main characters discuss the existence of God.  Ivan, in particular, questions the idea of God.  Alyosha, on the other hand, is a monk, a believer, some may say, a holy fool.

Ivan & Alyosha will be playing the Plaza Stage at Bumbershoot in Seattle on Monday, September 2, at 7:30 pm.

Boards of Canada

Let us now praise Boards of Canada and their new album Tomorrow's Harvest (Number 4 on CMJ's Top 20!).  This is magnificent stuff.

The Flavr Blue

Alex, I'll take Bands I've Never Heard Of for fifty dollars.

Seattle's R&B-meets-electro-synth-pop band The Flavr Blue will be the first band performing at Bumbershoot this year, taking the stage at 11:45 am on Saturday morning, August 31.  Since no other bands are scheduled for that early hour, it looks like I'll be kicking off the weekend seeing and hearing a new (to me at least) band kick off the festival.

According to the Bumbershoot website,

Following the release of their debut album, Pisces, last year, synth-pop trio The Flavr Blue has been igniting parties from their hometown of Seattle to New York City with driving bass, shimmering melodies, dazzling visuals and a lot of verve. Featuring vocals from all three members, the band’s music ranges from bright and dreamy to sultry and moody, and their live performances are infamous for being highly energetic and extremely fun.

Cayucas, The Masquerade, Atlanta, July 9, 2013

So, this was a fun night - last evening, Santa Monica's Cayucas played a steamy and humid Purgatory Room at the godforsaken Masquerade.  The band Brazos opened.

I didn't know these guys, but according to the indefatigable Wikipedia, Brazos began as the solo recording project of songwriter and frontman Martin Crane.  In its original incarnation, Brazos has opened for Grizzly Bear, Shearwater, Vampire Weekend, The National, Iron & Wine, Wye Oak, and Bowerbirds, as well as a national tour with Austin's White Denim.  Their album Phosphorescent Blues was released in 2009 to positive reviews but touring took its toll, and Crane "packed everything he owned into a 1990 Honda Civic station wagon that he'd had since he was 15 and moved to New York," signing to label Dead Oceans.  With new bandmates Spencer Zahn (bass) (who moonlights in Empress Of's band) and Ian Chang (drums), the band released its Dead Oceans debut, Saltwater, on May 28, 2013.

I'm a little surprised to learn they've been around that long, and with that much experience.  They played a handful of catchy pop songs, especially toward the end of their set, but the first half of their set featured several long, droney songs that although I'm confident would reward a careful listen, didn't have enough hooks in them to hold the audience's attention.  I was under the impression that they were a new band with a lot of potential and a handful of good songs, padding their set out with some literate songwriting more appropriate for a coffeehouse than for opening for a pop band.  But singer Martin Crane came across as immensely likable, and there's nothing wrong with the longer songs that a little harmony and some tambourine couldn't fix. 

Cayucas took the stage a little after 9 am, and after their opening song, launched into their signature song, the eponymous Cayucas.  Previously known as Oregon Bike Trails, Cayucas are from Santa Monica, which is evident in the summery, sprightly sound.  The group is fronted by singer/guitarist Zach Yudin, and includes his twin brother Ben Yudin on bass, Casey Wojtalewicz on drums, and Christian Koons on guitar (I'm back at Wikipedia, again). Their debut album, Bigfoot, was produced by Richard Swift (Damien Jurado, The Mynabirds, Foxygen, The Shins, etc., etc.).

There's no shortage of hooks, harmonies, and tambourine (and even a little maracas) in their music, which can be called "indie rock" (whatever that means nowadays) but is a little hard to classify beyond that.  You can hear traces of long-forgotten Beach Boys melodies, an almost calypso rhythm at times, and even a little Alt-J quirkiness. "Party music" might be the best name for it, and they had the audience dancing for most of their set, despite the sweltering heat in the room.

They wrapped their set up before 10 pm, and the audience called for an encore, chanting their name, "Cay-u-cas!"  However, Ben Yudin had to come on stage to sheepishly announce that they had already played "literally every song we know."  While I would have been fine with a reprisal of High School Lover or Bigfoot, the audience demurred and let them go.  On the positive side, after all those recent late-night shows at 529, it was nice getting home from a concert before 11 pm for once.

As usual, more pics are posted over at Flickr.

Dude, I Was There!

Here's more of Tikka heating up the Atlanta Film Festival's Sound & Visions Experience at The Goat Farm back on March 20, an evening much, much colder than this video suggests.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to IndieATL for posting this clip!

Stereo Total

Another self-produced video montage, this time set to Stereo Total's Baby Ouh!

oOoOO at 529, Atlanta, July 6, 2013

Alright, we have a lot to talk about today, as last night we watched the mysterious performer oOoOO at Atlanta's 529.  I came to the show with a lot of questions about oOoOO, including:

1. Just how do you pronounce the name "oOoOO"?
2. Is oOoOO a full band or just a single person?
3. And what, exactly, is "witch house" and is it even a real thing?  Does oOoOO still play in that style or did he ever?

And those are just for openers.  So even though I had gone to 529 just the night before to see Takenobu, I went back again last night to get the answers to these and other questions, and not only did I get my answers, but I also wound up learning a lot, lot more.

There were three local, Atlanta bands on the bill before oOoOO.  In fact, I suspect that the evening was originally intended to be an evening with just these three bands until the producer go the opportunity to book oOoOO, and tacked him onto the bill at the last minute. At least, I didn't even know that he was coming to town until about two weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed the name on the schedule if the show had been announced much earlier than that.

In any event, if not for oOoOO's name in the line-up, I doubt I would have gone last night - I hadn't heard of any of these performers before, and so had no motivation to drive down to East Atlanta Village to check them out. But as it turns out, the evening turned into an introduction to the Atlanta electronic music scene, a whole other movement in addition to the hip-hop, metal, and indie scenes I had mentioned yesterday, and one of which I was pretty much unaware of until last night.

By the time I arrived at around 10:00 pm (early by 529 standards), the first act, Hydrabadd, had already started.  Perhaps.  It was hard to tell.  There was some sort of trippy electronic music being played over the house PA system at full concert volume, and a video screening behind the stage documenting various ethnic dance traditions (I saw some native Central American, some African, and some Persian dancers).  But there was no performer on the stage, just a table full of laptops and other electronic gear, and only a handful of people in the club (I did note above that it was still early by 529 standards).  I grabbed a beer and found a spot to watch the video - it actually was interesting in an arty sort of way.

Eventually, a young man in a baseball cap and a This Will Destroy You t-shirt, took the stage and began manipulating the music with his laptop, one of the two on the table.  The video projection behind him continued although the documentary finished and various abstract and concrete images were now being projected.  This apparently, was the start of the Hydrabadd performance, although I'm still not sure it the previous, non-manipulated music playing before was a part of his performance or not (or if it mattered - I was enjoying the show regardless if it was by the performer or by the house).

  

Although their Facebook page describes them as a duo, on stage, Hydrabadd appeared to be just one musician, an extremely capable electronic d.j., who played a seamless set that morphed from hooky electronic dance pop to hip-hop to chopped-and-screwed stop-time beats.  The d.j. (I'll call him "Hydrabadd," although the name might refer to the band and not the performer) clearly loved the music, and half the fun was watching him gesticulate along with the beats he was creating on stage, backed by the video projections, which were start to look like the world's most psychedelic computer screen saver.

He played an extended set, nearly 45 minutes - long for the first of four acts.  When he finished, he simply closed his laptop and left.  Despite all of it's high technology, electronic music of this sort apparently doesn't require all that much hardware.

As the video was projecting clips from the film Naqoyqatsi in the background, the next act, No Eyes, prepared the stage for his set by draping a sheer fabric screen in front of the stage, so that he was performing in between two separate layers of video imagery.  He then donned a Japanese Noh mask on the back of his head, letting the hood fall over his face, perhaps to screen his eyes from the bright light of the video projector, or perhaps just for the bizarre appearance.  The effect was somewhat unsettling as one watched what appeared to be a twisted body intent on gazing at the video screen behind the performer on stage.

No Eyes set started with him singing through a heavily processed mic line, so that a single note was sustained and overdubbed so that it could harmonize with itself.  This produced a dreamy, almost hypnotic sound, the electronic music equivalent to dream pop.  At various times during his set, other vocalists came on stage and sang with him in much the same manner.    

The Noh mask eventually came off and the music changed genres, eventually incorporating styles as diverse as hip-hop, techno, noise, and damn-if-I-know.  Here's a pretty good sample of his sound(s):

No Eyes is apparently "comic-book fiend and bona-fide punk rocker" Seanny Georgie.  There's an excellent and interesting interview with him over at the Urban Whim blog, which describes his music as "trans-techno  shoegaze" (whatever that is).  Georgie played a nearly hour-long set until the club's sound man finally gestured to him to wrap it up, and even then he attempted to perform an encore at the encouragement of the audience, but found to his dismay that his feed to the PA system had been cut off. 

The table with laptops and other electronic equipment was finally cleared away for Twins' set, along with No Eyes' stage-front curtain.  Despite the name, Twins is also a solo act, just like all the other bands that performed last night, including oOoOO (which answers one of my questions).  In addition to playing more traditional keyboards rather than d.j.'ing from a laptop, Twins probably came closest to performing his music in the more traditional song structure, although the music and the songs were still clearly in the electronic music genre.  

Matt Weiner of Twins comes to electronic music not from the techno/house traditions of Hydrabadd and No Eyes, but from the New Wave/No Wave traditions of bands like Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen.  At times, especially when the strobe lights came on, I was reminded on the current band Trust. The video projections, which had ceaselessly played throughout the entire evening, both during and between all of the sets, continued throughout Twins' set, although I think Weiner would have preferred to have played in the darkness, illuminated only by the strobes (like Trust when I saw them at Holocene during MFNW 2012).  He even asked for the lights to be dimmed and the house obligingly turned off the stage lights, but the real illumination came from the video projector, which by and large washed out the strobe effect.

In any even, Weiner played standing behind his keyboards, but once the samples were up and running he would take the microphone and wander the stage, occasionally venturing as far into the audience as his mic cord would allow (somebody buy this man a cordless microphone).  

An answer to Question Number One, above, was provided at the end of Twins set when he informed the audience that "Ooo-Ooo-Ooo" was up next, but even he seemed tentative about pronouncing "oOoOO."  Given the spooky cover of oOoOO's first EP, I thought it might be pronounced like the sounds of a Halloween ghost, one long, quavering "Ooooooooooooooo," but Weiner, perhaps thrown off by the quirky capitalizations, broke it into three separate syllables.

I've learned today from Pitchfork that it's simply pronounced "Oh."  

So, at least that's answered. And following Twins set, as Christopher Dexter, wearing a Florida Marlins baseball cap at a cocky angle, finally got to set up his laptop and electronics at 1:00 am, I learned that like all of the previous acts, oOoOO is a one-man band.  

So finally, Question Number Three - just what is it that oOoOO plays?  What was immediately apparent as soon as the set began was that Dexter's music was played at a significantly slower pace than anyone on stage before.  In fact, the 529 audience, which had by now filled the small venue, was quite loud and noisy throughout his first number, as if they didn't realize that the languid beats and samples weren't still part of the soundcheck, or perhaps just some sort of prelude before the beats dropped for the first song.  But things never got any faster than that first composition, but did include the chopped-and-screwed sampling techniques of the earlier bands, although in a dramatically slowed-down fashion.  The effect was almost narcotic, as if the music was being heard from another room by a codeine-influenced ear.

The projections behind the stage continued but now consisted of Dexter's own videos, black-and-white scenes of him roving large, mostly empty spaces, stalking old ladies in subways, and occasionally glaring menacingly at the camera. As the audience grew accustomed to the pace of his music, they began enthusiastically dancing, arm-pumping to the beats and frequently surging back and forth like one large amoebic mass.  A high point of the evening was when everyone, including your humble narrator, were chanting along to I Need A Coach Bag, a song based on a sample from a Three Six Mafia song.

Seanny Georgie (No Eyes) stayed for oOoOO's set, and acted almost like a cheerleader near the front of the crowd, jumping up and down and waving his arms.  It's nice to see that performing musicians can still be fans as well.

The whole evening was quite a revelation to me.  While I go to a fair number of rock shows, I've been more-or-less oblivious to Atlanta's electronic music scene, and was more than impressed by the talent and diversity of the performers, the technological ingenuity of the music itself, and the artistry of the overall performance, particularly to whoever had put together the seamless video installation.  The audience was clearly a different crowd than I see at most shows, both younger and more jockish, and with fewer hipsters.  Many appeared to be Georgia Tech undergrads out to dance and rave it up a little on a Saturday night.  

As far as an introduction to the current state of electronic music, I couldn't have asked for a better selection. Both Hydrabadd and No Eyes performed in a variety of styles, while Twins approached the music from a whole different perspective and tradition, and oOoOO pointed toward a next-level interpretation, cannibalizing his predecessors and doping up the product. 

It was a fun and instructive evening.

Takenobu at 529, Atlanta, July 5, 2013

Post-classical cellist Takenobu played at Atlanta's 529 last night, headlining an interesting line-up of Atlanta and Atlanta-related bands.  Pictures are posted over at Flickr, and a summary of each band's performance is provided below.

Atlanta's Book of Colors opened and are the project of vocalist/guitarist André Paraguassu, featuring Ryan Gregory on violin, George Wallace on lap steel guitar, and Ryan Donald of Adron and Little Tybee (and probably other bands as well) on bass.  Members of Little Tybee, including Brock Scott and Nirvana Kelly, were in the audience for the performance, as well as Lindsey Harbour of Women's Work (I think).  Fourth of July weekend - if you're a local musician, weren't out of town, and didn't have a gig that night, you might as well have been at this show.

Even though Book of Colors have been around since 2009, it was my first time hearing them. The band currently has a violin and lap steel to flesh out André's songs, but apparently the band used to also feature flautist Teresa Lemaire and marimba/vibraphonist Eric Balint, before Teresa headed off to Brazil and Eric took some time off to be with his new baby boy.  But last night's set hardly sounded "stripped down," at least to this listener, as André and the band played music that fell somewhere in between the orchestral rock of bands like Fanfarlo and the rootsier folk rock of bands like Blind Pilot.  Although not as large an ensemble (at least not any more), they reminded me most of Portland's Typhoon, especially in the way that the focus remained on the central singer-songwriter, while the rest of the band provided the textures to support the songs.

NYC-based Weeknight were up next, and their dark electronic pop was a real contrast to Book of Color's organic music.  But once the transition was made (which probably occurred for most as soon as they saw the banks of synthesizers and keyboards set up on the stage, and for the rest as soon as the deep electronic beats started resonating in their rib cages), it was quite easy to enjoy and appreciate their fine musicianship.  Comparisons to Phantogram are inevitable, due both to the bands sound and their lineup (Andy on guitar, Holly on keyboards). They sang nearly every line of every song in unison, but expressed their individuality through their instruments.

It was Weeknight's first time playing Atlanta, even though guitarist Andy is from here (his mother was in the audience for the gig).  If they ever decided to relocate back here, they would fit in well with bands like Featureless Ghost and Mirror Mode.

It was also my first time hearing headliner Takenobu, although I've wanted to hear him for a while now.  To summarize his niche in the musical spectrum, frontman Nick Ogawa is to cello what Andrew Bird, Owen Pallett, and Kishi Bashi are to the violin - a classically trained musician expanding his boundaries into rock and pop by means of loop pedals and other techniques.  Alternating between plucking and bowing, and between lopping and real-time playing, Mr. Ogawa has a rich and varied arsenal with which to work.  He's also accompanied by a violinist to provide further layers of texture - sometimes they played as a duo and other times they were backed by a drums and keyboards.  Nowhere was there a guitar on stage.

It was an impressive set.  The songs were well written and thoughtful, and the melodies were not lost to the complexities of Ogawa's technique.  They occasionally performed intricate pop instrumentals (check out Exposition, below), but most of the compositions were songs, and he's a capable vocalist as well.

For his encore, he performed a solo rendition of Doc Watson's Shady Grove (also memorably covered by Quicksilver Messenger Service back in the 1960s).

It was a mesmerizing and revelatory set for this listener, and a sign of the richness and diversity of Atlanta's indie music scene that it is only now that I've gotten around to hearing a local performer of this caliber.  While Atlanta is justifiably considered by many to be a hip-hop town, and some are aware of it's metal scene as well, it also has a formidable roster of indie musicians that sadly are unrecognized beyond the Perimeter.  Not only do we have the orchestral folk rock of Little Tybee and the neo-tropicala of Adron, there's the Balkan folk of Christ, Lord (recently energized by an apparent merger with Hello Ocho), the bluesy, Cowboy Junkies-esque rock of Women's Work, and the baroque instrumentation of Lily and the Tigers, not to mention other stand-out bands like Book Club, Mood Rings, Dog Bite, Lucy Dreams, Tikka, and The Coathangers, and young new prospects like Von Grey. If there were even a fraction of the media attention here that exists in cities like New York and LA, most if not all of these bands would be critical favorites, with fawning reviews in NPR and choice spots in the line-ups of major festivals.

But for now, for both better and worse, they're our little secret, and when you can hear three bands as fine as last night's line-up at 529, a reason to be cheerful on a rainy July 4th weekend. 

Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory

Another day, another video, but at least this one is self-produced - a photo-montage I put together and set to Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory's Particle.

Happy July 4th, y'all!

Local Natives

Live at Glastonbury, 2013.

AM & Shawn Lee

Another day, another video. . . 

Decemberists

This may not last for long, but here are The Decemberists performing on Austin City Limits.