Chelsea Wolfe, The Earl, Atlanta - January 30, 2013

Chelsea Wolfe played The Earl last night, with Women's Work and Featureless Ghost opening.  There's a lot that needs to be said about this.  But first I want to note that last night was my first time at The Earl since last November 3 when we saw Lost In The Trees. It's been nearly three months since I've been back, surely a record, due in part to the Wilnter Doldrums and in part to the bookings at so many other clubs.

Writing in The New Yorker (Music To Your Ears, January 28, 2013), Adam Gopnik explains that there seems to be two "systems" in the brain that respond to music.  One is veridical and responds to the pleasant sounds of the songs we already know.  The other is sequential and anticipates the next note or harmonic move in an unfamiliar phrase of music. The sequential system is stimulated when  music follows the logic of the notes or surprises us in some way that isn't merely arbitrary.  

If you want to know if your mind is primarily veridical or sequential, consider this:  which would you choose if given the choice to be able to hear all of your favorite music whenever you wanted but to never be able to hear any new music at all, or to be able to hear nothing but new music all the time but never hear again anything that you've heard before.  If you choose the first option, your mind is primarily veridical and if the second option sounds better, your mind is primarily sequential.

Personally, my mind is predominantly, even aggressively, sequential.  It's not that I don't enjoy re-hearing music that I've learned to love (I do), but I'm much more interested and intrigued by the next thing, by what's new, by what I haven't yet heard.  As it turns out, this is a great time for sequential minds.  In the past, if you wanted to hear new music you would have to go out to a music store and buy a not-inexpensive new CD or LP, which caused one to make conservative choices and purchase "tried and true" music with which one was familiar.  Today it's fairly easy and cheap to load an iPod with more gigs of music than you can possibly listen to, while also using streaming services like Spotify or Pandora to generate endless playlists of a nearly infinite variety of new music.  Meanwhile, music blogs, YouTube, and other internet services open up more opportunities to hear even more new music.  The real problem, to be honest, is keeping up with it all, and my biggest regret is realizing that how much I'm still missing out on despite prodigious efforts to keep up with it all.

The sweet spot between a purely sequential experience and a strict viridial one is when you have the chance to listen to a new, unrecorded  band that you've heard once or twice before and know what to expect, but who's particular songs you still don't know so that everything still sounds fresh.  Such was the case with the opening band last night, Atlanta's Women's Work.

We've heard Women's Work twice before - last year in Oakland Cemetery at the annual Tunes From The Crypt event, and then again at Criminal Records during the Little Five Fest.  I like this band - they have a dark, somber sound but aren't afraid to play loud  when volume's needed, but I don't know much about them, so every song's still a bit of a surprise, even when they performed a Hank Williams cover.  They have their first record coming out soon, which may give them some deserved recognition and exposure.

I'm more familiar with the next band that took the stage, Atlanta's Featureless Ghost.  Featureless Ghost is the duo of Matt Weiner and Elise Tippins, who've been performing and recording music together since 2007 and relocated from Brooklyn to Atlanta and formed the band in late 2010.  

We've seen Featureless Ghost a number of times now, opening for bands at both The Earl and 529.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that I know all of their songs, so it wasn't a completely veridical experience, but I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from their synth-flavored electro-dance rock.

 

I like these guys, a lot, but last night's stage was not the place for them.  Their highly danceable, dark wave sound sounded a little out of place between the southern gothic melodies of Women's Work and the acoustic  folk-trance that Chelsea Wolfe brought to the stage after them.  This is in no way a criticism of the band, but perhaps of the booking.  The first band, Women's Work, had heads nodding  approvingly, and Featureless Ghost got people up and dancing.  But it's a disorienting if not a little cruel to get folk's feet moving only to have them stop and the body return to head bobbing for the headlining act.

So this leaves us with the main event, LA-by-way-of-Sacramento's Chelsea Wolfe.  We last saw Ms. Wolfe on this same stage at The Earl back in August when she was touring behind her Apokalypsis album and fronting an electric band,  playing electric guitar herself.  Now, she is touring behind a new album, Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, and is backed by a smaller, almost minimalist band.  

Ms. Wolfe performed exclusively on acoustic guitar last night and was backed by a violinist and keyboards, which merely provided some coloration to the songs rather than fill out the sound.  It was a quiet sound, quite different from her previous visit to The Earl, and the usual noise and chatter from the bar at the back of The Earl were distracting at times.  Still, Ms. Wolfe played a great set full of some very interesting harmonic effects and melodies that more than compensated for the attention the music required, even is she did have to "shush" the crowd a couple of times.  This was basically coffee house music being performed in a bar.

As always, Chelsea Wolfe looked lovely, and the stage was lit with candles giving it a suitably gothic look. I had managed to get up to the front row and can confidently report they smelled great as well.  A pair of talismanic animal horns sat on  a table next to Ms. Wolfe as she performed.

Here's a pretty representative video of what the band sounded like last night.

The hour-long set set ended dramatically with a lovely and complex number dominated by over-layered vocals, the same song, I believe, that she ended her Apokalypsis set with last year.  After she left, the audience stayed by the stage but only called her back for an encore with the most half-hearted of applause and cheers.  But ever the professional, Ms. Wolfe came back on stage alone and displayed a warmer side of her personality than the lean, tortured songs before permitted, even asking the audience if anyone had a guitar pick and requesting a song to perform.

Another Thao Song

On February 5, Thao Nguyen's band Thao & the Get Down Stay Down will release their new album We the Common via Ribbon Music. The follow-up to 2009's Know Better Learn Faster was produced by John Congleton (Modest Mouse, St. Vincent). One of the album's tracks, Kindness Be Conceived, is a duet with Joanna Newsom.

Thao pointed out on her Facebook page that the duet with Ms. Newsom and several other songs would not exist without the Hedgebrook Retreat.  Hedgebrook supports "visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come."

Hedgebrook Retreat is located on Whidbey Island, about thirty-five miles northwest of Seattle. Situated on 48-acres of forest and meadow facing Puget Sound, the retreat hosts women writers from all over the world for residencies of two weeks to two months, at no cost to the writer. Residents are housed in six handcrafted cottages, where they spend their days in solitude – writing, reading, taking walks in the woods on the property, on nearby Double Bluff beach or trails around the island. In the evenings, they gather in the farmhouse kitchen to share a home-cooked gourmet meal, their work, their process and their stories. The women who come to Hedgebrook are writing in all genres, and are of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and levels of writing experience.

Update:  Meanwhile, Thao released a second hilarious installment in her Behind The Scenes, The Making of The Making Of . . . video series.  Who knew she was such a great comedian?

Local Natives

Local Natives play the Music Hall of Williamsburg this Friday, and the show will stream live on The Bowery Presents Live YouTube channel at 10 p.m. EST.

Above, they play a live version of Ceilings, off their about-to-be-released second album, Hummingbird.  Below, they perform Heavy Feet, also from the new album, at last year's Paris gig.

 

Pillowfight

Following the release of Used To Think, Santa Barbara's KCRW named a new Pillowfight song as their Top Tune for Wednesday, January 23, 2013.  According to the station:

Gorillaz' Dan the Automator and multi-instrumentalist Emily Wells team up for a ferocious new project called Pillowfight. It feels like a party when Kid Koala contributes on the 1's and 2's and graffiti artist David Choe handles the artwork. Today's Top Tune, Get Down, from Pillowfight's self-titled debut, features Lateef the Truthspeaker on vocals.

(Sounds a little like vintage Big Audio Dynamite at the 2:00 minute mark)

Akron/Family

Akron/Family have leaked No-Room, our first taste from their forthcoming album Sub Verses, due out April 30.

Meanwhile, my copy of their CD, ATL 2 ELP, which includes their performance last year at The Drunken Unicorn, arrived the other day.   The band returns to the DU on April 29, which, wouldn't you know it?, is a Monday night so I probably won't be able to make it.

At least not by the doors-open time . . .

Calexico y Yo La Tengo at Buckhead Theater, January 25, 2013

So, yeah, last night was Yo La Tengo with Calexico opening at The Buckhead Theater.  Apologies for not posting more yesterday, but when I left for the copy shop at 4:30 to make four copies of a report for my job, I had no idea that it would take me three hours to complete.  As it was, I ran directly from the copiers to The Buckhead Theater, stopping home only to pick up my Will Call printout, and got to the show at about 8:00, a half hour before Calexico started the evening.

It was my first time at The Buckhead Theater.  The BT is actually the restored former Roxy, which I hadn't been to either, even though it's a mere three miles from my home.  Go figure.  Anyway, it's a nice venue and like Terminal West still has that "new car smell."  It has a large stage, a balcony, and really spacious rooms up front for drinks, the merch table, and coat check.  

Back in 1984, when Yo La Tengo first formed, Buckhead was a very different place than it is now, and I had spent many an evening socializing and partying in the old neighborhood at bars, restaurants, and nightclubs like Good Old Days, Carlos McGee's, Aunt Charlie's, Peachtree Cafe,  the Five Paces Inn, Texas State Line Barbecue, and the Steamhouse Lounge, among others.  Now, it's all boutiques and shops for the One Percenters or One Percent wannabes, and it actually now feels a little incongruous to be listening to live music, much less good live music, in the area.

But enough nostalgia. "The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime," Pink Floyd once sang  (or as the Gang of Four put it, "Nostalgia, it's no good").  Last night was an evening of good live music, stating with the opening set by Calexico.

Calexico formed from members of The Friends of Dean Martinez, one of my favorite instrumental, post-rock bands of the '90s.  Led by guitarist and singer Joey Burns, the band merges indie rock with mariachi and Tejano music styles.  The band is currently touring as a septet with many of the members playing multiple instruments, including two trumpeters, accordion, pedal steel, and vibes.  Their sound is exciting and uplifting, and as soon as the music began, I forgot all of my troubles back at the copy shop.

The group includes everything I like in an indie band. Upright bass?  Check.

Horns? Check.

Vibes? Check.

Accordion playing multi-instrumentalists? Check.

More guitars?  Check.

When they weren't playing together mariachi-style, trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela also contributed several terrific vocals in Spanish, while trumpeter Martin Wenk occasionally filled in on accordion.  All in all, it was a wonderful set of great music, with just the right amount of jalapenos to spice up the night.

Here Calexico play one of its singles, Maybe on Monday, in a Lower Manhattan studio.

But as good as Calexico was, it was Yo La Tengo who ruled the night.  Although they're been around for some 30 years now, this was actually my first time seeing them, and I'm already kicking myself for all of the missed opportunities - I've seen them billed so many times, yet never found it in me to make a it a set before.  

The band formed as the husband/wife duo of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley in 1984, with bassist James McNew joining the band around 1990.  The band can make a reasonable claim at being the original indie rock outfit, and their musical styles encompass punk, post-punk, folk rock, noise pop, dream pop, ambient, and jangle rock.  In other words, they're all over the map and are happy to explore and stretch themselves, while never content in being stuck in just one place.

The band is famous for its large back catalog and impressive selection of covers, as well as their annual Eight Nights of Hanukkah shows at their native Hoboken's Maxwell's.  I understand that some of their cover songs at last year's Maxwell's event included The Fugs' Frenzy, The Beatles' Eight Days a Week, Dylan's You Ain't Going Nowhere, Adam & the Ants' Antmusic, The Velvet Underground's Heroin and Sister Ray, Blue Oyster Cult's Burnin' For You, Neil Young's Time Fades Away, and Sun Ra's Nuclear War (which was actually their best-selling single), the latter performed with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Their 2012 Hanukkah show also included this feedback-drenched guitar orgy, which should give you a pretty good idea of how they sounded much of last night:

The Soundcloud gadget above is from the exemplary NYC Taper, which has most of the 2012 Yo La Tengo Hannukah shows available for free download.  

Last night's set started out loud and electric, with lots of post-punk songs and compositions and members  of the band exchanging roles and instruments.  Mr. McNew even took over on the drums from Ms. Hubley during the middle of a song without either missing so much as a single beat.    

Midway through the set, Mr. Kaplan switched to acoustic guitar and led the band through several quiet songs from their new album, Fade, with Ms. Hubley on vocals.  Although slower than the previous songs, the band still managed to keep the audience spellbound and quiet, and after a couple of those quiet, acoustic songs, Mr. Kaplan joked, "Now, we're going to slow things down a little."

Sometimes they were Sonic Youth and sometimes they were Low.  Sometimes they were the Velvet Underground and sometimes they were REM.  And sometimes they were Calexico, inviting the twin trumpeters on stage with them on one song.  

The highlight of the evening, though, was the closer to their set, a long instrumental jam which built up and up as one member after another of Calexico came on stage and joined in, and slowly wound back down again as the members left the stage one by one to rapturous applause from the audience.  The piece lasted for what felt like a blissful eternity, and even though it was all built around one very simple chord progression, I don't think anyone in the audience wanted to hear it end.

For their encore, the band went back to quiet, acoustic mode, ending the night with Ms. Hubley singing a lovely cover of a Johnny Cash song, with vibes by Calexico's John Convertino.

I don't mean it ironically when I sat that last night's show was the best concert of the year.  If and when I look back on 2013 and try to select a "Best Of" show, last night's performance will have to be given serious consideration.

Yo La Tengo