Daughter at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, September 20, 2013

I can tell only in the most general of terms which bands are popular and which ones aren't.  I listen to music more or less in a vacuum and respond to those bands whose sound I enjoy and ignore those that I don't, but don't have much of a peer group around me to tell me who I should be listening to and who I shouldn't.  As a result, I'm not the best judge of which shows are going to attract a large audience and which shows are going to have a sparse turnout, other than by the size of the venue and the hype of the promoter.  I'm often surprised to find only a handful of people at shows I thought would sell out, and equally surprised to see capacity crowds for bands I imagined that only I would enjoy.  Last night was an instance of the latter. 

When I saw that the fine English indie-rock band Daughter would be playing at Variety Playhouse, a medium-capacity venue, it was the first I knew that at least someone considered them more popular than, say, Austra, who played last week at the far smaller Earl.  But I couldn't imagine that Daughter's melancholy, down-tempo songs would attract all that large of an audience, so I didn't buy tickets in advance and only showed up at the box office about 15 minutes after the doors had opened.

I was surprised to see a line in front of the Playhouse that extended well past the adjacent Elmyr restaurant and far down the block, one of the longest lines I've seen in front of the Variety Playhouse.  I was easily able to buy a ticket (the line was for entry and not for purchase), but by the time I finally got inside, my preferred, usual spot in Variety Playhouse - first riser, right-hand side - was taken.  No problem, I found a suitable spot at the first riser, left-had side, but my first surprise of the night was how large a crowd Daughter had attracted for their first Atlanta appearance. 

My second surprise was that much of  the audience had apparently come for the opening act, another London band, a folk-rock ensemble called Bear's Den.  I had never heard of Bear's Den, but they had apparently played last week at the huge Mumford & Sons concert held in Centennial Park, arguably Atlanta's largest venue (Piedmont Park, where Music Midtown is going down this weekend, could make an equally legitimate claim as the city's largest venue).  Even the band seemed surprised by their enthusiastic reception, and the audience's quiet attentiveness while the songs were played. 

My guess is that Bear's Den must really have nailed it at the Mumfords' show, whom they sound quite like in many respects, although the NY Times Magazine notes that they've built up a cult-like following on both sides of the Atlantic with their relentless touring over the past year.  

The audience was predominantly quite young, even by rock concert standards - kids these days certainly do love their folk rock - but I was encouraged to see quite a few older folks as well, until I realized that they were mostly all there as chaperons for their younger charges.  In any event, the young audience seemed to really eat up every note of Bear's Den music, which actually was quite good, a sort of stripped-down version (they're a trio) of Mumford & Sons without the cloying over-earnestness of the latter. Further, the band appeared not only to be genuinely touched by their reception, but also to be a genuinely nice, sincere group of guys.

Bear's Dan are supporting Daughter on their North American tour, and the audience stayed for the headliner and gave them the same unconditional approval and attention as they had for Bear's Den.  The crowd was as quiet for both bands as I've heard at a rock show in quite a while, which was fortunate as Daughter's music alternates between loud and quieter, more intimate passages.    

I've been listening to Daughter for about a year now and think very highly of them, but was still pleasantly surprised to hear how much fuller their live sound was compared to the more bare, almost minimalistic approach of their recordings. Guitarist Igor Haefeli added many lovely orchestral flourishes to singer Elena Tonra's songs, often bowing his electric guitar to sonic effect. Normally, the difference in sound between the recordings of a favorite band and their live performance causes consternation not jubilation, but one could not help but appreciate Daughter's live sound, which lies somewhere between The xx and The Sundays at their prime.    

Dave seems to have really liked them, and was he hitting on Elena at the end?  Creepy.

Elena's sweet, almost shy, stage presence was a welcome relief to Daughter's lyrical material, which typically involves dark subject matter and a gloomy, pessimistic view on life ("This one's really depressing," Elena announced - or warned - before one song).  It seemed to take her a while to warm up to the audience, but as she gained her confidence bantering back and forth a little, she emerged as a somewhat introverted but gifted performer, genuinely glad to be playing the music she loves to an appreciative crowd. This was refreshing coming as it does from a singer who declares "I want you so much but I hate your guts" in her song Landfill.  

This was truly great stuff and Daughter played as fine a set as I've heard in a while, and I've heard a lot of sets (over 75 by my count) since Labor Day weekend.  This is a really great band, and the exciting thing is they're just getting started.  Headlining the Variety Playhouse is not a bad way to make your first appearance in Atlanta.  

The band closed their nearly hour-long set with an encore cover of Daft Punk's Get Lucky.

The rain is pouring down today - the first rain I've encountered in Atlanta since coming back from the Northwest - which must be wreaking havoc on Music Midtown.  Poor Atlanta - first, it rains non-stop during its inaugeral Shaky Knees festival last spring, and now it rains during its signature Music Midtown.  The irony that it rained only one out of ten days in the Pacific Northwest during Bumbershoot and MFNW is not lost on me. In any event, it doesn't look like appropriate weather for today's East Atlanta Strut either, so it looks like I get to relax today, watch some football, and catch up on missed episodes of Sons of Anarchy. 

Black Prairie Redux (with some dude singing)

So is this Colin Meloy backed by most of Black Prairie and featuring Laura Veirs, or is this Black Prairie with Meloy and Veirs, or is this The Decemberists with Veirs, or does this even matter? 

The Newport Folk Festival, July 2013.

Charles Bradley at Bumbershoot

Charles Bradley at Bumbershoot, Aug. 31, 2013 

Dude, I was there!  Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires at the KEXP Bumbershoot Music Lounge, August 31, 2013.

Black Prairie - Eddie's Attic, Decatur, Georgia, 9/17/13

Black Prairie is a six-piece bluegrass and Americana-influenced band from Portland, Oregon, consisting of four-fifths of The Decemberists (basically, The Decemberists without frontman Colin Meloy), plus violinist and singer Annalisa Tornfelt of the bands Bearfoot and The Woolwines and guitarist Jon Neufeld of Dolorean and Jackstraw.  Last night, they played at Decatur, Georgia's Eddie's Attic.

It was a wonderful, almost magical, performance.  Between their bluegrass sound, their Balkan-influenced, gypsy instrumentals, and heartfelt songs, they were consistently innovative and surprising, even after accordionist Jenny Conlee revealed the set's blueprint early in the show by announcing that they would be playing fast songs followed by slow songs.

Highlights, and there were many, include Annalisa's performances on a Romanian Stroh violin, a violin that amplifies its sound through a metal horn rather than a wooden sound box as on a standard violin, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk's contributions on banjo and dobro.  Jenny Conlee was a warm and captivating performer, as always.   

Here's a relatively recent performance that captures their sound pretty well:

And since Annalisa said the video shot by the Skidmore Fountain with passing trains was her favorite, here that is as well:

Like many bands, they included an ironic cover in their set, performing Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son as their encore closer, with Annalisa belting out the sustained high notes at the end in show-stopping fashion. 

It's hard for me to accept, but despite all the time I spent in Portland back in '07 and '08, and despite attending three consecutive MFNWs in Portland between 2011 and 2013 and three Bumbershoots in Seattle the same years, I still haven't seen The Decemberists perform live.  Seeing four-fifths of the band last night was pretty damn close, and early this month during Day Two of MFNW, I saw Decemberist and Black Prairie drummer John Moen playing guitar and singing as the co-frontman of the new band Eyelids.  

Decemberist frontman Colin Meloy is on tour and will be playing Variety Playhouse in November - seeing him play then, in addition to my Black Prairie experience, may qualify as finally having seen The Decemberists, even if not altogether at once. 

Dude, I Was There!

Bumbershoot Recap - The Video

Little 5 Fest, Sept. 14, 2013

After hearing 5 to 11 bands a day during Bumbershoot and MFNW, it felt a little odd, disorienting even, to be back home and hearing no live music at all for days on end.  Fortunately, the organizers of the Little Five Fest, the Little Five Points community's music festival, which last year was held on September 29, moved the date up to September 14, my first Saturday since coming back from the Northwest.  I like to think they did this just to satisfy my jones for hearing multiple bands in one day.

The L5Fest actually began with a few sets at L5P's Star Community Bar on Thursday and Friday, which I didn't attend, but on Saturday the venues expanded to include an outdoor stage behind the Star Bar, a very small performance space in the basement Vinyl Lounge of the Star Bar, The Criminal Records and Wax 'n' Facts record stores, and dj sets at the Elmyr Restaurant next to Variety Playhouse.

The bands performing were almost all exclusively up-and-coming local Atlanta bands (with a few exceptions), and the event gave me lots of opportunities to discover new (to me at least) bands as well as hear some of my local favorites.

This is really just a small, one-day community event, so it would be unfair to compare it to Bumbershoot or MFNW (or for that matter, Atlanta's Music Midtown or Shaky Knees Festival).  Even the smaller events I went to in Portland, the Marmoset party and the OPB party at Mississippi Studios, were off-shoots of MFNW, so comparisons are not appropriate.  But given what it was, the L5Fest was a fine day of music, with a rich and interesting lineup that illustrated not only the diversity, but also the interconnectedness, of the Atlanta music scene.

When I arrived, the band Starfighter were playing at the outdoors stage behind the Star Bar.  We've seen Starfighter at the 2012 Tunes From The Tombs event at Oakland Cemetery, but as I had just arrived and wanted to get a little more oriented to the festivities, I didn't stay around long.

Upstairs and inside, the band Factory were playing the Star Bar stage.  

Factory were new to me, but appear to be Naomi Lavender (Muleskinner McQueen, the Dracula rock opera) and Alice Kim, formerly of São Paulo, Brazil, along with half of the Young Orchids (guitarist Michael Kai and drummer Tak Takemura), and Zombie Zombie's Stuart Roane on bass. (Okay, I only recognized Naomi and looked the rest up on line).

Their music has been described as "possibly the dreamiest dream pop" in Atlanta, to which I concur.

Following Factory, I went over to Criminal Records in time to hear the last couple of songs by Fit of Body.

Fit of Body is Atlanta's Ryan Nicholas Parks, who performs solo accompanied only by spare samples and keyboard loops. Commenting on his song Deserter, Dummy Mag wrote, "There’s something rather elegant about the sparseness of Deserter. . . Listening is like chasing half a dozen unravelling balls of wool down a hill in slow motion. It’s an enchanting muddle, and I look forward to more."

Back at the Star Bar, it was the band Mammabear, the Brit-pop-influenced project of Atlanta's Kyle Gordon. To be honest, I actually wasn't expecting to watch them, but while walking past the Star Bar from Criminal Records on my way to the outdoor stage, their tuneful rock caught my ear, and I would up staying, listening to, and enjoying them.   

Back at Criminal Records, I heard Feast of Violet, which is the solo project of electronic musician Allen Taylor of Mirror Mode and Lotus Plaza.  Taylor also has a new project with Mood Rings' William Fussell called Promise Keeper who played later in the day, but we'll get to that in due time.  Meanwhile, as Feast of Violet, Taylor played a great set of ambient electronica.

For some reason, most of the acts that I wanted to see were at the Criminal Records in-store stage, and Feast of Violet was followed by Atlanta's Adron.  We've seen Adron lots of times before, but this performance was unique in that she played solo, and instead of performing material from her fine CD Pyramids, she instead performed a few Brazilian covers, some Portuguese songs she'd written herself, and some other material she doesn't usually perform with her full band. It was a wonderful set, a primer to her approach to Brazilian pop and neo-bossa-nova sound as well as an opportunity to hear her play some new material.  

Mike Doughty played next and was really the anomaly to the L5Fest lineup, in that he wasn't from Atlanta and was an already established musician in his own right.  But here's the odd synchronicity - some 20 years ago, I heard Doughty's former band, the terrific Soul Coughing, give a free in-store performance at the old Criminal Records location (still in L5P, but around the corner on Moreland Avenue instead of its current, Euclid Ave. location).  Their 1993 set blew me away at the time, and I thought their combination of folk-rock, hip-hop, and jazz was just about the coolest thing imaginable, and Doughty's post-hipster approach to singing was the epitome of cool.  For various reasons, Soul Coughing broke up in 2000, but I still followed Doughty's subsequent solo career, including the fine albums Skittish and Rockity Roll.  

Both he and I, as well as Criminal Records, have changed a lot since that 1993 show, and Doughty now has a new album coming out of beloved Soul Coughing songs rearranged, or as he puts it, "re-imagined," for solo performance.  His nearly hour-long performance yesterday at Criminal Records was of this new-old material, and it still sounds great in its new format.

Almost immediately after Mike Doughty's set, Atlanta's Dog Bite took the Criminal Records stage.  Dog Bite is primarily the vehicle for singer and guitarist Phil Jones, formerly of Washed Out's touring band, and much of that dreamy, chilled sound remains in their music.  We've seen a lot of different line-ups to Dog Bite in the past, including one that had Mood Rings' (and Promise Keeper) William Fussell on guitar, and another that had powerhouse drummer Sarah Wilson of Odist on drums.  Yesterday, he had Young Orchids' (and Factory's) Tak Takemura on drums, and Shepherds' Jonathan Merenivitch on guitar.  Merenivitch also plays for Janelle Monae, and as we shall see later, for Del Venicci, and his playing added significant contributions to Dog Bite's sound yesterday. 

Eric of Criminal Records assured the audience that Dog Bite is going to go on to great things, and someday we'll look back in fondness at the chance to have seen them perform an in-store show like this.  Their Sound Cloud page says that "Dog Bite combines all your hopes and dreams, fuses them with grapes and butterflies, and then lays them out on a tray with sliced oranges."  If that's a little abstract, here's a sample from their forthcoming LA EP.

After Dog Bite, I finally left Criminal Records and wandered into the tiny Vinyl Lounge in the Star Bar basement.  The band is TV Dinner, a new one on me, but what the heck is this music they're playing?  Rock? Jazz? Chip tunes? Space-age pop? Some sort of fusion of all four?  The instrumental band defies any easy categorization, but I still loved their sound, as apparently did the small number of people able to squeeze into their performance space.   This is what I love about these kinds of events - discovering something new and out of the ordinary, just as I did last year in this very same room with Spencer Garn.

There are apparently a number of bands across the country that go by the name "TV Dinner," but I did find this BandCamp by a "TV Dinner" that included "Atlanta" among their taglines.  The songs include vocalists, which they did not have at their L5Fest appearance, but the backing band does sound like it could be them (but I'm still not completely sure).

You can't judge an album by its cover, and you can't judge a band by their t-shirts.  Atlanta's Calm White Noise wore Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective t-shirts so I thought I might like them and was correct. They played a type of electronic rock that would have satisfied fans of both bands while sounding like neither.  

Oh look!  It's our old friend Jonathan Merenivitch (Shepherds, Janelle Monae) who we saw barely an hour or so ago playing guitar for Dog Bite in Criminal Records, now in the Wax 'n' Facts record store playing guitar for Del Venicci.  We've seen Del Venicci at the Artlantis event earlier this year (where Shepherds played earlier, but Merenivitch did not play with Del Venicci), and when they opened for Mikal Cronin at The Earl (when they did include Merenivitch).

 The performance space was so tiny that the quartet couldn't even all stand together but were spread out among the rows of records, and customers found themselves trapped between the performers for the duration of their set.  Unfortunately, I arrived in time only to hear the last few songs of their set. 

Meanwhile, back at Criminal Records, as indicated earlier, Allen Taylor (Feast of Violet, Mirror Mode,  Lotus Plaza) was performing with Mood Rings' William Fussell as Promise Keeper.  Anything these two guys touch is going to have an ambient, dreamy feel to it, and their Promise Keeper performance was no exception.  I don't know where this collaboration is heading, but I like it and hope that it leads at least to a CD or two.

Back at the outdoor stage (it's been a while since I had been there - the last time I headed that way I got hijacked by Mammabear into the Star Bar), these guys were playing surf-rock instrumentals as Fiend Without a Face to a delirious crowd.  A sort of Southern version of Los Straightjackets.

Upstairs in the Star Bar, Hollywood, Florida's Beach Day (not to be confused with Beach House, Beach Fossils, Dirty Beaches, or the Beach Boys) were playing infectious, garagey, 60s-influenced power pop.  

Back outside, The Coathangers performance was in full swing.  The Coathangers are an all-female band that play raw, noisy, near-perfect punk rock.  Their dissonant and cathartic vocals bear only the most casual of relationships with harmony.  For some reason, they played last night as a trio; keyboardist Candice Jones was apparently absent. 

A mosh pit usually develops during a set like this, but the pit last night was pretty much confined to one fairly well-defined area of about 6 to 10 people.  However, one person in particular seemed more aggressive than the rest, and soon a few women outside of the pit area called security over to complain about his crossing the line.  The guards didn't intervene, but their presence temporarily subdued the person to just pogoing in place. That is, until bassist Meredith Franco jumped off the stage into the audience and the moshmaster decided to he just had to punch her.  

That was the line not to be crossed.  Security and several of the audience who were fed up with his antics anyway proceeded to give him a fairly vigorous ass-kicking, dragging him out of the audience and throwing him up against the porto-potties, while drummer Stephanie Luke got up screaming "Who punched my sister?" and demanding that he be ejected (she was apparently under the impression that he was hiding inside the porto-potty and not crawling away behind it).  The band then closed their set with an improvised (I'm pretty sure) chant of "Don't punch my sister." 

This is not a band you want to mess with.  Just because I can't resist it, here's one of my favorite videos, The Coathangers performing Hurricane, one of my favorite of their songs.  Shot at The Goat Farm. 

There's nothing like a full-throttle punk performance and a little unexpected mob violence to get the adrenaline flowing.

Let's see, what else was there yesterday?  Oh yes, back at Criminal Records, the fine band Women's Work put on one of their typically fine performances of Southern Gothic songs.

The band's music revolves around the tension between the gentle vocals and viola playing of frontwoman Lindsey Harbour and the almost shoegazey guitars of the rest of the band.  It sounds unusual (and it is), but it works.  Plus, they're recently added a new backup singer to the band.

Back at the smoky Star Bar, The N.E.C. put on a strong and loud showcase of their guitar-driven psychedelic rock.

The audience for Atlanta's PLS PLS ("please please") filled Criminal Records to hear their melodic "electronic infused alternative rock" (their description).

Here's another Goat Farm video.  I was at this event earlier in the evening, but the cold temperatures drove me off before PLS PLS performed, so last night was my first time hearing them.

Joseph Arthur is an American singer-songwriter from Akron, Ohio, although he lived in Atlanta for a time in the early 1990s, where he recorded a bunch of home demo tapes, one of which he dropped off to Eric of Criminal Records.  Before his set began last night, Arthur was presented with that very tape by Eric, who told him that he has never listened to it, "not once," as he's been given hundreds of demos over the years. But Peter Gabriel apparently did, and signed Arthur to Real World music.  Last night, Arthur seemed genuinely touched to be given the relic of his early career.  

Arthur played a nearly hour-long set accompanied only by a drummer.  His poetic lyrics were layered over a sonic palette generated by a number of distortion pedals and generous loop effects, making one quickly forget the limited number of musicians on the stage.

It was a wonderful performance, full of nuance and beauty.  Kimmy Drake of Beach Day was in the audience, enjoying the set.

There were still several more bands scheduled to play at The Star Bar to conclude the L5Fest, but after Joesph Arthur, I called it a night.  By my count, I had seen 19 bands (a new single-day record!), including some local favorites like Adron, The Coathangers, and Dog Bite, discovered several new bands like Factory and TV Dinner, and heard established music stars Mike Doughty and Joseph Arthur.  

Last year, the L5Fest, held as it was on the 29th of September, marked the start of Rocktober 2012.  This year, with the number of shows coming up, I can't decide if it marks an early beginning to Rocktober 2013, or if it's the coda at the end of the Bumbershoot/MFNW Labor Day marathon.

Or if it matters.