Typhoon

If you're a fan or orchestral folk-rock, you know, bands like Beirut, Lost In The Trees, Fanfarlo, and Shearwater, or, if you live in Atlanta, Little Tybee and Oryx & Crake (if you live in San Francisco, Family Crest, I suppose), and you haven't yet heard Portland's Typhoon, arguably the best of all of them, then prepare yourself because you're in for a real treat.

Here they are, all 11 of them, in an August 29 session at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Thanksgiving Song

A day late (actually two - I'm posting this on Saturday but back-dating it to Friday) and a dollar makes me hollar, or whatever the expression is, here's a holiday-appropriate song for Thanksgiving, a poignant meditation on loss and remembrance. 

Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett, one of our favorite new artists of 2013, has done a Take-Away Show for Paris' La Blogotheque in Brooklyn, performing a stripped-down and slowed-down version of Avant Gardner, as well as Out of the Woodwork. "It is an altogether refreshing thing to meet someone on their first trip to a new country," whoever it is that writes for La Blogotheque notes. "Through their eyes, you get to strip disillusionment from your own and experience your home anew. Courtney Barnett was not only on her first trip to New York City, she was on her first trip anywhere when we met at the top of Prospect Park in Brooklyn to wander and record songs from her recently released Avant Gardener EP."

It's gratifying to see her getting some well deserved attention, and I've noticed that Georgia State's WRAS has started playing her songs.

Somebody bring this girl to Atlanta! 

Chvrches and Wet at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Nov. 26, 2013

This is Chvrches year.  Their first EP, Recover, was released last March and their debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, came out last September.  They've been on tour almost constantly since at least SXSW last March.  We caught them last September at MFNW in Portland's Roseland Theater and then the next morning at a KEXP radio set at the Doug Fir Lounge.  Last night, their tour took them for the first time to Atlanta.

But first, the Brooklyn band Wet opened.

According to The NY Times, Wet play "majestically downcast love songs topped by vocals with an unexpected Celtic and country tinge."  The Deli Magazine calls them an "electro mellow-core" project that "offers a musical recipe reminiscent of the wise, caucasian soul-pop of MS MR, but with an added personal twist consisting in a subtle quirkiness and an intriguing sonic spaciousness."

Whatever.  They were great last night, very nearly upstaging Chvrches.  Here's a sample:

The audience, of course, was there to hear and see Glasgow's Chvrchess, fronted by singer Lauren Mayberry, the Sweetheart of Scotland.  At the front of the stage, the bros outnumbered the babes by about an 8-to-1 margin. 

There's really nothing to complain about in Chvrches' radio-ready electro-pop, except perhaps a lack of spontaneity.  They played the songs the audience wanted to hear (The Mother We Share, Recover, etc.), and Mayberry was as charismatic and appealing as one could hope for, but given the limitations of her vocal range, the songs all start to sound the same after a while, and the whole thing felt at times a little mechanical and scripted.  I wouldn't go so far as to say they were phoning it in, but I do think the rigors and redundancy of their relentless touring are starting to get to them.

I didn't make it, but kudos to the band for performing an in-store show at Criminal Records before last night's concert.  It's nice to see that they're not "too big" to still reach out to the fans.

Their light show was much more sophisticated than I recall in Portland, one of the perks, I suppose, of their lucrative tour.

Their songs will make nearly everyone's end-of-year lists, and you'll be hearing them on the radio, in car commercials, and on movie soundtracks.  They're good and deserve the recognition and success, and quite frankly, it couldn't have happened to a seemingly nicer trio.

Here's their latest video for their song Lies:

It's Raining

The Casket Girls

Savannah's The Casket Girls, who were scheduled at one point to play Friday night's Stomp & Stammer anniversary party at The Earl, will kick off their 2014 tour in Atlanta and are booked at 529 on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2014. 

Set your calendars now.

Hilang Child

Prince Rama at The Earl, Atlanta, November 23, 2013

Stomp & Stammer is a local Atlanta music newspaper, perhaps the only living survivor of the fanzines of the 70s and the 80s.  As a matter of fact, last night Stomp & Stammer held their 17th Anniversary Party, with a lineup every bit as interesting as called for by the occasion.

The opening set was the premier performance by White Woods, a new band fronted by Julia Kugel of The Coathangers.

No one knew what to expect from White Woods. Creative Loafing, Atlanta's alternative weekly, described the band as a "retro- and Americana-toned" solo project, which gave us a little bit to go by.  But I don't think anyone expected the performance to be such an immersive visual and musical experience. 

The six members of the band, including Julia and two backup singers, took the stage all wearing white.  The stage lights were turned off, and the only illumination was by a projector playing a black-and-white German film with lots of titles and on-screen text, so that the white clothing of the musicians served as screens for the film, words and images playing across their bodies. 

Julia wore a long, flowing white dress and a large, pope-sized tiara and, frankly, never looked lovelier.  She sang, not in her high-pitched Coathangers squeal, but in an earthier, more emotive voice, and although the music certainly wasn't punk rock, it really couldn't be categorized as Americana, either.  She was backed by a very minimal drum set, just a snare and floor tom, keyboards, and alternately a second guitar, accordion, and even theremin.  The closest approximation I can suggest to their sound would be the recent acoustic efforts by Chelsea Wolfe, and the songs started out soothing and soft, but grew more and more menacing as the set progressed, with lots of interesting noise and dissonance brewing in the background behind Julia's vocals, but rather than let you guess what it was like, here's a sample:

The rest of The Coathangers were in the audience cheering Julia on, as well as who I can only assume was Julia's mom or at least some lady with the words "Coathangers Mom" on a napkin cloth-pinned to the back of her coat.  

In short, it was an amazing set and a most promising debut for this new band, whom I look forward to hearing more of in the future.

The heavy lifting of the middle set was ably provided by Atlanta's Zoners, filling in for Savannah's The Casket Girls, who were originally slated to perform.  Nonetheless, Zoners played loud, muscular and aggressive punk rock, featuring three guitars backed by drums and bass.    

The evening's headliners were Brooklyn's Prince Rama.  We last saw Prince Rama at the Farm 255 restaurant in Athens almost two years ago, and have been looking forward to seeing them again.  They did not disappoint.

Prince Rama shows have a reputation for being unpredictable affairs, and last night's show started with Taraka Larson on the shoulders of some stagehand, riding through The Earl audience covered by a veil while singing, as sister Nimai Larson drummed on stage in a gold lame bodysuit..

The Larson sisters famously grew up in a Krishna community in Alachua, Florida, just outside of Gainesville, and although they are no longer practicing Krishnas, the influence has obviously seeped into their music and performance.  Their parents drove up from Gainesville for last night's show; the father is the gentleman with the silver hair and denim jacket on the left side of the first photograph above of Tanaka being carried around The Earl.  I actually had a chance to talk briefly with him before the set began, and he told me that his daughters had recently come back from touring Australia and will be doing an installation piece at Miami's Art Basel festival this winter.  Mom had baked fudge and was giving samples out to the audience over by the merch table.  Cool folks.    

Taraka plays keyboards and does most of the singing, and Nimai plays percussion, sings, and dances.  Both Larson sisters wore colorful outfits, teased hair, and lots of glittery makeup, adding a visual spectacle to the performance.

Their set consisted mostly of songs from their latest album Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, in which the band "channels" ten imaginary bands at the time of an invented apocalypse, or something like that.  Their music was pop-py and eminently danceable, although not without weird psychedelic flourishes and their own enigmatic presence, especially on the last song, which was performed as they acrobatically danced in the middle of the audience, Nimai lip-synching covered in fake blood and using her water bottle as an imaginary microphone.      

It was all over far too quickly but still made quite an impression.  More pictures from the evening are posted on the Flickr site.  I understand that Prince Rama's not actually on tour right now, and did this gig as a one-off performance for Stomp & Stammer, but if you get a chance to see them, either at Art Basel or elsewhere, you really owe it to yourself to go.

Of Monsters And Men in Rome

Another set from La Blogotheque, this time featuring Of Monsters and Men in Rome.

Mike Doughty, Terminal West, Atlanta, November 20, 2013

Last night, Mike Doughty, formerly of the band Soul Coughing, performed at Terminal West.  New York's Moon Hooch opened.

Moon Hooch are a trio fronted by two guys on saxophones and backed by a drummer.  On first impression, their dance-oriented music is not dissimilar to moments of Big Gigantic, but unlike Big Gigantic, whose music I once described as consisting of all climaxes without any build up or release, Moon Hooch aren't afraid to vary their approach and to throw in some skwonk and experimentation. In fact, I don't think they're afraid of much of anything.   

It was my first time hearing Moon Hooch, and I enjoyed them a lot.  EDM meets avant-jazz, with a little old-fashioned funk thrown into the very modern mix.

The equally eclectic Mike Doughty headlined.  Doughty's music exists at the intersection of rock, hip-hop, and post-beat jazz.  He was the front man for the former band Soul Coughing, and one of my favorite concerts of the 1990s was Soul Coughing's free outdoor set in front of the old Criminal Records location on Moreland Avenue in Little Five Points.  I got a new printer just yesterday, and was able to scan in some of my old photographs of that set.  I'm not sure of the year of these pictures, but I believe it was about 1993 or so.  

Although I loved the Ruby Vroom album and their subsequent recordings, after that show, I didn't see Doughty again until 20 years later when I saw him, again at Criminal Records (although now at the new location), during last September's L5Fest.

During the L5Fest, he performed Soul Coughing songs solo, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar.  Last night, he had a band, or at least a very able drummer and an acoustic bassist, and he played electric guitar, keyboards, and turntables. It was all quite different, although equally enjoyable, from his L5Fest performance, and he included Screenwriters Blues in his set list. 

So, since L5Fest was the beginning of the surfeit of seasonal concerts that I call "Rocktober," and one of the highlights of L5Fest was Mike Doughty's performance, it seems appropriate to end Rocktober with this bookend, second performance by Doughty.  In other words, that's it for the longest Rocktober yet.

In a related note, I almost didn't go last night.  I got lazy and convinced myself that I just saw Doughty two months ago and it wouldn't be worth the $25 ticket to see him again so soon.  But I rallied at the last minute, but even driving there I decided that if I couldn't find a parking space in the nearest lot to Terminal West, I would just turn around and go home.  When I pulled into that nearest lot, it was full and several other cars that also couldn't park were turning around and leaving.  I turned around too, ready to go home, when suddenly, as if from nowhere, a young woman walked back to her car, got in and drove away, suddenly leaving the only open space in the lot right in front of me. Well, if the cosmos was going to be that obvious in its message that I should go, who was I to say "no?"     

Inti Rowland

I could sum up 100% of what I know about Inti Rowland in two sentences:

1.  He's opening for Hilang Child in London next week.

2.  He's one of the people in this video, probably not the woman on violin.

It's pretty sweet music, though.  Check it out.

Fruit Bats

In memorium, here are The Fruit Bats from a 2011 session for Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Yeah, Sure, Whatever. But what's Damien Jurado Been Up To?

This:

La Bulat

Basia Bulat at The Earl, April 30, 2013

Oh look. Our old friend, Basia Bulat, recorded a Take Away Show in Toronto for Paris' La Blogotheque. According to La Blogotheque, she performed "une jolie chanson qui vous trompe d’abord par sa joliesse, une qui vous plonge immédiatement plus profond, jusqu’à ce que vous donniez plus que ce que vous quémandiez. Et avant que ce ne soit terminé, vous êtes changé. en mieux." (a pretty song that fools you at first with its appearance, one that immediately draws you further in until you are giving more than you bargained for, and before it is over, you are changed for the better.)

Spark & Whisper At The 142 Throckmorton

According to researchers Stephen Bank and Michael Kahn, siblings are the central molding factor involved in the development of one's personality, more so even than that of parental influence. Their view is that "brothers and sisters, whether the relationship has been contentious or calm, satisfying or frustrating, filled with conflict or deeply comforting, can provide the touchstones and templates which mold each other’s lives."

As evidence, I offer my kid sister, with whom I haven't shared a roof since at least 1974, and who now lives on the opposite side of the great North American continent from me, apparently in a house full of children and living a life that really couldn't be more different than mine.  Since the templates that mold our lives work at a subconscious level, I can't say if I impacted her or she I, or if we both molded each other, but sometime around the turn of the Millennium and totally independent of each another, we both became Buddhists at about the same time, even though there were no Buddhist influences in our upbringing.  Could it have been that old copy of Motorcycle Maintenance I left laying around the house, or were we both left wanting the same thing that Eastern wisdom can provide?

As further evidence of our mutual templates, here are some videos of her Marin County friends, the fine folk duo of Spark & Whisper, that she emailed me this week

Witchi Tai To

Here's one of my favorite bands, London's Fanfarlo, covering one of my favorite songs from the late 60s, Jim Peppers' Witchi Tai To.

Basia Bulat, Eddie's Attic, Decatur, Georgia, November 13, 2013

According to a preview in The New Yorker magazine:

The twenty-nine-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat plays the Autoharp, the piano, the violin, and a variety of other instruments, but she can make remarkable music without any of them. Bulat has a singular voice, with a confident yet vulnerable tone, and she sings with an impassioned yearning that suggests the vast wilderness of her homeland. She’s been nominated for a Juno Award and short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize, and her third album, Tall Tall Shadow, recently released, shows her maturing as a songwriter. Bulat is touring the States, and is at the Bowery Ballroom on Nov. 23, with backing musicians—not that she really needs them.

She also appeared at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, Georgia last night.  But first, Nashville's Foreign Fields opened.

Foreign Fields are the duo of Eric Hillman and Brian Holl, originally from Wisconsin.  They both play electric guitar and both sing and sing well, but the magic in their music is their almost telepathic harmonies and the soothing gentleness of their songs.

Comparisons to Bon Iver are inevitable, but one can also hear influences or at least similarities to bands as diverse as Grizzly Bear, Gem Club, The Album Leaf, and Fleet Foxes.  I had never heard them, or heard of them, before last evening, but they were a most pleasant discovery, and gently eased the audience into a receptive mood for Basia Bulat's set that followed.  They were, quite simply, marvelous. 

We saw Toronto's Basia Bulat earlier this year opening for Pickwick at The Earl, and were charmed by her voice, her musicianship, and her adorable stage presence.  Eddie's Attic is a little off the beaten track for me, and not my favorite place to hear music due to all it's rules and required seating at tables, but not only was this show worth it, it might have been the perfect venue for both of these bands.  I'd rather get a lecture about not talking during the performance before a Basia Bulat set at Eddie's Attic than forego the lecture at The Earl but have to contend with all the chatter and socializing from the noisy patrons at the bar.

But anyway, last night was only her second appearance in Atlanta, and this time Basia was backed by a drummer and bass for much of her set (she performed solo when she opened for Pickwick). 

“Ms. Bulat’s voice is rich and nuanced," says the New York Times, "and her songs are as sophisticated as they are charming."  I would have to agree.  

Basia’s third album, Tall Tall Shadow, was released on October 1 and was co-produced with Tim Kingsbury of Arcade Fire and Mark Lawson, the engineer for The Suburbs. Basia has said, “This time around, I felt braver—I wanted to play with exploring the boundaries of the folk music some people know me for.”  In this regard, she reminds me of Sharon Van Etten, another singer-songwriter who's gaining confidence and bravery with each successive release and expanding her boundaries beyond the niche in which she started. 

Comparisons to early Joni Mitchell are inevitable and not unflattering, but Basia has moved far beyond the folk of Blue and Court & Spark.  You can hear a recapitulaton of her sound in her song Tall Tall Shadow, that starts in Mitchell territory with Basia solo on keyboards, but as the band starts to fill in, Basia's voice acquires that "impassioned yearning" referred to by The New Yorker, before soaring into the song's climax and moving into Van Ettten indie-rock territory.  

During the course of her set last night, she played guitar, 10-string mandolin, autoharp, and keyboards, and played them all well.  For her encore, she played a hammered dulcimer, and the middle segment of her set had her on stage alone, without the band.  Whatever context she found herself in, whatever instrument found its way into her hands, she played with honesty, emotion, and charm, and warmed the hearts of everybody in the Attic last night.