EMA at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta, April 29, 2014

Update: Somehow, I managed to lost the entire original post about Tuesday night's show at The Drunken Unicorn (old people and technology), so this is a complete re-post.

As I recall, the show opened with Atlanta's No Eyes (Georgie Seanny), who was joined on wordless vocals for one song by William Fussell of Mood Rings.  Most of the people in the audience other than me were with the other bands playing later, and Erica M Anderson (EMA) herself was crouching down near the front, recording most of No Eyes set on her iPhone, and seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit. 

Providence, Rhode Island's The Downtown Boys were up next, playing high energy, sax-driven, garage punk.  Everyone had a lot of fun both on and off the stage, with EMA and her band dancing throughout the set.

I've been wanting to see EMA live for years now, ever since I first heard The Grey Ship.  I'm pleased to report that her show Tuesday night was even better than I had hoped.

She played several songs off her new record, The Future's Void, opening with Satellites, and included California near the middle of her set, and even threw in a Bikini Kills cover.  

For someone with such a nihilistic body of work, she came across much more personable and likable than you might expect, shyly acknowledging the audience's compliments and keeping her stage banter pretty direct and honest.  I was disappointed that the audience was so small, and our attempt at an encore call fizzled out, but even as we started reluctantly filing out of the club, Erika came out on stage and asked if we wanted to hear one more.  Her generosity and humility kept the potentially awkward moment from being any more  uncomfortable than it needed to be.

That's about as much as I can remember.  It was a fun, fun night and all of the bands played highly disparate but terrific music.  A good night all around.

Annie Woodward

Annie Woodward is a singer/songwriter from Norway who fell into music "through theater through poetry through lots of random throughs."  She describes her music as "independent quirky folk meets alternative rock on a day off getting lost."  Recently, she introduced herself to this modest blog with the comment, "Hey, if you like CocoRosie, check out my folk rock with balls here: soundcloud.com/anniewoodward. Oh and I'm from Norway, peace, Annie."

If you like her sound as much as I do, you really ought to check out her Soundcloud.  You can hear the CocoRosie influence, as well as so much more if you give the songs even half a chance.

Nice to make your acquaintance, Ms. Woodward!  Come to Atlanta and play The Earl some day.

Just Sayin' . . .

Warpaint

Warpaint at Bumbershoot, 2011

Wondering when Warpaint will get around to touring the American South again, or if our paths will cross on the festival circuit?

Lost In The Trees

Lost in the Trees will be playing at The Earl on Thursday, May 1.

Angel Olsen at The Earl, Atlanta, April 24, 2014

Thursday night, April 24 - my first night back at The Earl since The Dum Dum Girls last March 20th.

Opening the relatively short, two-band show last night was Nashville's Promised Land Sound featuring a retro, early-70s brand of country rock.

Their set was pleasant enough and wisely short, because the full house was really there to hear Angel Olsen.

My friend Leslie compared Angel Olsen to "Sharon Van Etten's younger sister," and I can't really fault that description or come up with anything more apt.  I would love to hear the two of them collaborate someday.

So, she played a very nice set of songs and kept the stage banter fairly deadpan and low key ("You seem like nice people, but I don't really know you."), and noted when the time was 11:11.  Last night was the first of the second leg of her US tour (the first leg was February 18 through March 14, and she was in Europe March 23 through April 6).  Despite the two-week break since getting back from the European circuit, she and the band already seemed a little road-weary - perhaps it was in anticipation of the long slog of shows coming up, or maybe it's just a part of her natural insouciance.

The Earl audience gave her the attention she was due, and it's already clear that this is going to be a very big year for Angel Olsen.    

Angel Olsen

Angel Olsen in a La Blogotheque soirée de poche.

Dude, I Was There!

@ Faun and a Pan Flute, Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision, The Goat Farm, April 3, 2014

Hilang Child

The new song, The Garth Waterman, by the best new artist of 2014 can be downloaded for free here.  

Them Feels

"Jim Wise killed his wife out of love for her at her bedside.
And then he put the gun to his head but he failed at suicide.
His trial's coming up in the fall and he sighed when we stepped out and we left.
And I pointed out the pretty cardinal perched on the empty birdbath."
(from Jim Wise, by Sun Kil Moon) 

Still digging the new album, Benji.

Swans at Bumbershoot?

Seattle's Bumbershoot music festival (August 30 to September 1) isn't scheduled to release their lineup until May 8, when the announcement will be made at something called the Pink and Purple Pickwick Party at Nuemos, featuring, obviously, Pickwick (the best band you've never heard of).  

All we can do in the meantime, however, is speculate, but looking at the schedule for Swans, who'll be touring this summer behind their terrific new album To Be Kind (AOTY, possibly best album ever), I see they have no dates scheduled after July 6 until some West Coast shows starting September 2 in Denver, followed by September 4 in Seattle and September 6 in Portland, so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that they could squeeze in a Bumbershoot set sometime between August 30 and September 1.

Swans at Bumbershoot?  You heard it here first.

Little Tybee

They've  included this in their live sets for several months, and now we've got a video performance.

Creep

Raleigh Is the New Portland

For those of you keeping score at home, I'm still grieving and more than a little disappointed about the decision to scale back Portland's MusicFest NorthWest to a single-weekend, single-venue event that bears little to no resemblance to the week-long, multi-venue event of years past.  Not only did I really enjoy my time there, but after several years I was getting pretty good at navigating around the mammoth schedule and maximizing my experience.  In a way, the event even got tied into my sense of self identity ("I'm that guy who goes out and kicks MFNW's ass every year"), but now it's just some bleachers out in the sun for 18 bands on a mid-August weekend.

Before the announcement was made, I had already purchased tickets to Seattle's Bumbershoot for Labor Day Weekend, the weekend before the traditional start of MFNW (oh yeah, they changed the dates, too), so I still plan on visiting the Great Northwest on Labor Day Weekend, but instead of travelling from Seattle to Portland after Bumbershoot as I'd done in years past, I'll just be going up for Labor Day Weekend this year.  So what shall I do for that first week of September?

Today, the organizers of Raleigh, North Carolina's Hopscotch Festival released their initial list of performers, and it's pretty strong - Spoon, St. Vincent, Sun Kil Moon, Mastodon, Prince Rama, Mutual Benefit, and many more. What's more, I realized that, like the old MFNW, it's a multi-venue event but in downtown Raleigh instead of all over Portland, and that it's on the Thursday through Saturday after Labor Day Weekend.

So, theoretically, and I'm just spitballing out ideas here, I could return home from Bumbershoot on the Tuesday after Labor Day, take the 6-hour drive to Raleigh on Wednesday, enjoy the three days of Hopscotch, return home on Sunday, and be back at work the next Monday.

Okay, it's only three days, not six like MFNW had ballooned out to before the cut-back, but given travel logistics and new responsibilities at my new job, the schedule actually works better for me (I wouldn't have gotten back from Portland until the following Monday if MFNW had kept to their old schedule).  The venues seem to be more closely spaced and centrally located for Hopscotch than they were for MFNW (a lot of time was spent each night getting from one venue to another), and even though "only" 115 of the 155 or so bands for Hopscotch have been announced so far, the lineup is still pretty strong.  There's even headliner events planned for Raleigh City Square, similar to MFNW's Pioneer Courthouse Square concerts. 

So now I'm wondering, who really needs Portland, anyway?

Swans

More Real Estate

Little Dragon

Little Dragon have released a second track from their upcoming Nabuma Rubberband.  LD will be playing Variety Playhouse on June 14 (Flag Day, also my kid sister's birthday).  Better get your tickets soon (for Little Dragon - Flag Day's free and my kid sister's not planning anything special AFAIK).

Meanwhile, tUnE-yArDs' has releases a second track from her forthcoming Nikki Nack. She'll be opening for Arcade Fire here in Atlanta, unfortunately on the same night Mogwai is playing Center Stage.  The second time I'll miss her playing in Atlanta.

Coachella Knees

Coachella's been streaming all weekend on YouTube (Comcast Xfinity next weekend).  Here are some of the highlights from Friday and Saturday.

We missed Girl Talk at MFNW (RIP) 2012 due to our side trip to see My Morning Jacket in the Oregon countryside, but we did catch Warpaint in Seattle at Bumbershoot 2011.  We also saw Future Islands at the god-forsaken Masquerade before they exploded on Letterman last month.

Still, I'm thinking that the schedule for next month's Shaky Knees Festival here in Atlanta is even stronger than Coachella's, at least to my musical tastes.  Just sayin'.  Also, Fri > Sun > Sat.

S Carey & White Hinterland at Eddie's Attic, Atlanta, May 11, 2014

In one of the most startlingly non-rock'n'roll moves of the year, the promoters and proprietors of Decatur's Eddie Attic decided to put on a show featuring S. Carey (of Bon Iver) and White Hinterland starting at 7:00 pm, still the height of Atlanta's rush hour and an hour too early to allow one to eat some dinner beforehand - I had to arrive directly from work without even stopping home to feed the cats.

So with that off my chest, it was a great show, due entirely to the artistry of the performers and not the constant "shushing" of Eddie's management to the audience (note to Eddie's Attic: you might want to reevaluate your attitude toward your audience and honestly decide if promoting music shows is the right livelihood for you).

So, with that now off my chest, White Hinterland opened at 7:00 sharp (note the daylight coming in through the window at the upper right).  White Hinterland is Scituate, Massachusetts' vocal powerhouse Casey Dienel, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and keyboard and loop-supported one-woman band.  She performed an emotive and stylistically diverse set of songs, ranging from quiet voice-over-keyboards songs to rhythmically complex orchestrations of multiply looped vocals.

    

Her set included a terrific cover of Leon Russell's ballad, Song For You.

Her set ended concluded with a call-and-response piece with the audience (poorly) attempting to match her wordless vocalizations, but as the keyboards slowly dropped out of the mix and Casey's unaccompanied voice filled the room (she even moved away from the microphone and sang unamplified), an otherwise cliched moment became truly transcendent. 

After that, the audience didn't want her set to end and at only 7:45 pm, it didn't seem like it should have to, but all was quickly forgiven when Eau Clair, Wisconsin's (god, I'm so specific today) S Carey took the stage.  

 

We've seen S Carey once before, back in June 2011 when he opened for David Bazan (Pedro the Lion). Much like Bon Iver, for whom he plays drums, S Carey's music is hard to classify, ranging at times from quiet, polite balladry, to rhythmic, tribal percussion, to indie rock with electronic flourishes and coloration. To put it another way, he's a skilled interpreter of his music, willing to add whatever elements are necessary to convey the emotional content of his songs.

S Carey performed several new songs from his new album, Range of Light, and ended his set with a great one-two punch, staring with his probably best-known song, In The Dirt. 

In The Dirt, including its enthusiastic audience clap-along, was then followed by White Hinterland joining him on stage to cover Bjork.

@hessie via Instagram

Despite the early hour and the restrictive (repressive?) nature of Eddie's management, there was still something magical about the performances, the evening, and the artists.  I can't wait to see White Hinterland and S Carey perform someday at a real venue.

Real Estate

Frankly, it's more surprising to discover that Real Estate haven't played on television yet than it is to realize that Stephen Colbert will be taking over David Letterman's job.

Austerity Blues

Another song from Thee Silver Mt. Zion, etc., this one a mere excerpt from a song on their recent Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything.  Did I mention they're coming to Athens' 40 Watt next week?

Mutual Benefit vs. Shaky Knees

So the Shaky Knees schedule has been announced, and the whole festival starts with Mutual Benefit playing the Piedmont Stage (which appears to be in the space that Cirque du Soleil always sets up their tents) on Friday at 12:45 pm.

I missed Mutual Benefit at The Earl earlier this year, as it was on a Monday night after my first day back at a real, full-time job in almost two-and-a-half years. However, it shouldn't be as much of a challenge getting to Shaky Knees in time to hear his opening set. 

Other than scheduling Mutual Benefit a tad too early, I don't see any other major irregularities in the schedule, other than Friday is clearly better that Sunday, and Sunday is clearly better than Saturday (Fri > Sun > Sat). But even Saturday still has the terrific Lord Huron, as well as Modest Mouse, Jenny Lewis, and Conor Oberst, so it's not like there's really anything to complain about.

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra . . .

. . . And Tra-La-La Band, featuring members of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, have released a new song, Birds Toss Precious Flowers. The southern leg of their current tour doesn't touch down in Atlanta, but will have them performing at the 40-Watt in Athens on April 15 before they embark on the tour de ville (Asheville, Louisville, Nashville).

I'm scheming how to arrange a business trip to Athens next week. . . 

Cell Song

As described by Fanfarlo, "Cell Song is a song about the body. Most of us think of ourselves as an individual, a unity. Some sort of lone spirit living inside the head of a soft machine. But really we are the product of billions of little organisms that at one point decided that they were better off together, and so gave up their independence and joined together in a pact for survival. It's a beautiful thing, how the body is at once one and many. Like an evolutionary love story."

The Cell Song video employs thousands of individually inkjet-printed sheets of paper to create a stop-motion world teeming with bizarre cutouts from childhood science fiction and story books, and a cast of topsy-turvy biology gone decidedly strange.

Enjoy.

Red Baraat at Smith's Olde Bar, Atlanta, April 4, 2014

Still catching up . . .  here's my pics and commentary (such as it is) on the Red Baraat show at Smith's Olde Bar last Friday night.

The show opener, Atlanta's The Dialect Trio, were a revelation.  Where have these guys been hiding, and why haven't I heard them before?  The "trio" took the stage as a quartet and played a great amalgam of various world musics, incorporating elements of Hindustani pop, Afro pop, reggae, Cumbia, and various Afro-Cuban rhythms, with pleasingly Santana-esque guitar.  They described their style as "Chichia," a psychedelic, surf-inspired form of Cumbia popular in Peru.  Their Bandcamp site lists a full dozen albums and EPs, so they've obviously been around for a while - perhaps they've just been playing in an alternative universe of clubs and venues than I've been attending.

Here's a great video of them set to a memorable scene from Rodriguez' From Dusk 'Til Dawn (written and featuring Quentin Tarantino), posted here for The Dialect Trio's music and because you can never get too much Selma Hayek.

Headliners Red Baraat may be from Brooklyn, New York, but their music is from the Asian subcontinent by way of New Orleans, which is to say this is what a second line brass band might sound like in the India Quarter of the Crescent City, if such a thing even existed.  

To say they got the party started and the audience up and dancing would be an understatement - it was clearly the band's singular aim and mission in the very same manner as, say, the Dirty Dozen or Rebirth Brass Bands.  

There was a large contingent of Indians in the audience - I've never seen more turbans in an audience at any show before - engaged in a friendly, South Asian form of moshing, which involves two or more people locking feet or hands in the center of a circle, and then spinning around the center as rapidly as possible.  It was fun, and I speak from personal experience as late in the show I got pulled into one of those circles by an outgoing young man.

The band is led by percussionist Sunny Jain, whose hard driving North Indian bhangra rhythms merge with the five-man horn section's elements of jazz, funk, and hip-hop, and if you've never experienced a Sikh rapping over brass-band funk before, then you've got to catch Red Baraat.

This is the kind of band that really needs to be experienced live in order to be appreciated, so here's a little taste of Friday's show and a video below from a show in their native Brooklyn to give you a rough approximation of the joyful multiculturalism of their performance.

Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision

Before I start falling too far behind, let's recap last Thursday night's Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event at The Goat Farm.  I've already posted pictures of some of the visual offerings from the event over at the other blog, so here's a summary of the musical portion of the events.

When I arrived, Florida's The Dewars were on stage.

I hadn't heard of The Dewars before and wasn't quite sure what to expect - they describe themselves as "adult sing-along."  What they performed was witty and entertaining folk pop, as in their song Switzerland, the video of which was also periodically projected outside on a large screen.

Atlanta's electronic band Jungol were up next, and they brought a friend on stage with them.

The friend is a character from their short film/extended video Go Softly, which seems to fall somewhere in the Animal Collective-to-Bjork continuum of strangeness for strangeness's sake that doesn't need to be explained.  

Anyway, the friend lent an enigmatic and powerful presence to the stage while Jungol performed.  

Here's the entire Go Softly film, which was also one of the featured "experimental films" being screened in the building across from the band's performance.

Atlanta's eight-piece Faun And A Pan Flute took the stage sometime around 10 pm.  FAAPF play an indescribable brand of music that's equal parts Harry Partch, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, jazz fusion, math rock, minimalism, and prog, and I'm probably leaving out a half-dozen or so other genres that they covered.  It can be pretty adventurous and avant garde stuff at times, and I think it says a lot of good things about Atlanta's musical audience that the band seems to be so well loved and appreciated.

The weather was absolutely lovely the whole night - warm and dry, with a pleasingly low pollen count.  But despite the weather, and despite the terrific performances, fascinating films and videos, and fantastic art installations, I still called it an evening after Faun And A Pan Flute so that I could get home at an early enough hour to get a good night's sleep and be ready for another evening of live music on Friday.    

Meanwhile, Back at the Goat Farm

The Dewars performing at the Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event last night at the Goat Farm.  More on this soon.

Oxygen

Another new song from Swans' To Be Kind. . . featuring Thor (Shearwater) on percussion and clarinet.

A Little God In My Hands

Here's the first song released from the new Swans album To Be Kind, due May 13th. But right now, you can download a copy of A Little God at http://www.self-titledmag.com.  You've been warned . . .

Real Estate at Terminal West, Atlanta, March 31, 2014

The fine band Real Estate performed at Atlanta's Terminal West last night, the last evening of March Madness.

If you don't know what March Madness is by now, or if you think that it has something to do with a collegiate basketball tournament, then you haven't spent much time at this blog before.

The band Pure X opened, one of the quietest bands I've heard since, well, since the Dum Dum Girls.  They played fine, jangley dream pop not at all unlike Real Estate, and it was pretty obvious why they were chosen to open for and tour with Real Estate. Despite the low volume, however, the sound sounded muddled and incoherent at times, marring what was otherwise an interesting and enjoyable performance.

Following Pure X's set, Real Estate played on one of the loveliest stage sets I've seen since, well, since Purity Ring, and had the volume and mix exactly right from the very beginning of their set.

They sounded terrific, with the twin guitars of Martin Courtney and Matt Mondanile chiming and harmonizing perfectly.  Their joy and enthusiasm for playing guitar together was obvious through the set, which turned out to be an energetic one from a band that can sound laid back on record at times, and the enthusiastic audience cheered and egged them on throughout the show.

Sometimes I feel like I think that every show I just saw was the best of the year, which is actually a really nice way to experience these shows, but leaving last night's Real Estate set, I really did feel like I was present at something really special - a great, great show by a great, great band.

After a surf-rockish instrumental, the band teased the audience with the introduction to Black Sabbath's Iron Man during the encore, before settling in to play It's Real, probably their best known and most loved song.