Animal Collective Live in New York, November 2016

Animal Collective live in Atlanta, May 2016

We'll be honest with you, friends, and be open and truthful in much the same manner as Damien Jurado was on Thursday night at The Earl - we haven't been doing very well.  The election and the prospect of four year of a Trump presidency really have us down.  We try not to think about it, we try to reconcile ourselves with it, we try to find that still, quiet spot in the center of our mind, but we still want to punch our fist through a wall.  

Music has been, at best, a distraction for us, but we haven't heard anything since November 8th that made us think, "Yes, everything is going to be alright."  Or at least, "Okay, life sucks, but here's a way to make it better."  We've been listening to a lot of Thee Silver Mount Zion Orchestra lately, reveling in their moodiness and shifts from extreme pessimism to cautious optimism, but then to be honest, we had been listening to them a lot before the election as well, so nothing's really changed there. 

We're desperately waiting for the next big, game-changing record, the breakout album by a new band - or redirection by an old band - that would have the same effect on our consciousness as, say, Fear of Music by The Talking Heads, or London's Calling by The Clash, or even early Arcade Fire or LCD Soundsystem - something so compelling and innovative that it will restore our hope for the future. 

We could include some of Animal Collective's breakout recordings in that list of breakthroughs, but to be brutally frank, they haven't been bringing it lately.  They seem to have reached some sort of peak with Merriweather Post Pavilion (which isn't even their best record), and since then have been actively backing away from issuing any kind of music that might even suggest they were interested in trying to top that earlier peak.  

This live set isn't that return to form, or our sought-after sonic reason to keep on living.  But we caught Animal Collective's tour here in Atlanta back in May, and this recording from New York's Terminal 5 on November 2 (a week before Election Day) finds them much further down the road with the new songs from Painting With than they were back then.  They seem to be much more comfortable with living in the skins of the new compositions, and more willing to once again experiment and explore new sonic terrain and see where the songs might lead them, and are also digging back into their older material as well. This doesn't change our dismal outlook on the world, but it does provide a glowing, psychedelic alternate universe we can retreat to for a couple hours. 

This set set isn't the breakthrough recording we need to hear right now, but it gives us a quantum of solace that the breakthrough might be coming some day, and in the Trump Era, that might be all that we can expect.

So, once again, thanks to the good people over at NYC Taper for recording and posting this, and to Animal Collective for allowing it to happen and for doing all that they're still doing.

01. Recycling

02. Lying in the Grass

03. Golden Gal

04. Summing the Wretch

05. Loch Raven

06. On Delay

07. Jimmy Mack [Martha Reeves and The Vandellas]

08. Water Curses

09. FloriDada

10. The Burglars

11. Kids on Holiday

12. [encore break]

13. Hocus Pocus

14. Guys Eyes

15. Summertime Clothes

Ought

We saw Ought play at Shaky Knees on May 15, one of the highlights of the festival as far as we're concerned, but the weekend before their Shaky Knees set, Ought played at Rough Trade in New York City, where their set was captured by NYC Taper.  

Ought are a highly intelligent and hyper-literate Canadian band (Montreal), and well worth your time to investigate and explore.

Heron Oblivion

Psych-rock supergroup Heron Oblivion's self-titled debut album made my Best Albums of 2016 (So Far) list immediately upon its release, where it resided for several weeks before getting bumped by our enthusiasm for the newest latest release, but don't be surprised if it doesn't make a return again after repeated listenings and midyear and year-end reevaluations.

Heron Oblivion are currently on tour, but in a familiar refrain, their travel plans bring them nowhere even close to the American South.  However, the good folks over at NYC Taper have recorded and posted Heron Oblivion's May 28 set at Brooklyn's Union Pool, which you can stream above or download at nyctaper.com.

Heron Oblivion are Meg Baird (Espers, The Baird Sisters) on drums and vocals, Ethan Miller (Comets on Fire, Howlin Rain, Feral Ohms) on bass and backing vocals, Noel Von Harmonson (Comets on Fire) on guitar, and Charlie Saufley (Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound) also on guitar.

Yo La Tengo In New Jersey

Yo La Tengo at Variety Playhouse, September 27, 2015

New Jersey's finest band, Yo La Tengo, just completed their current tour with a home-state set at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theater on April 9, 2016, and the good folks at NYC Taper managed to beautifully capture the whole thing and have posted it to Soundcloud for people to share.

This is great stuff.  There's really nothing more to be said but enjoy!  

Kathryn Calder

Last September 11, while we were watching Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Variety Playhouse, Kathryn Calder, our favorite New Pornographer (with all due respect to Dan Bejar), was performing a set in New York's Mercury Lounge, and fortunately for us, the good folks over at NYC Taper caught it and posted it to their web site.  I simply can't say enough good things about this terrific artist.

Here's the set, followed by Calder's video for  When You See My Blood.

Still Yet Even More Luna

I don't want this blog to devolve to a mirror site, but the good folks at NYC Taper have really outdone themselves by posting Luna's October 2, 2015, show at Atlanta's Terminal West in its entirety.  They taped from up in the balcony, and remarked on Atlanta's "boisterous and a bit chatty" audience.

Bro, I was there!

I feel like a copy-cat posting two of their shows here in a row, but this really can't be ignored.

Still Yet Even More Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo at Variety Playhouse, September 2015

A strong contender for Show of the Year was Yo La Tengo's set last month at Variety Playhouse, and now, once again, the good folks at NYC Taper have gone the extra mile and posted YLT's recent (October 10, 2015) set in Brooklyn in its entirety for your streaming pleasure.  

Enjoy!

Yo La Tengo on stage at Kings Theater, Brooklyn with Ted Danson Nick Lowe

Luna

Luna at Terminal West, October 2, 2015

Bros of the world rejoice!  The good folks at NYC Taper have recorded Luna's homecoming show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, and have placed the entire show on their site for free download here.  

Here's a sample, the lovely Anesthesia;

Destroyer at The Loft, Atlanta, October 9, 2015

On a night of tough Rocktober choices, I made what I think was the right but difficult move last night and chose to go see Destroyer and Jennifer Castle at The Loft over the tempting option of Wild Ones and Pure Bathing Culture at The Drunken Unicorn.  Rationale: I've seen Wild Ones once before and Pure Bathing Culture at least twice maybe three times now and although Destroyer has been around for some 20 years, I've never seen them live.  The Unicorn is a more intimate venue to see a performer up close and personal, but on the other hand, The Loft isn't exactly cavernous, even if the stage is small.     

So I found myself at The Loft just a few minutes after the doors opened and got there in time to get a stage-front spot right at the center monitor to see opener Jennifer Castle.   

Castle is a Toronto singer-songwriter who's songs require more attention than most of the audience was wiling to give her.  Her songs and her singing rewarded close attention and transcended the austerity of folk music by interesting flourishes of flute and synthesizer provided by her band.  

Unfortunately, most of the audience wasn't interested in giving Castle the attention she deserved, but to her credit, she proceeded through her set despite all of the noise - talking and even outright shouting by the audience - even singing one song a cappella amid the roar and the din of the crowd. The audience did finally settle down and listen toward the end of her set, and she was both grateful and gracious for the late attention she finally received.

This, however, was a Destroyer crowd, and what they denied to Castle they paid in heaps to the headliner.  Destroyer, of course, is fronted by the New Pornographers' resident genius Dan Bejar, and writing in Brooklyn Vegan, Bill Pearis described the recent Destroyer show in New York's Webster Hall as follows:

"With an big, multi-piece band, including trumpet player J.P. Carter (so key to the 2011 Kaputt tour), Bejar stuck mainly to new album Poison Season which sounded pretty great in the live setting. Like usual, Bejar spent time not singing crouched on the stage, swigging a beer, and taking in the sound of the band." 

Bejar, who claims to be able to play guitar and piano (and I have no reason to doubt him), provided vocals for a backing septet (drums, bass, two guitars, keys, sax, and trumpet).  I found it interesting that a singing bandleader allowed so much time for his backing band to play.  As Pearis notes, the trumpet player JP Carter was the stand-out instrumentalist, alternating between playing melodic solos and providing bizarre washes of ambient soundscapes by running his trumpet through an elaborate, stand-mounted pedal board.

Being right up front, mere feet away from Bejar, I got to peek at the set list, which went as follows:

1. Bangkok
2. Forces From Above
3. Savage Night at the Opera
4. Euro Oils
5. Chinatown
6. It's Gonna Take an Airplane
7. Modern Painters
8. Looters' Follies
9. Times Square
10. Midnight Meet the Rain
11. Poor In Love
12. Hell
13. Kaputt
14. Dream Lover

The set list was very similar and actually a little longer than that of his Webster Hall show, which was captured and posted by the good folks over at NYC Taper.

So, to summarize, a great, great show by a musical genius who right at this moment is probably at the peak of his game.  I'm sure the other show last night was great too, but to quote Edith Piaf, je ne regrette rien.

Shit We Missed

We passed up this year's Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh and the opportunity to hear Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the pouring rain in order to stay home in Atlanta and hear Godspeed perform in the more intimate setting of Variety Playhouse.  

The next evening, September 12, we heard Atlanta's Oryx & Crake at their CD release party at The Earl, while back at Hopscotch, Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers) performed a set featuring Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) on guitar, Nathan Bowles on drums, and Jenifer Gelineau on violin.  The complete set has been uploaded for streaming over at NYC Taper, who always can be counted on for superb coverage of the Hopscotch Festival. 

Ambrogio will be performing in Atlanta at The Drunken Unicorn on October 31, Halloween, the same night, unfortunately, as Quiet Hounds at Ponce City Market.

Godspeed at Hopscotch

Godspeed You! Balck Emperor at Variety Playhouse, September 11, 2015

As previously discussed, we passed up going to Hopscotch in Raleigh this year to instead catch Godspeed You! Black Emperor here in Atlanta last Friday night at Variety Playhouse.  Since that time, the good folks at NYC Taper have recorded and posted Godspeed's entire Hopscotch show from the previous Thursday night and have made it available for free download.

I think I made the right decision to catch Godspeed in Atlanta rather than Raleigh.  Their set in Atlanta was at least two songs longer than the Raleigh set, and for Godspeed that means at least another 40 minutes or so of music, and here's a description of the Hopscotch experience from the NYC Taper website:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor shows are always meditative affairs, where you allow the band’s long instrumental sequences to draw you in, slowly, bombarding you with projected images against the backdrop of a black room. It’s an entirely different experience when that backdrop is of limited size, and the dark room is replaced with the downtown plaza of Raleigh, NC, lit by streetlamps and neon signs from Jimmy John’s and the local Marriott. In that environment, how can you concentrate on something like this? Can it resonate? 

Perhaps nature provided the best way, in the form of a downpour that blanketed the plaza in the early going, its sheets of rain and gusts driving away the merely-curious until only the die-hards were left. Absent the excess conversations, forced to reckon with whether this show was worth it under the circumstances, those who stayed answered their own question. GSYBE shows are events; their music isn’t for everyone, and they don’t make any effort to make things otherwise.

Here's the stream of Godspeed's rain-soaked Hopscotch set in Raleigh:

For comparison purposes, here's Godspeed's 9/11 set at Variety Playhouse as recorded and posted by Southern Shelter.

Hum

 

More from Manhattan Inn's remarkable Hum residency, brought to us by the good people of NYC Taper, this time featuring Jen Goma (A Sunny Day in Glasgow), Cassandra Jenkins, and Caroline Davis (Maitri).

For those of you disappointed by the absence of the previous set-by-set review of Shaky Knees, a) it will resume again after this holiday weekend, and b) what's wrong with you?

Yo La Tengo

For no other reason than I spent much of this morning listening to songs from Yo La Tengo's 30-year history, here's Night Falls On Hoboken and some pictures from their recent shows,  

Yo La Tengo at Buckhead Theater, January 25, 2013

Yo La Tengo at Variety Playhouse, March 29, 2013

Yo La Tengo (as "Little Black Egg Big Band") at Hopscotch Festival, Sept. 5, 2014 

Little Black Egg Big Band at Hopscotch Festival, photograph from NYC Taper

Meanwhile, In Manhattan

The Hum is a residency featuring free shows every Monday evening in April at the Manhattan Inn, featuring over 30 mostly female artists collaborating and crossing the genres of punk, indie, hip hop, classical, folk, jazz and more. Video artists collaborate with new groups each night.  

On April 20th, the first set was scheduled to be a duo with Alyse Lamb from EULA with Alex Nelson of Oracle Room, but the group became a trio with the addition of Pamela Martinez of Teletextile on percussion, keys and effects. Their set was a shared group of songs that neither protagonist had ever performed live before, and for Alyse the material was more aligned to her solo project Parlor Walls than to the hard-driving post-punk of EULA.

It's pretty good stuff, and brilliantly recorded by NYC Taper.  Check the entire residency out on their website, or just enjoy the EULA et al set below.

More Ex-Cops

Stars

Montreal's Stars played The Loft in Atlanta last night. I didn't go (alibi: cold weather and the Georgia-Auburn game), but here are some live clips from their November 10 show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, plus a classic from their 2007 album In Our Bedroom After the War.

For those of you keeping score at home, I've now officially missed more Rocktober shows than I've attended, although I did manage to squeeze in Foxygen at The Loft; J Mascis and Luluc at Terminal West; Polica and Web of Sunsets, also at Terminal West; tUnE-yArDs at Variety Playhouse and Allo Darlin at 529 on the same night; San Fermin and Courtney Barnett at The Loft; Warpaint and Liam Finn at Variety Playhouse; Sharon van Etten and Tiny Ruins at The Earl; Kind Cousin and Givers at Vinyl; Family Crest and Motopony at The Drunken Unicorn; and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The New Pornographers at The Buckhead Theater. 

I have to catch an early-morning flight to South Florida tomorrow, so I'll miss both Bebel Gilberto at Variety Playhouse tonight and Caribou at Terminal West tomorrow night, so Rocktober will most likely close out later this week with The Allah-Las at The Drunken Unicorn and Quiet Hounds at The Goat Farm.  A lot of missed shows, to be sure, but still a fun little run. 

Revisited

Beach Day at L5Fest, 2013

Did someone mention Beach Day?

The War On Drugs

Oh, look,  The nice people over at NYC Taper were at the Hopscotch Festival too, and both recorded and posted The War On Drugs performing I Hear You Calling.  

But wait, there's more!  Here's the entire WOD performance, courtesy again of NYC Taper.

It's nice to revisit this set since we missed The War On Drugs when they played Atlanta two weeks ago and we went instead to see Courtney Barnett and San Fermin.

Also, for those of you keeping score at home, nobody won The War On Drugs tickets, because nobody replied to my giveaway post.

Catching Up On Rocktober (Continued)

We didn't catch the Bowery Ballroom set, but this is pretty close to how it went down at Terminal West back on October 2.

Acid Mothers Temple and Tjutjuna at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta

Bring earplugs.  

Last night, Japan's Acid Mothers Temple performed at Atlanta's Drunken Unicorn, and man, were they loud.  My ears are still ringing.

Denver's Tjutjuna (the "t's" are silent) opened.

I forgot to bring my camera, so all that I have to show are my crappy cell-phone pics.  

Tjutjuna are an experimental, instrumental psych-rock band.  They made good use of a theremin, and it's not too many quartets that you see that have two drummers - fully half the band were drummers.  Although the twin drums provided a propulsive rhythm, the first 30 minutes of their set was marred by the mix which drowned the guitar behind the rhythm section.  It wasn't until guitarist Brian Marcus finally plugged his guitar into another amp that it could be heard over the house PA system, which improved things considerably.  Here's a sample from their first album, Fire Talk.

As noted above, headliners Acid Mothers Temple were loud.  In all, they played a full, 90-minute set and although they didn't play an encore, I don't think anybody left feeling anything less than satisfied.

They sound as though they're influenced by You-era Gong and early psychedelic pioneers Hawkind (am I the sole surviving Hawkwind fan?),  which aren't bad influences at all.  Their typical approach to songs involves repetition and improvisation, with a riff repeated over and over again, each time with added intensity, until it gets so heavy that it would threaten to collapse under its own weight, and then repeated some more until it finally does collapse, and then repeated yet still more until it rises from its own ashes and is carried off into the stratosphere by the band.  To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, here's the complete April 19 Acid Mothers Temple concert at the Mercury Lounge in New York, as recorded by NYC Taper: