The Black Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Wilco at Shaky Knees, Atlanta, May 9, 2015

Okay, I've got to move this retrospective along at a bit of a quicker pace if I'm ever going to finish it at all.  Let's see if we can't wrap up Day Two today, almost 20 days after the actual festival.

 Last post, I was leaving the Peachtree Stage heading toward Ponce to see The Black Lips. 

Actually, truth to be told, I wasn't heading that way to see The Black Lips so much as to wait through The Black Lips to see Neutral Milk Hotel.  I may be one of the few people in Georgia who doesn't care that much for The Black Lips, but I figured that they would have attracted a very different crowd than Neutral Milk Hotel and if I could wait through their 3:45 pm set, I could get a good position near the stage for NMH's 5:45 set.   

It was my first Black Lips show, so I suppose their Shaky Knees set was typical with the sing-alongs and crowd surfing and beer flung from cans across the audience, but I'm just guessing.  Still, even though they're not my favorites, I'll admit the show was fun and in fact didn't suck.

However, I was not the only one planning to press toward the stage after their set for Neutral Milk Hotel.  I managed to get about eight rows back from the stage, which wasn't bad at all, but it was so claustrophobicly crowded that I wasn't sure I wanted to wait there, pressed belly to butt with the crowd, for a full hour while Build To Spill played from the nearby Boulevard Stage.  But the crowd was pressed so close, and some kids had managed to sit down while waiting and took up what little ground wasn't covered by feet, that it was difficult to impossible to leave and I had no choice but to stand there under the Georgia sun for a full hour waiting for Neutral Milk Hotel to take the stage. 

But as it tends to happen, as soon as the band did take the stage, at 5:45 sharp, all the frustration over waiting in the crowded conditions was immediately forgotten.   But as soon as the band launched into Holland 1945, the crowd surged forward, and as impossible to believe as it was, things actually got more crowded.  Then the front rows started pushing the crowd back and we'd all teeter backwards like falling dominoes until a wave of forward-pushing bodies drove us the other way.  Back and forth we'd ebb and flow like kelp in surf as the band sang a song about, of all things, Anne Frank.  

After I had taken about as much of that pushing and shoving as I could want, I finally forced my way back toward the read of the crowd where I could watch the show more sanely from a less frantic vantage point.  I mean, I appreciate the enthusiasm of the audience, and the band was very, very well received, but I like to be in control of my own center of gravity.

Before I forget, it was a great set, one of the highlights of the weekend, and included Two- Headed Boy, In An Aeroplane Over The Sea, King of Carrot Flowers (Parts One, Two and Three!) and about every other song one would want to hear at a Neutral Milk Hotel show.  Virtually every song was a sing-along, and Jeff Magnum sang in his wonderfully nasal voice while Julian Koster played about every instrument imaginable, including the musical saw, all while wearing his goofy trademark hat.

Sadly, it had already been announced that this would be Neutral Milk Hotel's last tour ever, so we may never see them again.

Since I had managed to find a less frantic spot that still had good sight lines, I stayed there for the next hour while Milky Chance played at the Boulevard Stage and waited for Wilco.

Wilco took the stage at 7:45 and, as always, played a near flawless set.

Wilco opened with I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, followed by Art of Almost, one of my favorite Wilco songs.  This isn't from Shaky Knees, but this video captures the Art of Almost performance pretty darn well.

Actually, the full set list went as follows:

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Art of Almost
One Wing
Hummingbird
Handshake Drugs
Camera
Via Chicago
Secret of the Sea
Heavy Metal Drummer
I'm the Man Who Loves You
Red-Eyed and Blue
I Got You (At the End of the Century)
Jesus, Etc.
Born Alone
Impossible Germany
Box Full of Letters
A Shot in the Arm 

The earlier relentless sun had finally set giving way to a beautiful evening, and Wilco performed the perfect set to match the evening.

The days headliners were The Avett Brothers, but they had already started by the time Wilco finished their set and there was no getting anywhere near the main Peachtree Stage where the Avetts were playing, so after Wilco I headed home, one set early but fully satisfied, although from all accounts the Avett Brothers set was superlative.  In fact, I had only seen six sets the entire day (Speedy Ortiz, Viet Cong, Real Estate, The Black Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Wilco) as opposed to the ten I had seen the day before (Surfer Blood, Haerts, Mitski, John Grant, Wavves, Zella Day, Mac DeMarco, The Mountain Goats, American Football, and James Blake), but it's quality, not quantity, that counts baby! 

Shaky Knees Day Two in Pictures

Once again, a quick look back at the previous day of Shaky Knees as I get my body prepared for the third and final day.

Speedy Ortiz

Viet Cong

Real Estate

Black Lips

Neutral Milk Hotel

Wilco

Top 10 Concerts of 2013

Okay, first of all, I acknowledge right up front that there's 12 shows in my list of Top 10 Concerts of 2013, but that's the kind of year it was.  While 2013 might have been merely so-so in its recorded output, the live shows this year were outstanding.  So without further ado, here are my choices of the best live shows of the year, presented in chronological order:

January 25 - Yo La Tengo & Calexico, Buckhead Theater

Not my first show of the year, but still a nice, early show in the year to get 2013 rolling.  After all this time, this was my first time seeing Yo La Tengo live, and I wasn't disappointed in the least.

February 23 - Unknown Mortal Orchestra & Foxygen, 529

This was a big year for UMO, who released a great album that made my Top 10.  I saw them three times this year, and this wasn't even their best show - that would be their incendiary performance during MFNW at Branx.  But this was still a fine performance, though, and what really put it into the Top 10 category was their opener, Foxygen, who suffered all sorts of major and minor calamities, mishaps, and internal strife this year, but still were able to deliver a thoroughly entertaining show to the packed house at 529.

August 31 - !!!, Bumbershoot (Seattle)

It's easy to slip into sensory overload at a three-day festival like Bumbershoot, and both get carried away in the excitement of the event over a so-so performance by a so-so band, as well as get so glazed over that you completely overlook an outstanding set by a great band.   !!! added some real excitement to the first day of Bumbershoot, and when I saw them the next week at MFNW, they confirmed that they really were that good - it wasn't all just festival overstimulation after all.   

September 6 - Radiation City, Mississippi Studios (Portland)

I also saw Radiation City several times this year - at The Earl back in June and then twice during MFNW. Although their performance at the totally radical Marmoset party left little to be desired, they really shined at Mississippi Studios during the OPB party and gave the best performance I've heard by them yet, all sweetness, harmony, and pop ecstasy - if you need proof, the entire set is posted on the OPB web site.

September 14 - Little 5 Fest

September 21 - Okkervil River & Torres, Variety Playhouse

Okkervil River's been around for a while now and I've enjoyed their records over the years, but like To La Tengo, it wasn't until this year that I finally got around to seeing them perform live. But mark my words - I will not purposely miss another live show by them again.  The evening was heightened by Torres, who was totally new to me, performing a spellbinding opening set. 

October 7 - Junip, Terminal West

As hypnotic and mesmerizing as an evening of gently psychedelic electronic folk-rock can get without the actual use of hallucinogens.  Wow, just wow!

October 9 - Savages, Vinyl

I don't have any photos to share of this show due to the band's strict no photography, cell-phone, or other mindless distraction policy, and since I was at the very front of the stage mere feet away from frontperson Jehnny Beth, I abided by their rules.  As promoter Alex Weiss tweeted after the show, "Just when I thought that it couldn't get any more intense, they brought it to another level entirely. Definitely one of the best shows I've ever seen. If you ever get a chance to see this band live, do it. That is all."  Transcendent post-punk from London.

October 26 - Neutral Milk Hotel, The Tabernacle

Another show with a pretty strict, "no pictures" policy, but I managed to snag a few that got posted on line. It's not like this comeback tour didn't have any hype surrounding it and it's not like the expectations weren't sky high, but they not only met those expectations, they elevated the breathtaking show into the pure realm of high art. 

November 2 - Thee Oh Sees, Terminal West

The best live band in the business proved once again why they're the best at what they do.  If you were there, you'd understand, and if you understood, you were there.  With great openers OBN III and The Blind Shake, the evening was a showcase for the state of 2013 punk, but no one whips a crowd up into more of a frenzy than John Dwyer and company.  Let's hope the rumors of their demise remain just rumors.

November 18 - Colin Meloy & Eleanor Friedberger, Variety Playhouse

Two master singer-songwriters, both unique in their idiosyncratic ways, gave the audience a totally charming set of songs and stories.  Added bonus points for Kinks covers. I still haven't had the chance to see The Decemberists perform, but between a composite of frontman Meloy's set and the October show by backing members Black Prairie (which very nearly made the Top 10 list - it came down to an elimination bout between this set and theirs), I feel like I can approximate the experience.   

December 11 - Joseph Arthur, Eddie's Attic

I said it before and  I'll say it again - why this man isn't a major star is beyond me.  He released one of the best records of the year, The Ballad of Boogie Christ, and I saw him perform at Criminal Records (where he briefly worked back in the 90s) during L5Fest with just a drummer and then at Eddie's Attic with bassist Mike Mills (REM), and both times he's rendered me speechless. And man, can he play guitar!  Let's hope that Mills' box office appeal brings Arthur some of the recognition he deserves.  

Neutral Milk Hotel at The Tabernacle, Atlanta, October 26, 2013

It's both easy and hard to call any given show "Concert of the Year."  Easy in the excitement and rapture you experience as you're leaving the venue.  Hard, as in how can you compare, say, Savages at Vinyl with Yo La Tengo at the Buckhead Theater, or Blind Pilot at Centennial Olympic Park with Foxygen at 529?  However, given all these cautions and risks, Neutral Milk Hotel presented as strong a contender for Concert of the Year last night as one could possibly hope to hear.

Half Japanese opened. 

Photography, even with cell phones, was strictly forbidden at last night's show.  Although the crowd was big enough - the show was sold out - that I could easily have snuck in a few pictures, I decided to abide by the artists' request in the spirit of cooperation.  I found the Instagram picture above of Half Japanese on someone's Facebook page and since I never agreed not to share someone else's pics, there you go.  The Neutral Milk Hotel setlist at the top of the page isn't from last night's show (or even last night's sequence of songs), but the closest thing that I could find on Google.

But I digress.  The semi-legendary band Half Japanese opened with a full, hour-long set.  They are considered a punk rock band, but listening to them now just reminds me of how broad a range of music the term "punk" was applied to back in the late 70s and early 80s (sort of like "alternative" in the 90s or "indie" today).  Their music nowadays would probably be called "garage rock" or "lo-fi" rather than "punk,"  but then, who needs categories, anyway?  

Half Japanese are led by singer and "guitarist" Jad Fair. I put "guitarist" in quotes because Jad does not play guitar in any traditional manner, once stating "the only chord I know is the one that connects the guitar to the amp."  Instead, he banged and strummed on an untuned electric guitar, eventually breaking the neck off the guitar body and still continued to bend the strings and pull sound from the instrument before abandoning it all together.  

Half Japanese have been together for over 30 years now, although I vaguely recall seeing Fair perform solo once back in the late 80s in Albany, New York, of all places, but don't hold me to that - the memory's pretty vague. In any event, last night the band included longtime members, John Sluggett, Gilles Rieder, Mick Hobbs, and Jason Willett.  Highlights included no less than two separate songs about Frankenstein, a cover of Daniel Johnson's King Kong, and Fair's presence and sly sense of play throughout the set.

After a fairly long break between sets, Jeff Magnum took the stage solo, looking almost like the Unabomber with his long beard and hair.  His first words were to request that everybody put their cell phones away ("We want to play for you"), and then he launched into Oh Comely.  The audience was delirious - no one can cover Jeff Magnum like Jeff Magnum - and when the trumpeter came on stage for the horn portion of the song, they exploded in approval.

The band pulled out all the stops for this performance. For King of Carrot Flowers, the second song of the set, they had a three-member horn section, and at other times during the performance they had a s many as eight people on stage with them.  Band member Julien Koster (The Music Tapes) was as eclectic as ever, bowing a carpenter's saw, playing accordion, bass, a small Moog, or whatever the song required. 

It may not be possible at this point in time to define an "indie" sound, but whatever that sound may be, a strong argument can be made that Neutral Milk Hotel was the first to achieve it. One hallmark of what I consider the indie sound is the use of traditional acoustic instruments such as banjo and accordion, instruments usually associated with Amerciana music, but used in a non-traditional way to fill out the band's sound.  Neutral Milk Hotel have long been innovators in this, as well as the way that they use horns. You can still hear their influence today in the music of bands such as Arcade Fire, Beirut, and The Decemberists.

What was remarkable was how faithfully they captured the sound of the revered recorded versions of their songs, especially considering the 15 years that have passed since the release of In An Aeroplane Over the Sea.  Magnum's voice seems not to have aged at all, and not only did they have the rest of the original Aeroplane band members back together (Mangum, Koster, Scott Spillane, and Jeremy Barnes), but they apparently used the same expressive individual instruments as on the recordings (french and english horns, saws, bowed banjo, and so on).

The result was an entertaining, uplifting, and musically adventurous evening (as if we expected anything less).  The band played a full hour and then returned for a three-song encore.  After King of Carrot Flowers I forgot the sequence of songs, but they included Two-Headed Boy, Holland 1945, and Everything Is, as well as unrecorded songs like Ferris Wheel On Fire (appropriate for The Tabernacle, situated as it is next to Atlanta's new ferris wheel); in short, everything one could have hoped for.

I don't think anyone left unsatisfied, and as we walked out, I heard many people wondering if they'd be able to get back in tonight (Saturday was the first of a sold-out, two-night stand).  In you were a fan of NMH, the evening was everything you could have wanted, and I'm sure that if you hadn't have heard them before, you would have left a fan last night.

It was a wonderful, perfect set, lacking nothing.  Concert of the Year.     

Neutral Milk Hotel

Tickets to Neutral Milk Hotel's October 26 show at The Tabernacle sold out yesterday within 20 minutes of going on sale, a relatively rare event in laid-back Atlanta.  I managed to snag one, so I feel pretty lucky.

The video below is from a 1998 concert at The Knitting Factory in New York.