Of Montreal at Terminal West, Atlanta, Halloween 2016

Halloween night, what do?  I know, let's go to Terminal West and see Of Montreal!

First, we had a set by psychedelic rock band Chief Scout, which might have been enjoyable but the insane and incompetent light person at Terminal West pointed a spotlight in our face for their entire fucking set and I couldn't see a thing and were too annoyed squinting and shielding our eyes to enjoy the music.  Here's about the best picture that we got:

Next time, Chief Scout, when we don't have the asshole light guy to deal with.  Meanwhile, in Augmented Reality, a cat somehow got on stage.

Brooklyn's TEEN was up next,dressed for some reason, as unicorns.

We've seen TEEN several times before although this was the first time this year, and it seems like between each show we keep forgetting what a great set they put on, and how confident and commanding a frontperson Kristina "Teeny" Lieberson is.  This show would have been a great night if it ended at the conclusion of the TEEN set, but there was still a lot more to come.  A lot more.

Of Montreal opened with Different For Girls (and ended their set with a short reprise of the same song), followed by Let's Relate, two songs from their new Innocence Reaches LP.  After that, it all becomes kind of a blur in my memory, what with the light show, the stage set, the dancers, the giant opossum, someone dressed as Donald Trump dressed as a human dildo, Kevin Barnes' costume changes, and, well, Kevin Barnes.

    

The audience, needless to say, was worked up into a frenzy, and everyone's sensory processing systems were in a state of high overload.

So how do you end a set like this?  Well, if you're Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal, you do an encore cover of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World, which somehow manages to morph into Prince's 1999.  It was that kind of night.  

A couple years ago, when we saw The Orb on Halloween night, we thought we had found the perfect Halloween night show.  Nothing against The Orb, but now that we've seen Of Montreal, we now know better.

Hiss Golden Messenger at Terminal West, Atlanta, October 16, 2016

The challenges of Rocktober:  go to a third consecutive show for the third consecutive night, then the next day, sit at the computer and try to think of something different and original to say, something we haven't already said or posted about a show before or at least for the past couple of nights.  Story about what time we got there and how many people were or weren't already present?  Nope, already done that a bunch of times.  Start with over-the-top praise of the headlining performer?  Been there, done that.  Run the pictures through the Prisma app and see how they look? Sure, why not?, again.  I know, post a pic of a Pokemon on the stage.

Alert readers will know we've done that before, too.  

Look man, just relax, don't try so hard, and just post a picture of the opening act, The Dead Tongues.

See?  That wasn't so hard, and now that we've posted that, we recall that it was an enjoyable set in the vein of the previous night's Adam Torres show - an acoustic singer-songwriter for people who don't necessarily like acoustic singer-songwriters.  See?  Now we're posting, and just like last night's show, we're off to a good start.

Hiss Golden Messenger has long been on our bucket list of shows we've wanted to see, but for various reasons, every time he came to town, we already had tickets to other shows, or were out of town ourselves, or something else would happen and we never made it.  We finally checked the box last night and as extra bonus points, frontman M.C. Taylor had a full band and wasn't performing solo, as he's often want to do. 

His backup band included The Dead Tongues on guitar and North Carolina folk-rock fixture Phil Cook (above and below) on Wurlitzer and guitar.

Overall, it was a great set of country-rock, Southern rock, 70s roots rock, and various other guitar-based musics, all skillfully delivered with Taylor's warm, accommodating vocals.

See?  That wasn't so hard, was it?.  Writer's block is what you make of it.  Now, before we get too cute or clever, we'll close this post out with a video of a song by headliner Hiss Golden Messenger and leave it at that, and maybe we can think of something more clever to say by the time of our next show (which thankfully isn't tonight - we need our sleep).

Joseph at Terminal West, Atlanta, October 14, 2016,

So, this is what Rocktober looks like in 2016 - weekdays where we can stay home and get some sleep before the next day's work, and weekends packed full of shows.

Last night's Friday night offering was Portland, Oregon's Joseph, but first Nashville's Ruston Kelly opened with some pretty generic Nashville stuff.

Kelly did manange to keep the audinece pretty quiet and attentive for his slow, somber set, and I'll give him points for wearing a Slayer t-shirt under his jacket.  But the audience, which consisted primarily of young women (the female-to-male ratio around me was about 8:1), was there to see Joseph.

It was our first time seeing Joseph, and to be honest, we've only heard a handful of songs, but they performed pretty much as we expected, with rousing, upbeat, harmony-laden, indie-folk anthems, delivered with good cheer and optimism, and some very thinly-veiled protests against Donald Trump and the grim, misogynistic mindset of his supporters. 

Joseph, if you're not aware, is a sister band, consisting of Natalie Closner and her younger twin sisters Meegan and Allison.

They closed the set with their single, White Flag, and the audience called them back on stage by repeating the wordless chorus over and over.  Their encore performance was arguably the best part of their set.

Like a lot of shows, there was clearly an emotional bond between the audience and the performers.  I think a lot of young women are inspired and motivated by Joseph's upbeat,postive attitude, and the fact that three sisters can make their mark in the music business.

For those of you following along at home, here's an acoustic sample of Joseph's music, followed by Cloudline, probably the first Joseph song we've heard.

Okkervil River at Terminal West, Atlanta, September 21, 2016

After all of the back-to-back shows earlier this month, it was nice to have a week off to recuperate, or attempt to recuperate.  But that week has passed, and last night we had Okkervil River at Terminal West, with the Brooklyn band Landlady opening.

We saw Landlady once before, during Hopscotch 2014 at a day party in Raleigh's Pour House.  We liked them then and we liked them again last night, with their quirky, impossible-to-categorize music, their two drummer attack, and frontman Adam Schatz' sincere-but-not-too-serious stage presence.

About that enigmatic banner that hung over Schatz' keys - what was it that made the banner so compelling?

Look, I took a course in Subliminal Suggestion at Boston University's School of Public Communication (SPC) back in the '70s, and I know how these things work.

Once seen, it can never be unseen.  

We entered SPC to major in cinema, our head full of Hitchcock, Wells and la nouvelle vague, but we quickly learned that we were in the wrong school - SPC promoted advertising, turning out probably the last generation of Mad Men, and journalism (this was in the years after Watergate, and Woodward and Bernstein were regarded as rock stars), although they favored television news over print journalism.  As it turned out, directing, cinematography, and dramatic acting were all being taught over in the theater division of the School of Fine Arts, and I only lasted a few years in SPC, even though my classmates included Howard Stern and Geena Davis.  I didn't matriculate to the School of Fine Arts, but instead somehow wound up a Geology major, but I took a few courses in Visual Communication at SPC, and to this day my eye for the visceral was probably honed in those few years at SPC.  

Anyway, yadda, yadda, yadda - you didn't come here to hear about me. You want to know about last night's performances at Terminal West (old men like us tend to ramble in our senescence).  As we were saying, Landlady are a great band, a fun band, and deserving of wider recognition.  Check them out live if you get a chance, and/or support them by buying something off of their Bandcamp page.

But wait, there's more! (as they taught us to say at the SPC).  After Landlady, Will Scheff and the current incarnation of his band Okkervil River took the stage and played a heartfelt, two-hour set. It was marvelous.

The former members of Okkervil River have largely moved on, touched by tragedy, dissolution, and adult responsibilities, as Scheff noted in Okkervil River RIP, last night's opening song (and the opener of his new album Away). The first portion of last night's show was largely a track-by-track performance of Away, with some older material working its way into the set list as the evening progressed. 

For my fetishistic collection of Fotos of the Footwear of the Famous and Fashionable, here's Will Scheff's cowboy boots (they taught us to make liberal use of alliteration at SPC, too): 

Last night's setlist:

It was a marathon set, far longer than the set list suggests, and the band even graced us with not one, but two encores.  A lot of the new material is more somber than previous Okkervil River music, but Scheff's obvious love for the songs shined through the darker material, and he and the audience shared an emotional moment or two - or more - during the course of last night's set.

A good show, folks.

The Album Leaf at Terminal West, Atlanta, September 12, 2016

If you're going to close out a great five-night run of shows, you might as well go out with a great show.  Last night, the last night, The Album Leaf did not disappoint.

Quick and hopefully not too boring story: I don't know how I discovered The Album Leaf. Somehow, at some time, I downloaded a copy of The Album Leaf's fifth studio album, 2010's A Chorus of Storytellers.  I have no idea why or when I downloaded it or who recommended it to me, but as I stumbled across the album in my library of hundreds of gigs of MP3s, it stood out and I became fascinated by the band's sound. It fell into heavy rotation on my car stereo - healing music for late-night cruising up and down the streets of Atlanta.  No one else I know had heard of them, although everyone seemed to like them. 

Anyhow, flash forward to the summer of 2016, and imagine how delighted I was to see that they were going to be playing at Terminal West last night.

First, though, we had a set by California's Rituals of Mine, formerly known as Sister Crayon.

Rituals of Mine play a very emotive, gothy electro-pop with heavy hip-hop influences.  The band consists of vocalist Terra Lopez and synth-pad percussionist Dani Fernandez, along with veteran metal drummer Adam Pierce.   When the music worked, it worked great, but too often Pierce overpowered the band, and Lopez, who seemed to enjoy being enveloped in Pierce's wall of sound, was lost to the audience.  Whatever rhapsody she was finding among the pounding bass drums was purely solipsistic and not something in which the audience was allowed to share.  When Pierce gave her some room to breathe, though, she stood out and provided a glimpse of what the band's new lineup could sound like under the band's new name.

The Album Leaf's stage set was as beautiful as anything I've seen apart from a Purity Ring set, with gauzey fabric draped over the stage to create several layers of screen for projected lights to bounce from.  While it made the whole stage somewhat dark and moody, it fit the mood of the music perfectly and even functioned as another member of the band.  These pictures are not altered or treated or run through any Prisma filters, but are how the band actually appeared.

Breathtaking.  And the music was built upon intricate, looped layers of the electric piano, guitar, and synths of frontman and occasional vocalist Jimmy LaValle, the violin of Matthew Resovich, the precise and intricate drumming of David LeBleu, and the bass, trumpet and keyboards of Brad Lee. A glockenspiel occasionally found its way into the mix at the hands of various musicians.  The whole thing was mesmerizing in a way similar to past sets we've seen by Hundred Waters, Junip, and Mutual Benefit. And anytime the music got a little too dreamy, the band would snap everyone back awake with a little bit of kickass energy.

The set went long, well over 60 minutes, but I have no complaints because the band had that much to say and kept it always interesting.  Their new album, Between Waves, their first in six years, was released this year, and I can't wait to give it as much attention as I gave A Chorus of Storytellers. 

And then, that was it.  Five straight days of shows after seeing only two shows all summer.  Eleven bands in five nights after, like, four bands in two months.  And it was good, and we enjoyed it, and while we'd do it all again, tonight we're glad it's finally over and we can finally rest.

And so, to bed.

Angel Olsen and Juliana Barwick at Terminal West, Atlanta, September 9, 2016

Day Two of our five-day stand of great shows in the ATL (Rocktober in September): Angel Olsen at Terminal West, with Juliana Barwick opening.

Today's hexagram is Number 50 of the I Ching, Ding, The Cauldron, which connotes great fortune. We won't dwell on this one much, other than to note that we had been looking forward to seeing Angel Olsen again, and had bought our tickets some time ago in anticipation of the show selling out (it did).

But just a week ago, it was announced that Alex Cameron, the opening act, had been changed to Juliana Barwick, who we were looking forward to seeing October 2 at The Mammal Gallery anyway, so Ding!, a great show just unexpectedly got better. Great fortune, indeed.

Juliana Barwick plays ethereal, heavenly ambient music, looping her voice and keyboards to create layer over layer of dreamy sound.  It's as fascinating watching her create her constructions as it is to listen to the results.

While I have no complaints, Barwick seemed like an odd choice as opener for Angel Olsen, as their music is nothing alike, but my supposition is that Angel just has good taste and wanted someone to open whom she liked.  In any event, it all worked, and Barwick performed a wonderful 35-minute opening set consisting of one near-seamless composition.

Angel Olsen is touring behind her great new album, My Woman, released just a week ago, and last night was apparently the first night of her tour with her new band, who all took the stage dressed in identical western suits with bolo ties (cool).  They've obviously been rehearsing, though, because no glitches or first-night errors were apparent.  Still, at one point Angel told the crowd that she felt anxious about the opening-night performance, especially with her sister in the audience, and her bass player had to tell her to just pause and breathe.  Regardless, the show went off without any apparent glitches.

My Woman features a punchier, more pop/rock-oriented sound than Olsen's previous folk-oriented approach to songwriting, and the album is sequenced such that the more energetic songs are featured up front on the A Side, and the longer, more reflective tracks are towards the end. Olsen also sings in a broader range of styles on the album, and last night, while singing Forgiven/Forgotten from 2014's Burn Your Fire For No Witness, she put an urgent warble in her voice not heard on the record and that sounded similar to the effect that Torres gets from her voice at times.  

Once again, we got to the show early enough to get a front-row spot, although to the far-right end of the stage, so that all our photographs were shot at a distance from Olsen, who lined up at the left-center side of the stage.  Anyway, all my pictures wound up looking grainy and with lots of lens flare from the stage lights, but came out looking much better once run through the Prisma filters.

Including the encore, Olsen's set was almost 90 minutes long,  and included about equal amounts of material from the terrific new My Woman and from her previous albums.

We snagged the set list at the end of the show. FWIW, they didn't get around to the second encore.