District Lies

I heard about Serena-Maneesh years ago, and downloaded a few songs. “Drain Cosmetics” ended up on one of my virtual mix tapes from 2006 or so. But I never really pursued my mild interest in these Norwegians. I think I got them mixed up with Autolux or possibly one of the other 10 billion bands that were doing neo-shoegaze towards the end of the past decade. It’s a great sound, but basically interchangeable. Even 15 to 20 years ago these bands were mostly interchangeable. There was a livejournal blog several years ago that was posting shoegaze albums for download and I got real excited about it for a couple days then realized that after you have listened to MBV and Slowdive there isn’t really much need to delve into the Penelope Trips of the world.

Serena-Maneesh was more Penelope Trip than MBV. But that is ok too. I hadn’t seen any shoegaze type bands in a while.

I actually enjoyed their show quite a bit, not really knowing their stuff too well going in, not even certain how to pronounce their name. What struck me the most was how European they sounded — they wore their influences on the sleeves of their Euro-style outfits, and those influences were all northern European. And great influences, too, but this band seemed to deliberately eschew American rock and roll sounds, the singer’s Steven Tyler-esque veil notwithstanding.

Obviously they sounded occasionally almost exactly like MBV but they also had a fair amount of Britpop (as did MBV themselves) in there, and also had a serious krautrock thing going too — Kraftwerk background vocals over a strong motorik beat lifted directly from Neu!:

What they most reminded me of though was Primal Scream at their danciest, freaked-out-est — watching this band made me imagine what Primal Scream shows must have been like when Kevin Shields was playing guitar. And I would have loved to see those shows. I guess this was a fun substitute.

Here’s an alternate take and some photos from BYT.

Japandroids! This is a band that I begrudgingly adore! I heard about them from multiple people a while ago, and slowly started to listen to them, then bought their album. And with each listen I found myself grinning more often and enjoying myself more. Such fun! Such cheese! I sometimes pretend to be too old and embittered — and too into experimental, cerebral music — to love this goofy, joyful, noise/pop/emo duo, but I just can’t resist.

These are two young Vancouverites rocking out in the tradition of ’90s emo and ’00s noise pop, with their hearts apparently on their sleeves. They’re not embarrassed to sing terrible lyrics about French kissing French girls, and staying crazy forever. Their joie de vivre reminds me a little of early Minus the Bear — also fans of unabashed, enthusiastic songs about girls; their sincere awkward lyrics remind me of the Promise Ring who sang songs “from Bell South unto a southern belle.”

So yeah I kind of love these dudes. I was excited to go see them at the Rock and Roll Hotel, though it was a late-ish Monday night and it was hard to get all that pumped up after a busy weekend and most of a full work week ahead.

Openers Love Is All were ok. They seemed a little too energetic for a Monday night. They had a saxophone and a lot of random shouting and manic commotion. It reminded me of The B-52s or maybe Super Furry Animals. They had bad lyrics too but they got a pass for being Swedish. The girl singer reminded me of the singer from Fight Like Apes. Anyway I thought they were ok but I wasn’t really in the mood. They could impress me under other circumstances, perhaps. But I really just wanted to see the ‘droids.

And Japandroids did not disappoint. Ok, maybe I had hyped them up a little too much in my mind and was a little let down by the guitar tone (it seemed too quiet and too clean). And maybe I hate the Rock and Roll Hotel as a venue (I was pretty far back from the stage and you can’t see anything if you are more than 5 rows from the front). But those are minor quibbles. Fun times!

Here’s “The Boys Are Leaving Town”:

The guitarist — I guess I should call him Brian, since he introduced himself and Dave repeatedly — seemed pretty jazzed about the whole night, or at least he faked it convincingly, running all around, chatting with the crowd, playing stoopid fun riffs. The two of them played well off of one another and reminded me of a pop version of Lightning Bolt. The duo dynamic is pretty popular in indie music these days but I don’t think it works terribly often. Japandroids pulled it off.

Occasionally I was reminded of music unexpectedly during their set: here a Smashing Pumpkins vibe, there a Dead Meadow riff. But mostly it was what I expected: fun and basic pop.

Here’s “Young Hearts Spark Fire” with its irresistible “whooooahhh”s:

Sometimes it is thrilling to just enjoy simple pleasures and pop songs. This seems to be the Japandroids manifesto, as they sing in the song above — “I don’t wanna worry about dying, I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls.” Awesome philosophy.

“Rockers East Vancouver”:

They played pretty much all of their songs off of Post-Nothing, including my favorite, “Sovereignty.” And they played a couple other songs that were older, and ended the set with a cover of mcclusky‘s “To Hell With Good Intentions.” Brian introduced that one by claiming they only played it at the end of great shows, and that it wasn’t as good as the original. He was right about both — it wasn’t even half as good as the original, but it was a great show.

I don’t pay too much attention to bands that are hot on the internet: the p4k bands, the blog-hyped bands, the college bands, the hipster bands. But a few of my friends like The xx and I listened to them enough, and liked them enough, to check them out at 6th & I Synagogue on a Sunday afternoon.

It was a strange show. Weirdly, I was both impressed and disappointed at the same time, but it was a pleasant way to spend an hour. It gave me several things to reflect and pontificate upon.

(They played two shows back-to-back — I was at the first but I can’t tell which show the following videos were taken at.)

So what impressed me about The xx was the sound quality, the guitar playing (occasionally it reminded me of The Cure), and the integration of electronics into their music. I have been grappling for a while with the problem of electronic rock in performance and am sort of reaching a breakthrough on what I would like to see regarding this particular dialectic. Basically it works like this:

• THESIS: Play real instruments live if you want to call it rock and roll
• ANTITHESIS: It is cool to write music on a computer, and cheap and effective to just hit play on an iPod while you sing and prance about
• SYNTHESIS: Play some real instruments live; don’t try to just pipe in pre-programmed electronic music; have a designated person who can play keyboards, turn knobs, bang on a drum occasionally, and generally make the electronic music visually interesting.

The xx pulled off this synthesis as well as anyone I’ve seen; they had a third guy doing all kinds of cool stuff, including taking to a drumkit at one point. Thanks, xx! This is what I am looking for in electronic-based rock music.

The negative side to this concert was that The xx’s live music, while it sounded great, came across as more conventional and less quirky than their album suggested. There is something sort of unique about the album: it has a dreamy oddness to it that caught my ear and made it stand out (a little) from the crowd of similar bands. The recording is intimate, and the songs are skeletal and fragile, and it doesn’t sound exactly like anything else. I went into the concert not expecting that sound to translate well to a large audience — and it probably wouldn’t have. They scaled it up and fleshed it out a bit for the live show, and again, I thought it sounded good, it just lost a little something that made the recording intriguing in the first place. I am not sure what else they could do, though.

I was a little surprised to see the passion of their fans. This is a band that has only been in the public consciousness for like 6 months, and only has like 40 minutes of recorded music to their name. I can see really liking The xx — but can you love a band that is so new? Could they be your favorite band? It seems unlikely, but I guess I am old and cynical. I will let the kids have their silly crushes…

The other thing at this show was that I felt like I was coming at the performance from a much different angle than most people. My methods of discovering and listening to music are hopelessly retro. I knew all the songs from listening to their album, but I had this feeling like everybody else knew them from some other source: a blog-based hit, or a tv show soundtrack, or something.

I had the feeling most strongly when they played their encore song, “Stars,” and the crowd went nuts. Is this their popular song? How would I know? I am out of the loop. Oh well. It was pretty good stuff:

Saturday night I was excited to go check out Midnight Kids for the first time. They are a local band that I don’t know much about, but the City Paper linked to their free EP and I listened to it a bunch. I am only mildly familiar with The Apes who were a kind of a predecessor band… I know they were around but I probably never saw them (I always mixed them up with the Black Eyes and I wasn’t all that crazy about either). Anyway the Midnight Kids EP is an excellent mix of rock and electronics, smothered in disco glitter haze.

I wasn’t sure how it would sound live, or whether it would even be interesting live. And I’d say the results were mixed. There was a problem with the sound for the first part of their backstage set, most obviously in that the vocals were too low in the mix. About halfway through the sound got fixed up and it helped quite a bit.

Even taking into consideration the sound difficulties, I am not sure how well the Midnight Kids sound translates live. Like a lot of these electronic rock bands today, I find it better to listen to than to watch, though the Kids were playing real instruments and everything, and playing them well. It’s the electronic sheen layered over the whole sound that makes it just seem like a fake performance. They did their best to make a show of it, too, with lasers shining from the floor, weirdly shooting out between singer LouLou Ghelichkhani’s legs.

It all felt very early-’80s, late-disco era. One of my friends thought they could have been opening for Blondie. I don’t disagree.

Anyways I liked them live, but I just think the record is way cooler. Less demanding fans might disagree. Either way you should TOTALLY download the EP, I highly recommend it, and I hope they can play live just to get their music out there. I’d go see them again, if only to support them.

The openers were Casper Bangs which is another local project that I knew vaguely. I don’t think I’d ever seen them before but I had heard a little of their music somewhere. Apparently they are a one-man project but the band was pretty tight, and sounded good. It was total pop, but with noise and style. I liked it. It reminded me of Guided by Voices which is kind of weird, apparently GBV have been on my brain a lot lately.

So this was classic noise pop or “indie pop” in the ’90s sense. They even did a song where I was thinking, “this reminds me of Beat Happening” and lo and behold, I think the singer said “that was a little Beat Happening for you.” It was like magic.

So today I downloaded Casper Bangs’ EP from bandcamp but, sadly, I don’t like it as much as I liked their live show. The recorded songs don’t have the same energy that the band brought on Saturday night. This is kind of the inverse of the Midnight Kids performance.

Summary: Midnight Kids EP = awesome. Midnight Kids live = ok. Casper Bangs EP = ok. Casper Bangs live = energetic fun pop. Not bad! Everyone wins one way or another.

I like almost every style of music, but there a few exceptions. I don’t mind dance music (though I am not super into dancing) but I just don’t really like the dancehall permutations of it, or, really, funk and genres like that. It is ok — even reggae, my least favorite genre of all, has its charms. But I don’t normally go out of my way to see dance music that draws on these styles, and where they tell you when to throw your hands in the air.

But friends wanted to go see Balkan Beat Box last Friday and I had few other plans, so was like, eh, ok. I had checked them out a little online and thought they might be ok — I didn’t like the reggae and dancehall influence, but I totally liked the klezmer and other traditional music that snakes its way into their songs.

They turned out to be about what I expected — enjoyable, but not anything that will stick with me. I always enjoy seeing inventive horns, and the clarinet and sax were the highlights of the Balkan Beat Box experience. There was a fair amount of hip hop influence — again, not a problem — and some boring dancehall stuff, and a lot of shouted inquiries from the singer in the vein of, “Are you ready, Washington?” People all seemed to like it — and even I ended up dancing. And at the end of the show, the crowd flooded the stage, dancing around up there like it was the Dismemberment Plan.

I guess there is nothing wrong with creating music for the sake of partying and dancing — it’s kind of what the roots of musical experience are all about. And I appreciated the musicality of the whole thing, and totally enjoyed the appropriation of motifs from klezmer and Arabic music. So, it was satisfying, and worth seeing. Just not really my thing; I generally prefer to make my own decisions about when to throw my hands up.

Went to the Black Cat last night for no particular reason — a friend of mine wanted to go out and then looked up the band The Mantis and was mildly interested. So I was like, ok, sure. Ten bucks, something to do on a Wednesday night.

We hit the backstage one or two songs into the set by openers America Hearts. My first reaction was, this is ok, I have heard a lot of worse bands before. It was pleasant garage-y pop music with a singer/guitarist who looked about 15. Basic stuff, but not bad.

After about 5 minutes of watching, though, I finally noticed the drummer and was amused to recognize a certain local musician whom I’ve seen perform, like, a million times with a million bands. Interesting. Who was this young pop singer heading the band though? I never really figured out the deal, but here is America Hearts’ myspace page where you can see the line-up (I didn’t recognize the other musicians but maybe I should have). The recorded versions of the songs are acoustic and more like americana; the live sound was more rocking and a little scuzzier (i.e., better). The thing that sounds the same is the singing — it’s not strong, but not without its charms. At its best it reminded me of that Velvet Underground song “After Hours” with Moe Tucker on vocals. At its worst I was choking on a few of the lyrics (my friend texted me during one song to say “I love you the way the train loves the tracks”). Anyhow I guess the singer was actually a fair amount older than 15, but she was still young, could still grow into performing and singing and songwriting. And I’m always intrigued by these random, unexpected conglomerations of DC musicians.

The second band was The Mantis (or just “Mantis”?). They played typical post-rock instrumental stuff… I felt about them pretty similar to the way I felt about America Hearts: not bad, has some good moments, but nothing I haven’t seen lots of times already. I actually found it less interesting than AH because at least with pop music there is a lot that can draw you in; with The Mantis, even the background visuals were kind of dull and generic. At certain points they really sounded good, but at this point in time, a band in this style has to really be amazing or different to make me pay a lot of attention. The Mantis at times seemed like they were just jamming on good guitar parts that weren’t leading anywhere. It didn’t sound all that different from the stuff I was screwing around with on guitar just an hour before the show. This is the kind of music that works better in a druggy boozey basement party than at the Black Cat between two pop bands.

The headliner was called Happy Hollows and they had CDs and 7″s for sale so they seemed like they might be semi-legit. They apparently are from L.A. and had a sort of cute singer/guitarist and they were, again, ok overall. They sounded kind of like ’90s alternative rock. I might have been a little more into it — there was one guitar part I liked with harmonics! — but I didn’t really dig the singer’s voice. I ducked out after about half of a set. Again, like all the bands last night, they were ok but nothing I haven’t seen before.

I didn’t know much about The Clientele, but what I knew I basically liked, so I was amenable to checking them out when a friend had an extra ticket. I liked them and would like to check them out more. They reminded me of all kinds of stuff, all of it good: Galaxie 500, Spiritualized, The Velvet Underground, 4AD bands, Britpop bands, the Jesus and Mary Chain… basically they reminded me of every VU-influenced pop band, especially the British ones.

They were also interesting to watch. My friend and I couldn’t figure out how the main guy, Alasdair MacLean, can play guitar sans pick like that — I mean the plucking and fingerpicking, sure, but the strumming just looked painful to watch. His fingers and knuckles must be all weirdly calloused — maybe too much so to be hooking up with the hot elfin violinist who was part of the band? We can only dream.

I hadn’t seen a rock band in this melancholy English style in a long time so I was pretty happy to have made it. When, on their next-to-last song, they finally broke into an extended noisy breakdown a la Yo La Tengo, I felt even more satisfied. I will be investigating this band more in the future.

Openers Vetiver didn’t do so much for me, though. They started out as rather pleasant but bland pop music, got a little more rocking part-way through, but never really did much that was interesting. It all sounded like a re-hash of ’60s sunshine pop — from the Byrds to the Monkees — and early ’70s folk-rock like The Band. My friend at some point mentioned how they kind of sounded like the Grateful Dead and I was suddenly like, “yeah! exactly! They sound a lot like the Dead!” And this is ok but not really something I want to see very often. There is something weird about an “indie” band that sounds like the Dead. I don’t hate the Grateful Dead or anything, but I like my pleasant folk music to have at least a trace of a punk-influenced edge. If I have to travel back to 1968 I would mostly steer clear of the San Francisco scene — either New York or London for time-travellin’ me! Or maybe Memphis.

Anyway, I didn’t mind Vetiver but wouldn’t seek them out again.

Over the past few years I have been more and more into old country and rockabilly. (My new favorite musician is Roger Miller — amazing!) So I was kind of intrigued by the prospect of seeing 72-year-old Wanda Jackson in the familiar confines of the Black Cat. I had some friends hanging out downstairs drinking, and was halfway tempted to pass up the show ($20 is expensive for the Black Cat) but I knew I would regret it if I didn’t check it out. Good decision!

I actually knew some of her songs in advance, like “There’s a Riot Going On” and “Funnel of Love” — plus she did some Elvis covers and standards like “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going’ On” and “I Saw the Light.” It was interesting to hear her talk about how she was mostly performing in Europe, and was unaware that there was a burgeoning underground punk-ish scene in the U.S. that was all into rockabilly and her kind of music. Then she came back here and started touring successfully. Must have been so weird for her. And the crowd was pretty interesting — a wide range of ages, some country types, a lot of young punks, a sizable lesbian contingent, at least one hot little teen who looked like a Suicide Girl. But Wanda seemed into it. I guess I would be too, if this strange young generation got all excited about me at that age.

Check out some clips:

There were a couple of things that had me rolling my eyes — she was such a show biz veteran, playing up her stories about Elvis from back in the day. I mean, how many times has she told these stories over the past 50 years? But basically there was absolutely no way that any rock and roll fan could help but totally enjoy the show. I was smiling most of the way through, and I kind of think I’ve been in a good mood ever since… Can only hope I can still pick up a guitar (or be alive!) at that age.

So last month I was waxing enthusiastic about the Sockets showcase at the Black Cat, and I went and brought a bunch of friends. And it was great! But I got a little burned out on all-Sockets, all-the-time music thinking, and so I’m just getting around to writing it up.

It was a solid show, all 5 bands were good, and the whole night had a lot of good vibes. There was a nice turnout and a lot of enthusiasm for the music. And I talked to members of several of the bands, discussed things with my friends… it was all that I hoped for, really.

(I didn’t take photos or anything, so I am borrowing/stealing a bunch of photos from flickr user Paul Frederiksen. You can see his photos of the showcase via flickr here.)

As for the bands, well, let’s see. Up first was Big Gold Belt. This was the band I knew the least about coming into the show. I thought they were pretty great, though. It was mostly electronic stuff, with a chick singing who dressed and pranced a little like a drag queen, and a dude playing guitar over the electronic noise, perhaps just to make it look a little more like live music. I was reminded vaguely of bands like Glass Candy & the Shattered Theatre, or ’80s electro stuff that I don’t know too well. I would listen to them more. I wasn’t sure they were locally based, but I said hello to the singer at some point in the night and she said they did live here. But then their myspace says Brooklyn. So who knows — they sound like they should be from Brooklyn, though. They were the least rocking band of the night but I think they went over pretty well, and it was nice to have them play as a change-up from the guitar rock. In some ways they were even the most interesting, but I am not a huge fan of watching electronic music live, even with an attractive/weird singer. So probably good that they were the opener.

Here are a couple of Frederksen’s photos of Big Gold Belt:

Second was Buildings, who were my favorite of the night. I think this is a pretty sweet band, though I didn’t think their performance was as good as the previous time I saw them. Also, they didn’t even play my favorite song of theirs that I know (it’s called “Now”). I’m definitely a fan. They are opening up for Magik Markers soon which would be a pretty rad show, though I think I’ll be out of town.

Buildings:

Then came Imperial China. They were playing for their record release, and they were all in the news around that time (and good reviews are still coming out for Phosphenes), so a lot of people were probably there to see them specifically. And they put on a good show. Since I had just been listening to their album a bunch of times that same week, I was comparing their live performance to the CD versions. Live, they seem a little more aggressive: the percussion is much more distinctive, and also fun to watch when different people would start pounding on drums. And live, the electronics were less prominent, and the vocals less problematic (live vocals get a lot more leeway than vocals on tape). So they were quite good. I think they deserve their hype and some success, and hope they continue to play a lot and get more press.

Imperial China:

After Imperial China came Hume, who were clearly the most divisive band among my friends. Actually, it was all my friends against me. I really like Hume! But all the friends I dragged along found them kind of boring pop music, and they kept saying the singing sounded just like Death Cab for Cutie. But doesn’t everybody besides me like Death Cab? Or didn’t they at one point? This is confusing. Maybe it also had something to do with singer/guitarist/mastermind Brit Powell’s perpetual grin. Anyhow, I thought it was a very cool performance. Hume remind me of other au courant bands like Real Estate, and it seems to me like they could ride the current “quirky beach pop” wave to some success if they wanted to. They were the only band of the night that I could really see fitting into the mainstream indie world of hip mp3 blogs and profiles on NPR. And sometimes that is ok. I like pop music.

Hume:

Finally, the headliners of the diverse night were the Cornel West Theory. These guys were fun, but I think fatigue was setting in by that point, and I’m not sure they held the audience’s attention. This was the first time I saw them and I thought they were good, with lots of different singers and rappers and guest musicians. I mean, not exactly like a Thievery Corporation show, but it was good to see their ambition, and crossover appeal. One wonders what their fanbase is like among DC’s hip-hop scene. I enjoyed their show but was ready for the performance to be over by the time they were done. It is a lot of work to try to pay attention to 5 performances in a row.

Cornel West Theory:

So overall — a resounding success. But a wearying one! Check out the Sockets website for links to some audio and video from the night. Let’s hope for another one in a year or so…

Of all the DC bands I’ve paid attention to over the years, Imperial China is my least-favorite name since Q and Not U (whose name I have complained about publically here). Much like their unfortunately-appellated predecessors, the band-name turn-off kept me from checking out Imperial China for a long time, though I started to hear things about them a while ago. I finally caught them live last summer, and in a way I’m sorry to have missed out on them over the past couple of years — but based on Phosphenes I don’t have to really worry about it, because they seem like a band that is just starting to gel.

Here’s the thing about the album (coming out in February via Sockets/Ruffian): it’s very good, but not very easy to get into. Nowadays it is hard to summon the patience to absorb a whole album by a band you don’t already know, let alone one like Phosphenes that comes with a few features likely to make too many listeners click the “next” button. Musically, things are only slightly difficult. Imperial China offer up a very good-sounding mix of basic rock instruments and electronics, reminiscent at times of bands like Battles or the electronica of recent tastemaker-faves Fuck Buttons. The songs are sinewy and tense, tight but short on hooks, rarely too concerned about rocking out. This isn’t NPR rock, but it isn’t really extreme, either. The recording sounds great, although, as a guitarist, I must say that the only instrument that really stands out is the guitar, which isn’t too technically complicated, but sure has awesome effects. The electronics are pretty solid, occasionally adding unexpected twists like Radiohead-esque chilly background drones in “Letter of a General” and unsettling chimes on “The Last Starfighter” that remind me of the weird “Lullaby version of Tool” that my brother once used as a rough soundtrack to a film. It’s also pretty well steeped in DC rock tradition, from Fugazi to Frodus, and bears a lot of hallmarks of producer Devin Ocampo (from Faraquet/Medications/etc.).

Musically and sonically, Phosphenes grabbed me right away, but the thing that took me a few listens to come around to was the vocals. It’s not that they’re bad at all, but I think they are an acquired taste. On my first listen to the album, my favorite song was an instrumental, “Mortal Wombat.” The singing is just trying to do way too much, and the songs depend too much on vocals that aren’t as good as the music. The singing sounds best at its most melodic, as on the other first-listen highlight, the pop song of the record, “Go Where Airplanes Go.” Whereas the vocals are at their worst when they are kind of spat-out and shouted, as on the opening track, “All That Is Shouted.”

But what I realized after a couple listens was that the singing, while not amazing, is actually doing a lot of very cool things. There is D. Boon-style patter on “Invincible,” Tim Harrington hollering on “Bananamite,” and creepy crooning on “A Modern Life” that sounds an awful lot like singer/winemaker Maynard James Keenan. It’s pretty fun to notice this stuff, and I gradually came around a bit to the vocals, on the whole. The lyrics seem about what you’d expect from this kind of music, all quite appropriate for a DC band. (And by the way it is nice to just think that there are “DC bands” in the heritage of the ’90s scene that I loved so much.)

I hope enough people can get past mildly-challenging music and mildly-weak vocals to listen to the whole record, because it is nicely arranged into a whole. The whole thing twists and teases, keeping you on a sinister edge, refusing to really lead you anywhere. It’s deliberately frustrating. Even the killer closer track, “Letter of a General,” starts to build up and build up in traditional rock and roll style, then — well — sort of deflates. This isn’t an album that is interested in just giving out rewards — you have to earn them through a little work of your own. I can appreciate that, and hopefully some other people will too, because this is one of the better albums by local bands to come out in the past few years.

Here are my favorite songs… enjoy, and go see this band when you can, and here is their myspace page where you can support them and buy stuff.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

P.S. if you don’t know what “phosphenes” are, look it up. This is a cool word, and I wonder how long it’s been on the band’s radar. I kinda wish the band was called Phosphenes instead of the album…