Madonna, "Confessions On a Dancefloor"

This past Friday night, I sat contently in an alcohol-aided, smoke-induced haze while some friends DJ'ed. I kept intending to get up and dance, but somehow never got around to it. That's OK, I guess, but I felt a little bad about it when they dropped "Hung Up". Girls seemed to appear out of nowhere, packing the dancefloor. It's possible that I was gushing about M83 at the time.

Madonna's new single is spectacular, it's easily her best since "Ray of Light", and before that ... I don't know, "Justify My Love"? Powered by a tremendous, unrelenting beat and the best use of an ABBA sample, well, ever (are there even any other deserving nominees?), it feels destined to be timeless much like Kylie's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is timeless, as opposed to the "electronica sure seemed like the hot new thing"-quaintness of the "Ray of Light"-era singles.

Suddenly, scores of people chime in and exclaim that Madonna's music hasn't been this deeply soaked in club culture since her earliest records (um, "Vogue"? "Express Yourself"?), which are then held up as the best of her career ("Holiday" wasn't that great a record. And the singing on early Madonna singles is atrocious).

I'm suspicious of the album in the same way that I'm suspicious of almost every 60-minute album (so many of them could stand to lose a few tracks and 15-20 minutes). It's supposed to ressemble a pumping DJ set, a concept which leaves little room (for such a disco-fied style, anyhow) for the types of balladry that typically appear on Madonna's albums. The album is frontloaded with corkers, but the second half comes down from a massive high, the vocals become lusher and more drawn out, and the lyrics become more introspective. It feels like some of these songs were conceived as ballads but the overriding album concept didn't allow them to end up sounding that way.

But at least half of this album KILLS, and that half certainly provides an incredible rush.

Mogwai + Sex and the City

I caught a rerun of SatC this and they managed to slip a Mogwai song past me in a scene where I somehow hadn't noticed it before. Somebody who works for that show LOVES Mogwai because that makes three songs of theirs that they've used during the series' run (and maybe more are lurking, unnoticed by me for whatever reason? I just discovered that the episode guide on HBO's web site also includes musical credits, so ... anyone wanna check for me? Nah, I'll eventually look through every one of them myself anyhow ...)

Season 4, episode 14, "All That Glitters". The first and best. Trey and Charlotte decide to separate just days before House and Garden magazine planned on visiting to photograph the happy couple in their fashionable, renovated apartment. Cue Trey's dramatic arrival as the opening notes to "Take Me Somewhere Nice" slide in.

Season 4, episode 16, "Ring A Ding Ding". I suppose I hadn't noticed this because unlike the other two instances, the song doesn't appear during a climatic final (or near-final) scene. Instead, "Close Encounters" shows up as Carrie sits down to read what she believes is a goodbye letter from Aidan, only to have the scene (and music) abruptly cut away to the coffee shop once she realizes it's a letter from his lawyers. There's also some serious superfan trainspotting shit going down here because "Close Encounters" was only available on the Japanese version of "Rock Action" (although it was later compiled on a European tour EP).

Season 6, episode 3, "The Perfect Present". Carrie and Berger lie in bed and finally spill the beans re: their emotional devastation at the hands of their respective exes, and in the background -- as they reveal the skeletons in their closets -- is "Kids Will Be Skeletons". It really is one of the most peaceful songs Mogwai ever recorded.

John Cale, Priya Thomas @Lula Lounge

It's my first visit to this venue, and I'm a bit startled to see that it's an actual lounge, with people eating dinner and stuff. It's funny how I find myself here just a couple of weeks after getting a looksee at the "A Night With Lou Reed" video from 1983 that was held in a similar-looking club in New York, with tables up front and standing room in the back.

Opener Priya Thomas is well-versed in "Is This Desire?"-era PJ Harvey, although PJH had started singing instead of wailing by that point. And I can't get over a nagging feeling that her guitar+voice are badly out of tune with the canned parts from her sequencer. Cale manages to take a career of wild unpredictability, avant-gardism, and defiantly anti-pop nonhits and turn it into something polished and nigh on professional. His new album "Black Acetate" is a slick piece of churning rock and roll that is ably recreated with his live band. The likes of "Pablo Picasso" (mammoth, intense) and "Guts" (feeling nearly like a handheld singalong with Cale at the piano) fit comfortably alongside newer straightforward rockers like "Outta the Bag" and "Hush". Overall, it's a tremendously entertaining two hours spent watching a 63-year old dude who's vigourous beyond his years. Oh, and Matthew Sweet would have killed to have written "Perfect" a decade ago.

Cool Drummings - Steve Reich and Friends @ McMillan Theatre

On Sunday night, I saw one of those concerts I thought I'd never see. In the early 90's, I had a few close calls with the Orb -- rumoured shows, a cancelled show, a tour stop in Montreal but not in Toronto (and I wasn't able to make the road trip to attend it) -- but I knew I'd see them eventually. Being conscious of that didn't erase the frustration of having to wait years to see them, but I knew that it would happen someday.

On the other hand, I never thought I'd see Steve Reich. That was a fantasy. That was the type of concert that I knew was happening somewhere in the world, but I couldn't envision it happening in the part of the world that I inhabit.

These weren't unfounded paranoias -- Steve Reich hadn't been to Toronto in twenty years. But last week, he visited the University of Toronto Faculty of Music as a Visitor in Composition, and the gala concert featured a trio of Reich pieces, "Music For Pieces of Wood", "You Are (Variations)", and "Drumming".

Members of percussion ensemble NEXUS have been playing with Steve Reich and Musicians for literally decades, and the ease with which they play are clearly the result of years of familiarity with the countless nuances of these semi-improvised pieces. They are absolutely astonishing -- them old dudes have SKILLS. They possess a sick sense of rhythm, and an uncanny ability to keep metronomic tempos just as easily as they can phase them out from each other and lock them back into place completely at will.

The flimsiness of a CD recording of "Music For Pieces of Wood" is lost in a live setting. All music is best heard live, but with percussion-based music in particular, the high harmonics inherent to the instruments are largely lost on a recording (not to mention the concert hall reverb that requires being there in person to experience). Each strike of the wood drills loud, ringing tones into one's ears with pristine clarity. The hypnotic "You Are (Variations)" is instantly recognizable as Reich, with four pianos driving the piece forward in a semi-Spectorian type of spectacle.

Lasting 57 minutes on this night, "Drumming" is the clear highlight. As the sound made by nine marimba players filled the hall, and the spider web of eighteen mallets billows above their instruments, the overall effect seems to be one of sustained tones despite the underlying rhythmic complexity. These soft, near-melancholy drones wouldn't be out of place in the more ambient portions of Bowery Electric's "Beat", or perhaps a Stars of the Lid album.