OK, "La Foret" didn't happen. It was a nice little experiment in improvisation, an attempt to make almost an entire album full of sparse ballads. Incidentally, several months following the release of "La Foret", I fell in love with "Helsabot of Caraleebot" from the "Fleshettes" EP. Sparse, tense, fragile -- these words don't even begin to describe it. That EP should have been Xiu Xiu's last word in tender acoustic ballads because since then they haven't been able to assemble three of them that I can listen to without getting bored.
Xiu Xiu's new album, "The Air Force" is an outstanding piece of work. With every Xiu Xiu album, people seem to write "This is the album that will appeal to those who weren't pre-existing fans. We swear it! It's the Xiu Xiu album that everyone can love." One pained Jamie Stewart scream later and that proclamation gets shot to hell. Those who feel that Stewart's voice is their main impediment to appreciating his music on any level should know that he's remarkably restrained here, with female vocals featured more prominently and his own vocal eccentricities are squashed for the most part. Whereas "Fabulous Muscles" was Xiu Xiu's crack at making pop music (white noise pop at that), only the delightful "Boy Soprano" really fits that mold. Over and over again, they hit upon a dazzling sequence of fascinating and unexpected sound combinations set to hummable balladry, midtempo 80's throwbacks, and anodyne noise-blanketed moods. If "Fabulous Muscles" was the pop album, then "The Air Force" may well be the power ballad album.
"Buzz Saw" begins with gentle piano that could have been lifted from a Satie piece (or "Music For Airports") before getting interrupted by snare cracks, ghostly cymbals, electro-funk squelches, a female chorus, and wind chimes -- all in turn (and in various combinations). It threatens to break out into something more menacing (and earsplitting), but that moment never comes. This is a ballad that is determined to see itself to the finish. "Vulture Piano", with it's metronomic beat and spidery bassline, could pass for "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me"-era Cure (the letter-by-letter spelling of the song's title toward the end, similar to that in the chorus of the Cure's "Fire In Cairo", leads me to believe that the the ressemblance is no accident). Continuing the 80's theme, "Save Me" sounds like the Magnetic Fields covering songs on Fleetwood Mac's "Tango In the Night". Elsewhere, those who crave a noisier Xiu Xiu should be pleased with "Bishop, Ca", whose Kraftwerkian intro ("Franz Schubert" or more accurately, Rising High label ambient as immortalized on the early 90's "Chill Out Or Die" comps, or even better, Depeche Mode's "Waiting For the Night") does nothing to foreshadow the nightmare that accompanies its friendly "walla walla hey" chorus.
I have a CD by composer Martin Janicek, and on one of the pieces he plays a bent piece of thin plank wood held taut in its position by strings, creating echoey drones from its complicated vibrations. The final track on "The Air Force" is called "Wig Master" and to me it sounds a lot like that Martin Janicek piece. By this point (the entire record is a wonderously brief 34 minutes), I already have a million things to think about and that's before I get hit with the line "I'm gonna spank your ass so hard you're gonna hate the Wig Master, but I'll put two pillows on your dining room chair." Excuse me?
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Monday, June 19, 2006
Two Memorials
Hundreds of notable personalities are buried in Paris' Cimetièire Père Lachaise, but it's only at Jim Morrison's grave that you'll find a security guard at his post seven days a week. As you surely know, Jim Morrison was a talentless junkie who also happened to be the lead singer of the Doors. Stories of his boorish behaviour abound, and his amateurish 8th grade Oedipal ramblings speak for themselves in terms of defining his uselessness as a writer. Ray Manzarek has made a career out of sanctifying Morrison as a visionary hero, eerily similar to the style that Tony Wilson would adopt vis a vis Ian Curtis (a Jim Morrison ripoff according to some) about a decade after Morrison's death. I personally enjoy the (apocryphal?) story about Jimbo dangling (or walking) off/on a balcony in an overwrough display of affection (twisted guilt trip?) for Pamela Courson (or Nico). The apologists say that it was an act of fiery passion by a man consumed by his romantic devotion to another human being. The sensible folk note instead that dangling (or walking) off/on a balcony is a fucking stupid thing to do, and only a total moron would do it under any circumstances. Speaking of drug abusers and sex addicts who died in Paris, it took me about twenty minutes to find Amedeo Modigliani's gravesite, which was about four rows off the walking path (most famous people are situated directly next to or within easy viewing distance from the path) and displayed a very unremarkable headstone. Until last week, not a single stone rested on his grave. They made a biopic about Modigliani's life too, so where is the love?
Continuing on the theme of people who drank themselves to death and expired in Paris, I figured I couldn't visit this city without making my own pilgrimage to Serge Gainsbourg's longtime residence at 5 Rue de Verneuil. Graffiti covers virtually the entire outside wall, and anguished poems and greetings to the deceased are written everywhere. It's a fairly quiet street, and in the few minutes I spent there, the people did walk by hardly seemed to notice the building at all -- surely it blends in with their perceived surroundings because they've seen it a million times before. I quietly took a few pictures and walked on.
Naturally, everybody should do what pleases them, but forgive me for ridiculing those who pull a tortured artist shtick and visit a gravesite or memorial to wrench immediate inspiration from it. It's about paying one's respects, not about camping out and relishing the taste of one's own angst.
Hopefully I can accompany this post with some pictures very soon
Continuing on the theme of people who drank themselves to death and expired in Paris, I figured I couldn't visit this city without making my own pilgrimage to Serge Gainsbourg's longtime residence at 5 Rue de Verneuil. Graffiti covers virtually the entire outside wall, and anguished poems and greetings to the deceased are written everywhere. It's a fairly quiet street, and in the few minutes I spent there, the people did walk by hardly seemed to notice the building at all -- surely it blends in with their perceived surroundings because they've seen it a million times before. I quietly took a few pictures and walked on.
Naturally, everybody should do what pleases them, but forgive me for ridiculing those who pull a tortured artist shtick and visit a gravesite or memorial to wrench immediate inspiration from it. It's about paying one's respects, not about camping out and relishing the taste of one's own angst.
Hopefully I can accompany this post with some pictures very soon
Monday, June 12, 2006
Bardo Pond, Ghostlights @ Lee's Palace
Bardo Pond's soundcheck/warmup becomes a spectacle in and of itself, building from gadget-checking tics and plucks into a cauldron of improvised noise with every band member's instrument screaming in unison. A lot like the opening band, Ghostlights, as a matter of fact. I can't help feeling a bit like a sucker for going out of my way to purchase or hear so many BP side projects and jam sessions when it's plain to see that they can knock that shit out in their sleep without the slightest thought.
And that pattern tends to repeat itself ... "Destroying Angel" begins a string of songs based around a similar tempo and style -- relaxed start, slow build into the cauldron of etc., and even though I fall for their tricks every single time, after an hour I'm still holding out for something much slower (e.g. "Favourite Uncle") or much faster and aggressive (e.g. "Again"). Those moments never come, for the band is in the mood to pour jam on everything tonight, even digging "Abscence" out of the archives to slot it into this looser style. "Every Man" is one of their live staples, but I have always felt it was the weakest track on "On the Ellipse", so thankfully I'm more than happy to hear them encore with "Aldrin" (whose coda finally fulfills my yen for both an aggressive track and a suitably mammoth closer). But didn't you know that Bardo Pond will play all night if asked? Michael Gibbons asks for a few minutes break, and the thirty or so diehards who stick around to take him up on his offer are rewarded with an explosive run through "Tommy Gun Angel".
All this and two-plus hours in the company of Isobel Sollenberger, who is still the hottest woman in rock.
And that pattern tends to repeat itself ... "Destroying Angel" begins a string of songs based around a similar tempo and style -- relaxed start, slow build into the cauldron of etc., and even though I fall for their tricks every single time, after an hour I'm still holding out for something much slower (e.g. "Favourite Uncle") or much faster and aggressive (e.g. "Again"). Those moments never come, for the band is in the mood to pour jam on everything tonight, even digging "Abscence" out of the archives to slot it into this looser style. "Every Man" is one of their live staples, but I have always felt it was the weakest track on "On the Ellipse", so thankfully I'm more than happy to hear them encore with "Aldrin" (whose coda finally fulfills my yen for both an aggressive track and a suitably mammoth closer). But didn't you know that Bardo Pond will play all night if asked? Michael Gibbons asks for a few minutes break, and the thirty or so diehards who stick around to take him up on his offer are rewarded with an explosive run through "Tommy Gun Angel".
All this and two-plus hours in the company of Isobel Sollenberger, who is still the hottest woman in rock.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Buzzcocks @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
Seeing a perfect show is a very rare thing, so rare that I'd have to think long and hard to remember the last one I saw. No, this Buzzcocks gig isn't the best show I've ever seen (not even close to it) but it was about as close to perfect as a concert can be (be careful not to confuse perfection with excellence).
There wasn't a single song I wanted to hear that they didn't play, sure, that's not so difficult to pull off if my Buzzcocks familiarity doesn't extend much beyond "Singles Going Steady", but nearly every band fails the selfish, nonsensical Set List Test. I didn't see a single person in the packed building who made a fool out of themselves by dancing in a style that gave away their age. Again, an easy test to pass in principle, but few bands and their fans can manage it. Pete Shelley still sounds great. I gave some quality thought to the notion of the Buzzcocks making the world safe for Green Day. They played for only 45 minutes, thankfully acknowledging the fact that any bands whose songs last only two minutes can't possibly play for much longer than that. Every song was efficient and fun. They made me want to run home and listen to the Ramones, in particular, to reconfirm that "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" is still the all-time best song about love and relationships (it still is).
There wasn't a single song I wanted to hear that they didn't play, sure, that's not so difficult to pull off if my Buzzcocks familiarity doesn't extend much beyond "Singles Going Steady", but nearly every band fails the selfish, nonsensical Set List Test. I didn't see a single person in the packed building who made a fool out of themselves by dancing in a style that gave away their age. Again, an easy test to pass in principle, but few bands and their fans can manage it. Pete Shelley still sounds great. I gave some quality thought to the notion of the Buzzcocks making the world safe for Green Day. They played for only 45 minutes, thankfully acknowledging the fact that any bands whose songs last only two minutes can't possibly play for much longer than that. Every song was efficient and fun. They made me want to run home and listen to the Ramones, in particular, to reconfirm that "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" is still the all-time best song about love and relationships (it still is).
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Pressure Kill Common Style, Twin Fangs @ Reverb
Rolling the dice on a NXNE gig featuring bands I've never heard of (save for a short recommendation in a newspaper) makes for some risky business -- if one of those bands turns out to be great, it's almost a bonus. Two great bands is a windfall.
For their main course, Pressure Kill Common Style channel "Isn't Anything"-era MBV, unleashing a furiously precise slate of noisy guitar rock. On the side, seemingly to satisfy the band member's collective curiousities, they do a thorough job of humiliating oft-hyped electronic pop bands like Styrofoam and Junior Boys by stealing their act and improving on it by leaps and bounds. How? Using the all-purpose musical topping -- hazy synth washes -- and drowning their dance beats with them. M83 should take note: this is the proper volume for synths in your live gigs. Then they dabble in Franz Ferdinand's style of 80's-style funk, just because they can, I guess. Brilliant stuff from beginning to end.
I don't usually like drums/guitar bands, but Twin Fangs are a very, very good one. It finally dawns on me just how low the White Stripes have set the bar. The drums are actually the lead instrument in this sort of band. Sloppy stickhandlers like Meg White put disproportional focus on the guitar -- the overall effect is that it appears as though an instrument is missing. This isn't the case with busy, dextrous, metronomic drummers. Screaming guitar solos and continual requests to increase the levels on the bass strings give the effect that there are four or five players on stage, and after a whirlwind thirty minutes, they stop, well before they've worn out their welcome. Always leave them wanting more, there's no fault in that.
For their main course, Pressure Kill Common Style channel "Isn't Anything"-era MBV, unleashing a furiously precise slate of noisy guitar rock. On the side, seemingly to satisfy the band member's collective curiousities, they do a thorough job of humiliating oft-hyped electronic pop bands like Styrofoam and Junior Boys by stealing their act and improving on it by leaps and bounds. How? Using the all-purpose musical topping -- hazy synth washes -- and drowning their dance beats with them. M83 should take note: this is the proper volume for synths in your live gigs. Then they dabble in Franz Ferdinand's style of 80's-style funk, just because they can, I guess. Brilliant stuff from beginning to end.
I don't usually like drums/guitar bands, but Twin Fangs are a very, very good one. It finally dawns on me just how low the White Stripes have set the bar. The drums are actually the lead instrument in this sort of band. Sloppy stickhandlers like Meg White put disproportional focus on the guitar -- the overall effect is that it appears as though an instrument is missing. This isn't the case with busy, dextrous, metronomic drummers. Screaming guitar solos and continual requests to increase the levels on the bass strings give the effect that there are four or five players on stage, and after a whirlwind thirty minutes, they stop, well before they've worn out their welcome. Always leave them wanting more, there's no fault in that.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Scion, "Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks"
If we assume that all mixed albums are required to represent what is hot at a particular time (a contentious assumption to be sure, but I think there's something to it), then it should be very rare for a mix to keep getting better with age. In this case, the increase in minimal techno's popularity over the past few years might be responsible for this album feeling more timeless than it does right now (i.e. the style wasn't hot at *its* particular time, but it is hot at *this* particular time). Because in 2006, "Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks" is sounding like the greatest mixed CD ever.
You wanna talk about timeless? This mix was released nearly a decade after the original recordings and instantly became the antidote for people who were bored shitless of Basic Channel and couldn't be bothered to sit through all 12 minutes of "Octagon" one more time. Its style fits midway between a couple of extremes. The first are the microassembled mixes by the likes of Ritchie Hawtin and Algorithm, who used familar source material to create something that sounds extremely unfamiliar. The second are the tastemaker comps, exemplified by Michael Mayer whose approach to mixing entails playing individual records from start to finish, with clean but straightforward mixing between tracks. Scion's mix feels like a greatest hits comp (everything on it sounds instantly familiarity) but in fact it takes old tracks and twists bunches of them together into new shapes. Hawtin's work contains hundreds of cleverly hidden details, but the simplicity of the Scion mix is awe-inspiring -- technically speaking, you could perform most of this by yourself using three decks and a mixer. Their new creations are continuously morphing, but the overall piece isn't cluttered (or busy) in the least. There's always just the right amount of "something" going on.
You wanna talk about timeless? This mix was released nearly a decade after the original recordings and instantly became the antidote for people who were bored shitless of Basic Channel and couldn't be bothered to sit through all 12 minutes of "Octagon" one more time. Its style fits midway between a couple of extremes. The first are the microassembled mixes by the likes of Ritchie Hawtin and Algorithm, who used familar source material to create something that sounds extremely unfamiliar. The second are the tastemaker comps, exemplified by Michael Mayer whose approach to mixing entails playing individual records from start to finish, with clean but straightforward mixing between tracks. Scion's mix feels like a greatest hits comp (everything on it sounds instantly familiarity) but in fact it takes old tracks and twists bunches of them together into new shapes. Hawtin's work contains hundreds of cleverly hidden details, but the simplicity of the Scion mix is awe-inspiring -- technically speaking, you could perform most of this by yourself using three decks and a mixer. Their new creations are continuously morphing, but the overall piece isn't cluttered (or busy) in the least. There's always just the right amount of "something" going on.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
American Idol Gala Extravaganza!
Ten seconds into his audition, I knew I wanted to see Taylor Hicks in the top twenty four, and figured he was just enough of a unique fringe talent to end up there after the Hollywood cuts. Even as recently as the top six, I didn't expect him to win once "goofy older brother" syndrome caught up with him and the voting public realized that he was a bit too eccentric. But in the end he pulled it out easily (note the lack of on-air talk about the voting results -- when the vote is close, AI always plays it up) as Katharine was back to wearing the "I know I'm fucked" expression all over her face as the results were read. Unlike the week when Chris was eliminated (the five seconds that followed that announcement, complete with Kat and Chris' priceless expressions, will stand out as the most oft-remembered moment of the season) she was entirely at peace with her all-but-certain fate this time around. And why not? Every actor on TV would have killed for the audience that had tuned in to watch her sing, making the finale had earned her a debut single no matter what the result, she'd starved herself for months to slim down to her season-ending scrumptious self and become probably the most gorgeous person on TV in the process.
Wednesday's finale drew 36 million viewers in the US, with a peak of around 45 million. In Canada, those numbers were 5.2 million and 8 million, respectively. That means roughly 1-in-6 Canadians watched the show compared to 1-in-8 Americans. Does the Idols summer tour come to Canada? Er, maybe it should?
Best of all, they ditched the usual format for the finale (which included an hour of waiting around backstage for the real show to start) and made it a full-fledged musical gala. The quality of the performances and guest artists rivaled the Grammys or the MTV Music Awards, and everyone was having so much fun onstage that it was easy to forget that we were supposed to be nervously waiting to find out who the winner was. Ignoring the silly but entertaining mock award segments and other miscellaneous taped/review bits*, here's a look at the performances:
*OK, I have to mention the Puck & Pickler segments, which were adorable and if FOX TV executives have any brains then they're hurriedly planning a role-reversed version of "The Simple Life" for the fall season.
1. Carrie Underwood returns again this season tocapitalize on her country music awards momentum lead Taylor and Kat through Barry Manilow's "I Made It Through the Rain" (one apropos track among a spate of them during the final week) with the rest of the top twelve backing them up. Everyone is wearing white outfits and by the end of it I could swear that I'm watching, I don't know, "West Side Story".
2. Paris Bennett and Al Jarreau sing "We're In This Love Together", and Paris' huge voice utterly dominates Jarreau's in his very own song. As great as this was, by the time the night is over I'll have forgotten about this completely, which is a puzzling aspect of Paris' consistently fine performances, at least for me.
3. Chris gets to fulfill his dream by singing "Your Mystery" with Live, keeping in line with his usual habit of performing songs that nobody cares about when he could have sung "Lightning Crashes" instead. He easily outsings Ed Kowalcyk, which convinces me that as a "pure rocker", he probably does surpass Bo Bice. Bo is a versatile talent who can sing rock, blues, and soul in a multitude of styles. Chris can only sing "pure" mid-90's angst rock. Yes, he still sucks.
4. Has it really been fourteen years since "Bat Out of Hell II"? Time for Part III already? Realizing this has to be one of my top five all-time "damn, I'm getting old" moments. This oddly atonal arrangement of "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" is validated by Meat's typically manic intensity and Kat's spectacularly cleavage-enhanced dress, the latter of which will be making pleasant appearances in my dreams for the next few years. In all seriousness, if all else fails (and even if it doesn't!) then she needs to tour with Meatloaf as the hoochie sidekick who duets with him on songs like "Paradise By the Dashboard Light".
5. During the guys' group medley, Taylor busts out his harmonica for the first time since the final Hollywood cuts. Last year's Idols were talented individually but never seemed to gel when singing together. This year's group doesn't have that problem. Bucky sounds about a million times better than he did at the start of the season.
6. Elliott and Mary J. Blige try to recreate her "One" moment with Bono from the Grammys. Elliott doesn't have a "big" voice, so once MJB gets going he smartly doesn't try to compete with her. In fact, he was mostly a spectator once she stepped on stage, standing off to the side and looking thrilled to be sharing a stage with MJB.
7. If Pickler could sing like Carrie, she'd have been in the finale with Taylor. If Carrie had Pickler's personality she'd be the greatest Idol winner ever. Although if Kat was half the singer she wants to be (= Mariah Carey) then she'd wipe the floor with them both. Hey, it's only been three paragraphs since I've mentioned how hot Kat is.
8. The evening's biggest trainwreck is Taylor and Toni Braxton struggling through "In the Ghetto". It wasn't Taylor's fault though -- Braxton sounds horrible, possibly because the song is in the wrong key for her. And call me a prude if you must, but rubbing oneself against Taylor's leg when singing a song about poverty feels a tiny bit inappropriate.
9. The female Idols parade through about 194 songs with the word "woman" in the title. OK, I get it, they're all women. Say it loud, they're women and they're proud. Nobody remembers Melissa McGhee anymore. I feel bad for her when she sings and nobody cheers for her. The whole medley felt like a diva display for Kat, unlike the guys medley where Taylor just blended in.
10. Michael Sandecki, AKA Clay Aiken's #1 fan from the auditions, is invited onstage to sing and can you see the Clay Aiken surprise appearance coming from ten miles away? Apparently Sandecki didn't (in post-show interviews, Seacrest states that he had to hold him to keep him from falling down, contrary to my suspicion that the entire segment was elaborately staged). I like Clay's new look, with his hair grown out and dyed brown, so sue me. At this time, let us recall that Simon Cowell, whose image of a pop star has been enforced by his work with Il Divo and Westlife, passed on both Clay and Taylor. He started by feeding them his "it's not just about the voice" criticism (i.e. "you're too ugly to be a star"), and berated their singing styles the whole season. With Clay it was "I feel like I should be hearing you on Broadway, not on the radio" and with Taylor he regularly interprets anything with soul as a drunk wedding performance (fine, Taylor's dancing doesn't help).
11. The entire top twelve performs a masterful ten-minute medley of Burt Bacharach songs, accompanied by Burt himself on piano. Gorgeous. Timeless. Who thought it would be a good idea to have Chris sing lines from "Arthur's Theme"? Chris sounds like shit when he's forced to do anything other than mid-90's angst rock : Exhibit ZZ. Dionne Warwick's walk-on is predictable but necessary, as is the closing "That's What Friends Are For" with the entire troupe. I've always hated this song, but in pro wrestling, this would be called "great booking".
12. The Brokenote Cowboys are surprisingly decent and not at all embarrassing. There's magic in the air tonight, folks.
13. Shocking doesn't begin to describe the appearance by Prince. He's a notoriously reclusive character who avoids awards shows like Ruben Studdard avoids exercise ... and he turns up on American Idol? Remember how big a deal it was when he performed on the Grammys with Beyonce in 2004? For whatever reason (Prince's ego?) this is a solo gig, which makes me wonder why he's here other than for self-promotion on one of the most watched shows of the TV season. Yes, Taylor and Katharine would both show him up height-wise, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have done a duet of "Kiss" with Paris.
14. Taylor's voice is completely unsuited for something as bland as "I've Had the Time of My Life". I'm overcome with new admiration for Bill Medley for somehow making this song work. It's a perfect song for Kat though.
15. The results are in, David Hasselhoff is crying (!!?!?!?!?!!!!), and I've now decided that Taylor's single, "Do I Make You Proud" is kinda awesome after all ...
Wednesday's finale drew 36 million viewers in the US, with a peak of around 45 million. In Canada, those numbers were 5.2 million and 8 million, respectively. That means roughly 1-in-6 Canadians watched the show compared to 1-in-8 Americans. Does the Idols summer tour come to Canada? Er, maybe it should?
Best of all, they ditched the usual format for the finale (which included an hour of waiting around backstage for the real show to start) and made it a full-fledged musical gala. The quality of the performances and guest artists rivaled the Grammys or the MTV Music Awards, and everyone was having so much fun onstage that it was easy to forget that we were supposed to be nervously waiting to find out who the winner was. Ignoring the silly but entertaining mock award segments and other miscellaneous taped/review bits*, here's a look at the performances:
*OK, I have to mention the Puck & Pickler segments, which were adorable and if FOX TV executives have any brains then they're hurriedly planning a role-reversed version of "The Simple Life" for the fall season.
1. Carrie Underwood returns again this season to
2. Paris Bennett and Al Jarreau sing "We're In This Love Together", and Paris' huge voice utterly dominates Jarreau's in his very own song. As great as this was, by the time the night is over I'll have forgotten about this completely, which is a puzzling aspect of Paris' consistently fine performances, at least for me.
3. Chris gets to fulfill his dream by singing "Your Mystery" with Live, keeping in line with his usual habit of performing songs that nobody cares about when he could have sung "Lightning Crashes" instead. He easily outsings Ed Kowalcyk, which convinces me that as a "pure rocker", he probably does surpass Bo Bice. Bo is a versatile talent who can sing rock, blues, and soul in a multitude of styles. Chris can only sing "pure" mid-90's angst rock. Yes, he still sucks.
4. Has it really been fourteen years since "Bat Out of Hell II"? Time for Part III already? Realizing this has to be one of my top five all-time "damn, I'm getting old" moments. This oddly atonal arrangement of "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" is validated by Meat's typically manic intensity and Kat's spectacularly cleavage-enhanced dress, the latter of which will be making pleasant appearances in my dreams for the next few years. In all seriousness, if all else fails (and even if it doesn't!) then she needs to tour with Meatloaf as the hoochie sidekick who duets with him on songs like "Paradise By the Dashboard Light".
5. During the guys' group medley, Taylor busts out his harmonica for the first time since the final Hollywood cuts. Last year's Idols were talented individually but never seemed to gel when singing together. This year's group doesn't have that problem. Bucky sounds about a million times better than he did at the start of the season.
6. Elliott and Mary J. Blige try to recreate her "One" moment with Bono from the Grammys. Elliott doesn't have a "big" voice, so once MJB gets going he smartly doesn't try to compete with her. In fact, he was mostly a spectator once she stepped on stage, standing off to the side and looking thrilled to be sharing a stage with MJB.
7. If Pickler could sing like Carrie, she'd have been in the finale with Taylor. If Carrie had Pickler's personality she'd be the greatest Idol winner ever. Although if Kat was half the singer she wants to be (= Mariah Carey) then she'd wipe the floor with them both. Hey, it's only been three paragraphs since I've mentioned how hot Kat is.
8. The evening's biggest trainwreck is Taylor and Toni Braxton struggling through "In the Ghetto". It wasn't Taylor's fault though -- Braxton sounds horrible, possibly because the song is in the wrong key for her. And call me a prude if you must, but rubbing oneself against Taylor's leg when singing a song about poverty feels a tiny bit inappropriate.
9. The female Idols parade through about 194 songs with the word "woman" in the title. OK, I get it, they're all women. Say it loud, they're women and they're proud. Nobody remembers Melissa McGhee anymore. I feel bad for her when she sings and nobody cheers for her. The whole medley felt like a diva display for Kat, unlike the guys medley where Taylor just blended in.
10. Michael Sandecki, AKA Clay Aiken's #1 fan from the auditions, is invited onstage to sing and can you see the Clay Aiken surprise appearance coming from ten miles away? Apparently Sandecki didn't (in post-show interviews, Seacrest states that he had to hold him to keep him from falling down, contrary to my suspicion that the entire segment was elaborately staged). I like Clay's new look, with his hair grown out and dyed brown, so sue me. At this time, let us recall that Simon Cowell, whose image of a pop star has been enforced by his work with Il Divo and Westlife, passed on both Clay and Taylor. He started by feeding them his "it's not just about the voice" criticism (i.e. "you're too ugly to be a star"), and berated their singing styles the whole season. With Clay it was "I feel like I should be hearing you on Broadway, not on the radio" and with Taylor he regularly interprets anything with soul as a drunk wedding performance (fine, Taylor's dancing doesn't help).
11. The entire top twelve performs a masterful ten-minute medley of Burt Bacharach songs, accompanied by Burt himself on piano. Gorgeous. Timeless. Who thought it would be a good idea to have Chris sing lines from "Arthur's Theme"? Chris sounds like shit when he's forced to do anything other than mid-90's angst rock : Exhibit ZZ. Dionne Warwick's walk-on is predictable but necessary, as is the closing "That's What Friends Are For" with the entire troupe. I've always hated this song, but in pro wrestling, this would be called "great booking".
12. The Brokenote Cowboys are surprisingly decent and not at all embarrassing. There's magic in the air tonight, folks.
13. Shocking doesn't begin to describe the appearance by Prince. He's a notoriously reclusive character who avoids awards shows like Ruben Studdard avoids exercise ... and he turns up on American Idol? Remember how big a deal it was when he performed on the Grammys with Beyonce in 2004? For whatever reason (Prince's ego?) this is a solo gig, which makes me wonder why he's here other than for self-promotion on one of the most watched shows of the TV season. Yes, Taylor and Katharine would both show him up height-wise, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have done a duet of "Kiss" with Paris.
14. Taylor's voice is completely unsuited for something as bland as "I've Had the Time of My Life". I'm overcome with new admiration for Bill Medley for somehow making this song work. It's a perfect song for Kat though.
15. The results are in, David Hasselhoff is crying (!!?!?!?!?!!!!), and I've now decided that Taylor's single, "Do I Make You Proud" is kinda awesome after all ...
Monday, May 22, 2006
SunnO))), Oren Ambarchi @ The Music Gallery
As Oren Ambarchi's adds layer after layer to his gentle bass tones, building them into a cavernous noise and then back to near silence again, he addresses a serious concern of mine: the volume in the Music Gallery. I've never been pleased with the sound system in this converted church, but the piles of amps on stage that augment the comparatively wimpy speakers in the venue help to put my fears to rest.
Between sets, smoke begins to fill the room to a orchestral soundtrack of suitably impending doom, almost like Wagner mixed with the theme to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". By the time SunnO))) (plus Ambarchi) begin playing, the entire church is filled with an opaque haze. The light from the lamposts on the street are shining through the windows, cutting through the smoky air like sharp white daggers. The entire front half of the building could have collapsed into a smouldering husk for all my eyes can see, and a red glow softly illuminates the area around the stage. Thunderously loud guitar drones are a lot scarier when you can't see the people standing six feet away from you, let alone where that terrorizing sound is coming from. I've heard that this is music you feel in your chest cavity, but the hardwood floor at the Music Gallery ensures that I mostly feel this gig in my feet.
Adjectives like "good" or "bad" aren't really descriptive of one's opinion of SunnO))) live. Their gigs are not something you enjoy inasmuch as they are to be endured. Everyone is forced to stand and take in the shared ordeal. The darkness, save for the soft red and/or blue illumination through the thick smoke, recalls the scenes from "Superman II" when Superman is able to remove his (and later the villians') superpowers. We're all standing in a funnel of sound while some kind of intangible energy is slowly sapped from our bodies.
Gradually, I inch closer and can soon make out the shadowy, black caped figures in the band. Emerging from the onstage mist, a clenched first slowly pumps along to the beatless music. Perfect.
Between sets, smoke begins to fill the room to a orchestral soundtrack of suitably impending doom, almost like Wagner mixed with the theme to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". By the time SunnO))) (plus Ambarchi) begin playing, the entire church is filled with an opaque haze. The light from the lamposts on the street are shining through the windows, cutting through the smoky air like sharp white daggers. The entire front half of the building could have collapsed into a smouldering husk for all my eyes can see, and a red glow softly illuminates the area around the stage. Thunderously loud guitar drones are a lot scarier when you can't see the people standing six feet away from you, let alone where that terrorizing sound is coming from. I've heard that this is music you feel in your chest cavity, but the hardwood floor at the Music Gallery ensures that I mostly feel this gig in my feet.
Adjectives like "good" or "bad" aren't really descriptive of one's opinion of SunnO))) live. Their gigs are not something you enjoy inasmuch as they are to be endured. Everyone is forced to stand and take in the shared ordeal. The darkness, save for the soft red and/or blue illumination through the thick smoke, recalls the scenes from "Superman II" when Superman is able to remove his (and later the villians') superpowers. We're all standing in a funnel of sound while some kind of intangible energy is slowly sapped from our bodies.
Gradually, I inch closer and can soon make out the shadowy, black caped figures in the band. Emerging from the onstage mist, a clenched first slowly pumps along to the beatless music. Perfect.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Bardo Pond, "Ticket Crystals"
It's time to add Bardo Pond to the list of bands that made an unexpectedly great album in 2006.
Yes, Bardo Pond, the same band that made my third favourite album of 2003 plus a couple dozen hours of East Coast hippie delights that currently clog my music collection. Despite all this, great bands don't always make great records. This particular band is great despite their patchiness, often succeeding through sheer force of volume (e.g. there's a very good album lying within a carefully edited set of "Dilate"'s 70-plus bloated minutes) or by sheer force of mood (e.g. the Tom Carter/Bardo collab is fairly boring, but is a useful listen if you're just chilling out with several hours to kill listening to music).
Until the release of "On the Ellipse", there weren't any truly outstanding Bardo Pond albums. They all had their fierce moments and their filler. "Lapsed" came closest -- their sound has never sounded so mammoth to this day -- but "Tommy Gun Angel" and "Flux" obliterate everything else on the album. Even if the overall level of quality is higher than their earlier albums, it's hard to think of an album as being great overall when it's highlights stick out that far above the mean. And with running times around 50 minutes, "Lapsed" and "On the Ellipse" are short records by a band that tends to indulge itself a bit too often. So when I heard that the new album was going to be 75 minutes, I wasn't expecting a second straight classic.
"Ticket Crystals" is a much looser album than "On the Ellipse", as Bardo Pond continue to come up with new ways to jam. The opener, "Destroying Angel", is the type of nine-minute guitar-revving monster that they can probably hammer out in their sleep by now. It's the type of track that made their last album so outstanding. "FC II" is a prog-dub marathon session that is usually reserved for their "Volume" collections of semi-improvised tracks, but very few of the tracks featured there are this good. "Father Jod" closes the record with a dizzy swirl of wailing, screeching guitars. Some people complain about the lazy, imprecise drumming on some Bardo Pond records, but intentionally or not, it feels as though the drummers arms are stuck in vats of oil here, making the beat lurch around like a drunken sailor (but in a good way -- think about PJ Harvey's "Goodnight" (even though there aren't any drums on it)).
They've never relied so much on acoustic and semi-acoustic elements on their albums, which suggests that their admiration for Charalambides (particularly this year's "A Vintage Burden") extends beyond asking Christina Carter to contribute guest vocals on "Ticket Crystals". I'm not quite sure where she sings on this record -- Bardo's traditional love of double-tracking Isobel's vocals makes it a bit difficult to tell -- but a good place to start is "Moonshine". Its wistful, starry-eyed psych-folk eventually explodes into a maelstrom of noise and back again. The gorgeous, sighing vocals might be the most hummable lines that Bardo Pond have ever done. In a similar vein, their semi-acoustic cover of the Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry" is another example of how they've collided singalong melodies with noisy improv, two elements of Bardo Pond's music that they usually keep separate.
They'll bust your ears apart -- but a bit more intimately this time. Bardo Pond have hit another home run with "Ticket Crystals", and I probably shouldn't doubt them the next time around.
Yes, Bardo Pond, the same band that made my third favourite album of 2003 plus a couple dozen hours of East Coast hippie delights that currently clog my music collection. Despite all this, great bands don't always make great records. This particular band is great despite their patchiness, often succeeding through sheer force of volume (e.g. there's a very good album lying within a carefully edited set of "Dilate"'s 70-plus bloated minutes) or by sheer force of mood (e.g. the Tom Carter/Bardo collab is fairly boring, but is a useful listen if you're just chilling out with several hours to kill listening to music).
Until the release of "On the Ellipse", there weren't any truly outstanding Bardo Pond albums. They all had their fierce moments and their filler. "Lapsed" came closest -- their sound has never sounded so mammoth to this day -- but "Tommy Gun Angel" and "Flux" obliterate everything else on the album. Even if the overall level of quality is higher than their earlier albums, it's hard to think of an album as being great overall when it's highlights stick out that far above the mean. And with running times around 50 minutes, "Lapsed" and "On the Ellipse" are short records by a band that tends to indulge itself a bit too often. So when I heard that the new album was going to be 75 minutes, I wasn't expecting a second straight classic.
"Ticket Crystals" is a much looser album than "On the Ellipse", as Bardo Pond continue to come up with new ways to jam. The opener, "Destroying Angel", is the type of nine-minute guitar-revving monster that they can probably hammer out in their sleep by now. It's the type of track that made their last album so outstanding. "FC II" is a prog-dub marathon session that is usually reserved for their "Volume" collections of semi-improvised tracks, but very few of the tracks featured there are this good. "Father Jod" closes the record with a dizzy swirl of wailing, screeching guitars. Some people complain about the lazy, imprecise drumming on some Bardo Pond records, but intentionally or not, it feels as though the drummers arms are stuck in vats of oil here, making the beat lurch around like a drunken sailor (but in a good way -- think about PJ Harvey's "Goodnight" (even though there aren't any drums on it)).
They've never relied so much on acoustic and semi-acoustic elements on their albums, which suggests that their admiration for Charalambides (particularly this year's "A Vintage Burden") extends beyond asking Christina Carter to contribute guest vocals on "Ticket Crystals". I'm not quite sure where she sings on this record -- Bardo's traditional love of double-tracking Isobel's vocals makes it a bit difficult to tell -- but a good place to start is "Moonshine". Its wistful, starry-eyed psych-folk eventually explodes into a maelstrom of noise and back again. The gorgeous, sighing vocals might be the most hummable lines that Bardo Pond have ever done. In a similar vein, their semi-acoustic cover of the Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry" is another example of how they've collided singalong melodies with noisy improv, two elements of Bardo Pond's music that they usually keep separate.
They'll bust your ears apart -- but a bit more intimately this time. Bardo Pond have hit another home run with "Ticket Crystals", and I probably shouldn't doubt them the next time around.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
American Idol Finale Anticipation!
I got what I wanted -- the Taylor/Kat finale -- but I found myself rooting for Elliott rather vociferously in the last few weeks. He was the perpetual dorky underdog who stepped up his game when it counted the most and became the easy sentimental favourite. It was like watching a low-seeded team go on a roll and come dangerously close to reaching the championship game. Eventually you start to forget about the finale you wanted to see all along and root for the megagigantic upset instead.
Taylor was outstanding this week, confirming that the competition is his to lose. Even though "Dancing In the Dark" is a song that needs time to build (no time for that when all songs are in the 1.5 - 2.0 minute range) but what we heard was inspiring. All that despite the fact that Paula's Courtney Cox moment seemed lost on the audience. "Try A Little Tenderness" allowed him to yell and scream to his heart's content. Oddly enough, "You Are So Beautiful", AKA the song that everyone had been waiting the entire season for him to inevitably sing, was the least remarkable (in my eyes), probably because he got a bit *too* involved in apeing Joe Cockers mannerisms and facial expressions.
Katharine's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was very good, but didn't deserve anything close to that sell job from the judges. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Elliot's "I Believe To My Soul" was vastly underrated. His other songs were underrated to a lesser extent (although his voice isn't big enough for something like "Open Arms" -- a poor choice by Clive Davis) but the cynic in me interprets that as the producers trying to influence the voting public and engineer the finale they want by feeding instructions to the judges. The best example of this was in Bizarro Season (#3), in which the judges engaged in a verbal blitzkrieg during final three week to prevent horrifically undertalented cutie Jasmine Trias from making the finals (and practically anointed Fantasia Barrino as the winner).
Things got even more memorable the next night when the clips from the homecomings were aired. Katharine didn't get a parade thrown in her honour, ostensibly because permits are so difficult to obtain in the LA area. The true reason was likely a combination of urban sprawl and the "small fish in a big pond" principle. Attending a parade, even in a centralized part of the city, would be a transportation nightmare -- I still don't have a clue how the immigration protest were so big (where did all those people park?). There are also a million and a half things happening in LA on a given day. In Hoover, Alabama, a Taylor Hicks homecoming likely saturates the local news and becomes the biggest thing happening in the area that week. It's not that simple in LA, which is why Katharine's schedule involved her travelling to see other people rather than people going out of their way to see her. Twelve thousand people packing a shopping mall to get a glimpse of Taylor Hicks was an extraordinary sight, but even that didn't compare to the screaming hordes that packed the streets for Elliott, who showed more vigour and enthusiasm during that four minute segment than in the entire season combined. He came off looking like the most popular and likeable superstar in America, and the vote ended up being so close that I firmly believe that he'd be in the finale right now had the footage somehow been shown before this week's voting began. Very few of us can even imagine what it was like to live through that kind of attention -- I was practically tearing up just watching it.
Taylor was outstanding this week, confirming that the competition is his to lose. Even though "Dancing In the Dark" is a song that needs time to build (no time for that when all songs are in the 1.5 - 2.0 minute range) but what we heard was inspiring. All that despite the fact that Paula's Courtney Cox moment seemed lost on the audience. "Try A Little Tenderness" allowed him to yell and scream to his heart's content. Oddly enough, "You Are So Beautiful", AKA the song that everyone had been waiting the entire season for him to inevitably sing, was the least remarkable (in my eyes), probably because he got a bit *too* involved in apeing Joe Cockers mannerisms and facial expressions.
Katharine's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was very good, but didn't deserve anything close to that sell job from the judges. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Elliot's "I Believe To My Soul" was vastly underrated. His other songs were underrated to a lesser extent (although his voice isn't big enough for something like "Open Arms" -- a poor choice by Clive Davis) but the cynic in me interprets that as the producers trying to influence the voting public and engineer the finale they want by feeding instructions to the judges. The best example of this was in Bizarro Season (#3), in which the judges engaged in a verbal blitzkrieg during final three week to prevent horrifically undertalented cutie Jasmine Trias from making the finals (and practically anointed Fantasia Barrino as the winner).
Things got even more memorable the next night when the clips from the homecomings were aired. Katharine didn't get a parade thrown in her honour, ostensibly because permits are so difficult to obtain in the LA area. The true reason was likely a combination of urban sprawl and the "small fish in a big pond" principle. Attending a parade, even in a centralized part of the city, would be a transportation nightmare -- I still don't have a clue how the immigration protest were so big (where did all those people park?). There are also a million and a half things happening in LA on a given day. In Hoover, Alabama, a Taylor Hicks homecoming likely saturates the local news and becomes the biggest thing happening in the area that week. It's not that simple in LA, which is why Katharine's schedule involved her travelling to see other people rather than people going out of their way to see her. Twelve thousand people packing a shopping mall to get a glimpse of Taylor Hicks was an extraordinary sight, but even that didn't compare to the screaming hordes that packed the streets for Elliott, who showed more vigour and enthusiasm during that four minute segment than in the entire season combined. He came off looking like the most popular and likeable superstar in America, and the vote ended up being so close that I firmly believe that he'd be in the finale right now had the footage somehow been shown before this week's voting began. Very few of us can even imagine what it was like to live through that kind of attention -- I was practically tearing up just watching it.
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