So, Zac Crain is writing about music again; that should be welcome news to a certain type of local music fan that misses his agenda-free stance and biting wit. D Magazine just launched a new blog called FrontRow that is billed as "A Daily Review Of The Dallas Arts," and it takes a straight-forward approach towards ranking the various disciplines with a stoplight color-coded judgment of either: Green (Go See It), Yellow (Worth A Shot), or Red (Don't Bother).
Crain's first order of business is to engage the readers as participants (which we highly encourage, of course), by asking them to do show reviews via Twitter, with the culled results posted on the blog the next day. Sounds fun.
Anyways, this was rather welcome news, as I was really starting to feel like the local media had just morphed into one giant and rather grotesque booking, promotions, and publicity entity for itself and the local narrative that they try desperately to espouse with their buddies in the biz. Of course, I have faith in you, dear readers. I know most of you are too smart to fall for that.
WED: H.O.T. Presents: Fucked in the Basement with Swamp Tease/Ancestral Diet/Taboo/Nite Shadez (J&J's Pizza) WED: Worn In Red/Decades/Dark Forces/Big Fiction (1919 Hemphill) THR: Stew!/Drink to Victory/Captain Incredible (Rubber Gloves) THR: Unfun/Stymie/No Heroes/Serious Business (1919 Hemphill) FRI: Nouvelle Vague/Shock of Pleasure/Chameleon Chamber Group (Granada) FRI: Joe Jack Talcum (The Dead Milkmen)/Lord Grunge/The Bassturd (Rubber Gloves) FRI: Retribution Gospel Choir/The Rainhorses/New Science Projects (The Cavern) SAT: True Widow/Great Tyrant/Darktown Strutters (The Chat Room) SAT: The English Beat/Fishbone (Granada) SUN: RJD2/Kenan Bell/Happy Chichster (Hailey's)
Pretty slow weekend, but thanks to FP for putting most of this together. Also want to give props to Cliff Notes for making some nice little design changes around here... there's more to come, so look out. Shows:
FRIDAY
ADD: Big J | Hot Britches (Plush Basement located at 1400 Main in Dallas) The seems to be the natural successor to replace the gaping nightlife void left by the shuttered Suite Basement. Austin's Hot Britches will be along to help out local favorite, Big J. -DL
Julie Dorion | Bowerbirds | Fox and the Bird: Julie Dorion's latest album is really good and hearkens back to her work with Eric's Trip. I wish I would have picked it up earlier because it probably would have made it on my best of the year list. I don't know who the hell the Bowerbirds or why they are headlining this show and not Julie. After listening to a sampling of their music, they sound rather bland and uninteresting, riding the Beach House train to indie successville. Maybe it's because they have one of those band Myspace pages where their faces are really big at the top with all the fancy graphics.
Thank you to the NX35 blog for calling us out on our hate of the local folk scene when mentioning the Fox and the Bird in one of their recent features. You might remember a couple of weeks ago when I completely eviscerated Fox and The Bird with such quotes as " I was really captivated by The Fox's performance" and I bet the band had trouble getting on stage after I said they are "more exciting than the standard folk outfits" We don't hate folk music, just boring insipid folk music. Astroblaque presents Soular Power (Fallout Lounge): Spinning dub, kraut, funk, garage, post punk, everything.
Buzzcocks, Martin Hannett, Joy Division, Stone Roses, FAC51, A Certain Ratio, Baggy Jeans, New Order, The Fall, So It Goes, Slaughter & the Dogs, The Smiths, Bez, Happy Mondays, Salford Lad's Club, Magazine, Devoto, The Factory, Ecstacy, Mike Pickering, Morrissey, James, Tony Wilson, 808 State, The Verve, Barney and Hooky, Monaco, Section 25, Voodoo Ray, The Charlatans UK, Acid House, Graeme Park, Electronic, Revenge, The Other Two, 24 Hour Party People, Quando Quango, Inspiral Carpets, The Durutti Column, The Chameleons, Warsaw, Ceremony, Shack Up, Greg Wilson's Funk Night, Black Grape, She's Lost Control, I Am the Resurrection, Ian Brown ,Mark E. Smith, Johnny Marr, and all things Manchester + Hacienda Classics!
This Wednesday, the hopes and dreams of many weirdo music fans in the area (including mine) came true as we had the privilege to see the legendary Residents live at The Granada. So how did this dream turn out? Like a nightmare, of course. And oh, what a nightmare it was! If you don't know about the Residents you should go download the "greatest hits" compilation they have put up on their site and hear the music that has delighted and confused open-minded music fans since 1972.
The show was more of a theatrical performance than a rock concert, which is to be expected. The set was comprised of entirely new material, and the group was not supporting any new album despite the fact that they have released a couple in the past year or so. The Residents approached this as a concept tour in which they tell a story through staging and improvised music as opposed to stringing together songs from through out their career. Along with the signature eyeball headpieces, the band also shed one of its members, as lead resident explained that "Carlos" had decided he had had enough with show business. This left keyboards, guitars and vocals for the night.
The stage was set up like a comfortable old man's den. Huge baggy chair adorned with doilies, luggage strewn about and a fireplace complete with a Yule log DVD running on a TV. The only thing that seemed out of place was a common looking LCD scrolling sign on which random messages scrolled across. Before the band took the stage "I'd Like to buy The World a Coke" began to blare across the system, reminding us that we were in the presence of some of the finest social and popular satirists America has sever seen. As I mentioned, the eyeball heads were nowhere to be found, and instead the guitarist and keyboardist, stationed permanently to the left and right of the stage, were dressed all in black and wearing some kind of odd helmet with what looked like dreadlocks attached. The lead singer and storyteller for the night resembled a freakish old man, what I envision the CEOs of most OIL companies to resemble. His vertically striped bathrobe and comically over sized neck tie made him look more like a child playing dress up, albeit a child with fantastic make-up skills.
Over the course of the performance, the demonically old man alternated between rapping his skull methodically while positioned in his chair, telling jokes, singing songs, dancing an impish jig and setting up some extremely bizarre video clips. The clips, which resembled Youtube confessionals done by David Lynch, were projected via a handheld projector across three floating white orbs. As to be expected, these stories were bizarre as can be. The First was about a man searching for the corpse of a dead child who happens to be holding a cryptic wedding ring. In the second, a teenage girls recounts her first lesbian relationship which begins by recounting early sexual exploration and ends with the narrator overfeeding her lover with cakes and watching Dr. Phil. The said lover consumes until she reaches several thousands pounds and has to be hacked up in order to transport the body out of the room. As for the third, my mind was so fucked by this point I can't really tell you what it was about other than it was a creepy old lady saying horrific things.
The two musicians may have been overshadowed by the narrator, but of course the show would have been nothing if it wasn't for their accompaniment. The music seemed to mostly improvised but recalling the styles they have explored before, although a bit more polished than I expected. I say polished, but trust me, it was still just as menacing as you would expect.
There was some semblance of a through line connecting these stories together, something about getting old and mirror people. Of course, continuity was not something that matters with artist such as The Residents. This show was an exciting and abrasive exploration into the mind of creative artists and their thoughts on getting old. I read a little bit about the show going into it, so I knew not to expect to hear a bunch of classic Residents songs-- I'll admit I was a little disappointed to know this, but by the end of the night it didn't matter because the show delivered on everything I would expect from a Residents performance. An experience I will never forget and I know will never see duplicated. If you want to hear the show for yourself, the band is making sound board recordings of all the dates on this tour available for $7.99 on their site. For all the skewing they do of the commercial aspects of rock n' roll, they sure know how to utilize them.
Top Notch with Sober | Schwa | A1 | Visuals by Tommy Boy (The Cavern) This is the one-year anniversary of Top Notch so come by and personally congratulate Sober. Some of these amateur hour DJ's could learn a thing or two about manners from this guy, by the way. Real class act.
Babar | Final Club | Portrait Of St. Anthony/Art By Leti Gomez (Rubber Gloves) This is the grand opening of the new Meme Gallery, the new art gallery located in the actual Rubber Gloves compound. It's great to see that they are still utilizing the space, especially for something as positive as this. It seems that there's a good chance that a musical performance will probably coincide with exhibition openings, and of course, that's always beneficial to both artist and musician alike.
Final Club continues to gain ground after an explosive debut in both the press and after their surprise sellout show, and they have been nice enough to pass along a link to their first EP, which you can acquire by clicking here. The vocals have a distinct high-register to them that I wasn't expecting. Lookout for the EP as a feature on Weekly Tape Deck soon, which will probably have even more details.
Yeah Def (Hailey's) Another Thursday where Yeah Def finds himself in the very Conan O'Brien-like position of carrying DJ G's 80's Night torch, but tonight he'll have some help: 80's Scholars Shane English and Jonah Lange will be there to pull some of those rare tracks from the bottom of the Reagan era's cultural trash heap, and place them firmly in the future that their creators could only dream about. Isn't it romantic?
This weekend, go see Skip Noah at Dahlia Woods Gallery on Friday night. He's WSJR Art List officially-sanctioned greatness. There's a reception between 6:00 and 8:30 PM.
Then maybe check out the second annual Dallas Art Fair. It's $20 to get in and features over 50 prominent national art dealers from 15 cities. If that's too snooty for you, head down to south east Dallas instead for the eighth annual Art In The Hood studio tour. It's free unless you get mugged.
The Residents (Granada) Where does one even begin in trying to explain or convey the mystique, impact, and intrigue of this group? Well, a brief summary doesn't do them justice, but what you should know or probably already know is that they are costumed, little is known about their actual identities (outside of know-it-all music dorks, of course), they have been a band for 41(!) years, and their overall conceptual approach to their art has been incredibly influential to many musicians and fans the world over.
Now none of their disguises or concepts would really matter all that much if they hadn't made such arresting music. Armed with both a gifted guitarist (the late Snakefinger), as well as an untouchable ability to make powerfully creepy melodies, they have bewildered and inspired fans through a powerful mixture of parody, repetition, quirkiness, and ability longer than many of us can possibly imagine. The Kubrick-like video above is a good place to start if you've ever run across their eyeball-adorned work in the racks, or to remind yourself why you should make every effort to make it to what will most likely be one of the most unique spectacles in DFW this year. Somebody mentioned that the group has never been the same without Snakefinger, and while that's certainly an understandable position, some video-taped evidence on the web suggests that this will still be unlike anything else you're likely to see anytime soon.
The Ish with Yeah Def | Ocelot | indo (Ghost Bar) Some of the punk rockers may turn their noses up at this event, but you may want to check out Ocelot since it includes former North Texas resident Cory Kilduff, late of both electronic/hardcore act The Rise and local ska-punk band Policy. Anyone remember those days? I wish I didn't. I think it's a very good thing to evolve and play whatever type of music you feel like making, but sometimes I look at some of the screamo music or ska bands that people used to be in, and it really scares me to imagine what kind of dance music some of those same people are now making.
We're currently doing some remodeling, which includes getting rid of the news section and replacing it with something better that you'll see pretty soon. Posts like this one, which would have normally appeared in the news section, will appear on the main blog from here on out.
I'm sure there are a number of readers who probably assume that I hate Midlake because they know guitar chords and took singing lessons or something, but actually, nothing could be further from the truth-- we enthusiastically wrote about Midlake in the very early days of this blog (to the dismay of some readers), and to this day I feel like The Trials of Van Occupanther is a pretty great record. I still listen to it here and there when I'm in the mood, and the fact that it happens to sound like Fleetwood Mac and America doesn't bother me either-- I like the former quite a bit and don't even mind the latter.
Furthermore, upon hearing the rumors that Midlake's long awaited third record, The Courage of Others, was supposed to be inspired by English psyche folk and specifically Fairport Convention, I was at least somewhat enthusiastic because it seemed like a perfect fit-- if any group of present day American indie rockers could pull that type of thing off without sounding totally silly, Midlake really should have had as good a chance as anyone else, and a better one than most. After getting my hands on a copy of the record and giving it a listen, I realized that my prediction was correct in a sense-- Midlake's new record does not sound silly. It's full of competent songwriting, literary lyrics and fine performances, and its clear that the band really understands and respects the material from which they draw inspiration.
However, there's a little problem with all of this, and its summed up fairly well in today's Pitchfork review of the group's latest effort (a score of 3.6). In it, author Paul Thompson calls it almost exactly as I've heard it on my speakers over the past few weeks-- the record feels unenthusiastic, a little bit forced, endlessly labored over and quite tense, lacking in the warmth and sense of adventure that the group's previous record conveyed so well, which might be a long winded way of saying, simply, that the songs aren't there this time. Indeed, very little of the magic of the last record can be found here, and most of the tracks don't seem to go anywhere or exist for any reason other than to be Midlake songs, as the review alludes to:
"Theirs is an exceptionally polite reading of these British folk constructions, and as nearly every tune tumbles through its ornate intro, its hushed first verse, and the minor lift of its chorus, your patience wears as thin as the tunes."
Again, it almost pains me to say this, but Thompson is totally on point-- Midlake's latest is smart and competent, but feels more than a little lifeless. In case you were wondering, I did read about the group's struggles with making this record, and its important to keep that narrative in mind when listening to what they've produced here-- I've never tried to make a record myself, much less a highly anticipated follow up record, but we can all appreciate what it feels like to be under intense pressures in our careers, and most of us don't even have a "public" to worry about either. This feeling of tension is almost audible on The Courage of Others, and although I'm sure many fans will be able to find something redeeming in it, its a disappointing follow up to a very strong national debut.
Of course, its funny that Pitchfork is making these arguments considering a lot of the stuff the site supports, but the point remains the same, and it seems to apply to a lot of the more popular "indie rock" that has emerged in the past couple of years-- too timid, too labored over, and too goddamn polite to really express much of anything of value; emotionally, intellectually or otherwise. Perhaps its just the times in which we live, or merely a series of unfortunate passing fads, but over the past couple of years I've been more thoroughly dissatisfied with supposedly exceptional music than at any other time in my life, and Midlake's latest record feels merely like an example of what I've been thinking for quite a while-- the current incarnation of American indie rock is on artistic life support.
