Rolling Stone gathers Maerz

Former City Pages music editor Melissa Maerz is headed to Rolling Stone

It's weird how nowadays in music journalism, as you move up, it just gets worse. I mean this as no crack on Melissa, who's always struck me as a stand-up gal and great writer, but Rolling Stone hardly seems to be a paper to aspire to anymore. I guess their longer articles can often be good, and I did really enjoy their look at whether George Bush is the worst president in history, or merely one of the top five. Maybe they're like the reverse of Pulse--a music magazine where their political coverage is the best thing they do.

Still, though, their CD reviews have become laughably vanilla in recent years. Look at any given page of the reviews section and you'll find that nine out of ten CDs get three stars. Stars are so ridiculous when it comes to reviews; if you just want to know quickly whether a reviewer liked a CD, read the last sentence. How hard is that?

I always liked Maerz's piece on Friends Like These where she spent 10 days on the road with them.

Best of luck to Ms. Maerz. We at Signal Eats Noise are above mentioning your boyfriend.

How we like music

There's a part in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" towards the end, after Elizabeth and Darcy have gotten together, where Elizabeth demands to know how he ever fell in love with her in the first place.

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation," he says. "It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

I often find myself in similar straits when it comes to albums that have become favorites, but it never stops me from wondering, as I first become familiar with a band or an album, if this is going to be a band that I'm going to fall in love with.

There are just so many ways that a band can get at you: maybe you hear a song on the radio one day, and then hear it again and again, and finally wonder who it is. You stick around in the car long enough to find out, then go find out if they have a webpage. Maybe you buy their disc. And then maybe that track you couldn't get out of your head is the only decent one on the disc, and it ends there.

Or maybe you find out that song that you were so taken with is not even the best song on the disc. But then what you thought was the best song is simply the most immediately appealing, and in fact you come to realize that some deep album cut is really the best one, even if by then it's no longer your favorite. Your favorite is that unassuming seventh track--the one you used to skip when you first got the disc.

This is the point at which a band and an album have gotten under your skin: the point when you have a favorite track on an album which you acknowledge is not the best track on the album. Case in point: You'd be hard-pressed to admit that "The Way We Get By" is not obviously the best song on Spoon's Kill the Moonlight. They're a band that's all about swagger and feel, and "The Way We Get By" has been stripped of every unnecessary element, leaving nothing but a knot of perfectly menacing pop. It has one of the finest opening couplets of all time: "We get high in backseats of cars / we break into mobile homes." It has handclaps.

But "Jonathon Fisk" is my favorite song on Kill the Moonlight. The first couple of times through, it seems strikingly unremarkable compared to "The Way We Get By," but repeated listenings reveal a subtle structural and melodic genius. First of all, it's the story of a school bully. The melody of the verse hovers in a tense relationship to the muted guitars behind it, and the tension holds until the third verse, which opens with a line that descends down a major scale. Satisfaction is delayed, and the song is three minutes and fifteen seconds of uneasily riding nerves.

See, this is the kind of thinking I get into when a band really gets under my skin. I've tried to watch it as it happens, but it's so hard to tell. Sometimes I listen through an entire album, and nothing really hooks into me. But then, magically, at the end of the disc, I need to go back and start it again. Building Better Bombs' Freakout Squares was like that for me. Something sticks, is the thing, on albums that are going to turn out to be favorites. A melody in a chorus. Something the drums do.

I probably view these things too piecemeal for my own good. I come from a background of being a musician, so sometimes it's the little musical things that I latch onto, or just the way an album sounds. That's the way it was with Grizzly Bear's Yellow House. Right from the first moments of the first track, the feel that the band imbued the album with is astounding. You can feel the floorboards in the titular house, the glass in the windows, and the Atlantic Ocean washing up drowsily on the beach outside. Behind it, a forest stretches back up a hill, lights floating in it. Sure, maybe someone else gets something completely different from the album, but I can't believe that it won't hit an open-minded listener as redolent of something, and that's an achievement.

So I can say, most of the time, why I think this band or that band is worth your time to check out, but when it comes to how I first discovered that, I feel like Darcy. I was in the middle before I knew it had begun.

First Judas Priest, then video games, now ... emo?

You might as well blame music

I first heard about this from Steve Seel on the Current, and you can go ahead and file it under ridonkulous. Ah well, emo was always kind of a bullshit name anyways, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure what's generally considered the first emo band, Rites of Spring from D.C., predates the Internet actually, and I always think of the good "emo" stuff as being from the late '90s, i.e. Jets to Brazil, The Promise Ring, etc.

The term "emo" has obviously taken on a different connotation nowadays. For instance, a whole lot of shirts over at Threadless are what I would now call "emo." This one, say. And I used to get a lot of CDs that were covered in blackface fonts and had a lot of black and a lot of red and maybe some silver hits, and these were often considered "emo." When exactly did emo go from being cute little Davey von Bohlen and the boys in The Promise Ring to being My Chemical Romance? It's weird, because stuff like The Get Up kids and Promise Ring always seemed to have the straightforwardness of punk, but stripped of all desire to change the world, acknowledging that it was hard enough just to change ourselves. Somehow this got all bound up a kind of dark, black, gothic thing, somewhere between Thursday and Taking Back Sunday. Ha. That's a days of the week joke.

Anywho, it hardly needs to be said that Salt Lake City is off its rocker. Spurs in 5, I say.

CD Review: Digitata :: II Daggers

Digitata
II Daggers
Totally Gross National Product

You could take a look at the component parts of Digitata and think you know what's up: Female vocalist, Rhodes keyboard, squiggly electronics plus live drums equals breathlessly slick electro, right? Not quite. While Maggie Morrison's voice is capable of swooping nimbly from a hushed croon to a catty yowl, she's neither as dispensable as the guest vocalists on most trip-hop tracks, nor as front and center in the mix as all those electro divas with one name (Annie, Kylie, etc.). Instead, her vocals ride in lockstep with Ryan Olson's digital manipulations and Drew Christopherson's crackingly live drums. That duo's done time as the rhythm section of art-hoppers Mel Gibson and the Pants, and it shows. The texture of the album as a whole is kind of smooth peanut butter to MG & the Pants' extra chunky.

The first proper track, "Bangin' Jessica Alba," has been up for streaming on their MySpace page for a while now, but it's an entirely different animal when it makes its way out of quality stereo speakers, and not the shitty little ones on a laptop. What the track has to do with movie star and newly-minted Golden State Warriors fan Alba is anyone's guess, but the groove is certainly thick enough to bang whomever it chooses. The title track that follows is even more darkly menacing and the interweaving components of the song (a skittering flute-like triplet, a pulsing and distorted bass, Morrison's bell-like Rhodes chords) do their best to stay out of the way of the beat's thundering stride. It's not all menacing bass and pounding drums, though. "Marinos Amores" is almost breezy--Morrison's yearning vocals are drawn out over a pastoral backdrop that builds into a slow burn by the song's end.

In a uniformly solid album, though, the two standouts are "Digitata 4 Ever" and "Enter the Palace." The first's hyperkinetic and breathless pace stops up short in the chorus, creating a yawning gap that only makes what surrounds it sound more urgent. And the second features Ryan Olcott (of Mystery Palace, hence the title, I'm guessing) as a male counterpart to Morrison, and the pairing is perfect. Olcott's icy and ghostly vocals seem to grow from the electronics, while Morrison's have just a bit more flint and spark, and are grounded in the woodier tone of the Rhodes. It's most obvious on "Enter the Palace," but that intersection of organic and electronic, analog and digital, is the fulcrum around which Digitata teeters, and II Daggers provides ample evidence that it's a crossroads with a lot of directions to explore.

Buy it from Totally Gross National Product.

Digitata play Wed., May 30 at the Turf Club with Pit er Pat, Mystery Palace and Priestbird. 9:30 p.m. $5. 21+. Corner of University and Snelling Aves., St. Paul. 651.647.0486. turfclub.net. Check out Digitata's MySpace page for more info.

The confusing circumstances of Hockey Night's breakup

My boy Chuck Terhark (Can I say he's my boy? I think so.) over at City Pages reported this week that Hockey Night broke up. A long time ago, apparently, and that was news to some of the members as well, it seems. Here's Chuck's story:

The Hockey Night calls in the Zamboni

This just in: The Hockey Night split up. Two months ago.

News of the local indie-rock quintet's demise would have broken the hearts of fans, especially since the band was rumored to be on the brink of signing a major contract with DFA Records, an imprint partly run by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy. Except that news never got out. Even the band members were sketchy on the details after it happened.

"We did a really bad job of communicating with each other," says drummer Alex Achen. "It was dudes talking. You know how dudes talk to each other. They're terrible at it."

Then, unbeknownst to the band, the music website Daytrotter.com issued a statement from Paul Sprangers, the group's founder and lead singer, making the breakup official.

"We were operating under that indie-rock idea where it was fun and everybody's buddies," the website quoted Sprangers as saying. "We just want to do it right and we couldn't get things done."

The post went on to say that Sprangers and Scott Wells, Hockey Night's other guitarist, were still signing with DFA. Almost immediately, the message board on Modernradio.com—frequented by Hockey Night members and fans—exploded with criticism, much of it accusing Sprangers and Wells of firing the other three members of the band in order to hog the glory of the major label. The separation was especially underhanded, posters sniffed, because Achen, Sprangers, and Wells had gone to high school together and were supposed to be best friends. As one poster, who calls himself Coach, wrote, "That's integrity my friends, spelled c-o-c-k-s-u-c-k-e-r-s."

Achen admits that the breakup was hard at first, but he looks at the situation with considerably less ire than those anonymous message-board posters. "It wouldn't be inaccurate to say I felt kind of betrayed," he says delicately. "But I don't begrudge Paul and Scott. I would have liked to remain in the band, but there were ills. We weren't being productive."

Neither Scott Wells nor Paul Sprangers responded to CP's requests for comment.

Achen, who says he loved playing in the band but couldn't stand its name, prefers to remain positive. "Hey, at least I'm not in a band called 'the Hockey Night' anymore."

It's too bad it had to end like that. Hockey Night put out one of my favorite albums of 2005, Keep Guessin', and contributed a great track to the one Twin Town High compilation I was involved in. I guess I learned recently the hard way that things usually end badly--if they weren't bad, they wouldn't end, right? So cheers to Hockey Night for a good run, and I hope everybody invovled keeps making great music, one way or another.

Andrew Bird :: Armchair Apocrypha :: Making the album with Ben Durrant

Ben Durrant runs Crazy Beast Studio in Minneapolis and has recorded local artists from Dosh to Roma di Luna, but last year, he began to work with Chicago-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird after Bird began working with Martin Dosh as a duo. His last album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, was something of a breakout hit for Bird, who first came to prominence as a member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and later as the leader of Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. He's a notoriously restless and genre-devouring musician, a virtuoso violinist, a mellifluous and sometimes acid-tongued singer and certainly a decent enough guitarist. When all the diverse elements of his repertoire are combined with a nimble talent for looping parts and harmonies, Bird becomes a virtual one-man band, and Dosh brings many of the same abilities to the table. Translating all this work from a live duo into a full studio album was Durrant's task, and I recently got to sit down and talk with him about his part in making Bird's latest album, Armchair Apocrypha, and his general approach to recording.

Signal Eats Noise: How did you get hooked up with Andrew Bird?

Ben Durrant: It was totally because of Dosh. I don't remember how it first happened. They had been here after tour and went and did a couple songs at Third Ear [Studios, owned by Tom Herbers] and they were still just trying to figure out where and what and what kind of songs and how they were going to work together for recording purposes. So he had told Andrew about working at both places, and I got a call from his manager one day and they wanted to do, like, two days to see how it would go. Martin [Dosh] told me that he's kinda ... not fickle, because fickle wouldn't be the right word ... decisive about what he likes and doesn't like. Then [the manager] was telling me the stories about how, with the last record [The Mysterious Production of Eggs], they had done it three times and scrapped it and started over. So I was thinking, we'll see how it goes, but it probably won't be a match.

But we did "Fiery Crash" first, which is kind of loop-based, so it was sort of along the lines of something that Martin and I would've done on one of his albums, and we just ended up clicking pretty good. A lot of it was that we personally clicked well, too. Liked a lot of the same kind of stuff when we were talking about music. So we did those two days and it ended up going well, so they came back for another five days in a few weeks. All along, you didn't really know--it certainly wasn't one of those things like, we're gonna do these 14 songs. It was very much a just-keep-going, see-which-things-work thing. In the end, most of it worked out really well. There are pieces from different places and people, which made it kind of tricky, within the same song, to meld different places, different people playing different instruments, kind of different songs, but in the end it all jived.

SEN: So there was stuff that had been recorded other places that you then had to mix with stuff that you were recording?

BD: In some cases. "Heretics" was the main one. That one, the drums were done in Chicago with his other drummer. I don't know if that was done before any of this other stuff--I'm not sure of the order of things. And I think they did the bass at Third Ear and then I got the tracks for that. On that one in particular, nothing was labeled. The drums were amazing sounding, but I didn't know what any mic was. I think it was like 20 drum tracks and no idea what any of them were. The left side of the room? An overhead? That one was nuts. "Armchairs" was another one that was a shared one. Most of the basic tracks on that one were from Third Ear. Then we did the vocals and guitars and some of that sort of stuff. I don't think, in the end when I listen to it, it doesn't seem like, that was this and this was this. There's enough mixing of things that it seems unified.

SEN: Well, it seems like it has a sonic identity that's cohesive. Sometimes you hear albums--you know Feist?--Feist's first album had 12 tracks that sounded like they were recorded at eight different places because they were all approached so differently. Armchair Apocrypha seems like it has a unity of purpose to it. Is going from place to place way that he had worked before? Is that his general way of doing things?

BD: It seems like it. Mostly just from hearing stories about the last one. I don't know if it's restlessness or trying to get the right sort of vibe for a particular song--whether that's a different place or a different space, I'm not sure, or people--he definitely seems to be someone who really absorbs the people that he's playing with and the people that are around him. For better or for worse. It seems like he can definitely get ... if he gets in a bad mood or he feels like the takes aren't good, he can definitely get [to feeling like] everything sucks. So, from my standpoint, definitely a chunk of this whole thing was to get him to do his best. To feel like he was doing his best, to get him comfortable. I think a lot of that happened because we jived pretty well and when it wasn't working out, it would be OK.

I think that had a lot to do with him moving around to different places, especially with that last one, because I looked at the credits for that and it was like, Whoa. Every song was different places, although I think in the end David [Boucher] mixed all of it, and he obviously did a great job of making it all seem pretty cohesive. It didn't seem as crazy as you'd think it would be.

SEN: Well, I think the role of the person who's running the boards--especially if someone's particularly sensitive to it--has such a huge effect on the album, because ultimately I feel like albums are a collection of little things. You might have an idea about some big thing, but it's going to be made up of all these little choices and little decisions you make. If you have somebody who's attuned to those things--I've always had to work in situations where you go in and do five tracks or ten tracks and then you're done, because I haven't had the luxury to do it any other way. But, if you've got somebody who wants to make sureeverything's right before they proceed to the next step, then you've gotta have the right people working around you.

So did he come to you with distinct ideas about where he wanted things to go, or did he just feel it out as they progressed? It seems like when you've got somebody who can do so much live by themselves--I mean, by himself he's a whole band, and then you bring in Marty, who's by himself a whole band. You've got two guys like that--is that a lot different than working with somebody who just has one perspective from one instrument?

BD: Oh yeah. On a given song, he had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to approach laying down that song. It wasn't like he had a road map, but it seemed like in a given song, there's a pretty good idea of at least the basic elements of what was going to be there and how they would do it. Would it start with Martin doing a loop? Or was it live drums and he plays guitar and sings? Some of them started with him on the guitar and then the drums came afterwards. Almost every song is done in a completely different way. Overall, he had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to do it, or between the three of us, we would sort of figure out what seemed like the right feel for that particular song, but again, a lot of it sort of morphed along the way and kind of took on the collective identity of all the people that were working on it and along the way it got more streamlined as it went.

The earlier [songs] were still sort of--not only were they [Bird and Dosh] figuring out how they played together, but also how they were going to record together, and we were figuring out how we were going to work together also. So some of the earliest ones, in the end, were the hardest because they took the longest to figure out. Some came together incredibly fast. Like "Simple X": I think we did that from end-to-end in like an hour and a half. The lyrics, I think he wrote really fast. Another funny thing is that there's a line in there about "scattered about from hell to breakfast? My friend--that's a saying he uses all the time and I used that in the course of a conversation that day, talking about all our crap spread around the studio. And he just looked at me and said, "What did you just say?" And I told him and what it meant and everything and he said, "That's the weirdest sounding phrase I've ever heard," and sure enough, he drops it into the song. As we got more in tune to how to approach things, it got a lot faster.

SEN: Aside from Marty, there are a lot of other local musicians on there--Haley Bonar and other people. Did you work with them on that stuff or did their tracks come separate?

BD: Yeah, they came here. The Haley things, he had a pretty good idea of which ones he was going to use her on because I think she had sang on a lot of those songs on their tour, because she had opened for him. Chris [Morrissey, bassist], I think it was the same kind of deal because he was touring with Haley at the time. He didn't play with Andrew, but Andrew knew who he was. Jeremy [Ylvisaker] totally happened by accident. We went to see Haley at the Cedar Cultural Center and Redstart opened [Ylvisaker's band with Wendy Lewis, Mike Lewis, Greg Lewis and Martin Dosh] and we got there right at the end of their set and they were playing one of their real pastoral kind of tunes and Jeremy was playing fingerstyle electric. We'd been working on "Scythian Empires" at the time, and that was one where he wanted to add fingerstyle guitar and he had laid down a good fingerstyle part that worked pretty well, but then when we went to that show, he was like, "I love that; I have to work with that guy." He went back to Chicago with some rough mixes of things, knowing that we wanted to do something on that one song. So when [Bird] came back, Jeremy laid that on there and did some other things that were on songs that didn't get on there, but again, [Ylvisaker's] one of those people that, musically, they hit it off and next thing you know he's in the band and playing on Letterman.

SEN: It seems right, because that community that he's slotted in with here is a group of people who seem very well-suited to what he does. it just seems like a great match with Marty and Jeremy and theRedstart people and Fog. It seems like it a really good fit.

BD: And Andrew plays on one of Fog's tunes on their next thing and I think that he used a loop of one of [Andrew] Broder's things for one of the dance--he just recorded some stuff for a dance performance thing--and I guess he used a couple of Broder's loops for that. So he's become pretty intertwined with that group of people, which totally makes sense. He's just kind of a sponge--he definitely picks up, musically and personally, on the feel of people, so I can totally see why those three [Bird, Dosh and Ylvisaker] fit together so well.

SEN: And for you recording is that the best way for you to work? To just react to what's needed? I know that some engineers have processes and ways to go about things; how do you approach it?

BD: I don't really know how to answer that other than to say that I'm not someone who has a process. Other than that, I couldn't really tell you, but I'm definitely not that.

SEN: What's your background like for recording? Did you study it as a discipline?

BD: No, no. Very much came at it from being a frustrated recording musician, probably like you. The few times I got to record it was 6-8 hours jamming everything in and then you'd move on and you aren't very happy with it. So for me, it was four-tracking to try and record things I was working on and then getting a little Mackie mixer and kind of never really intending to anything all that serious with it and then just gradually, you buy more crap and do more things and you end up somewhere else.

But no, I never studied or anything like that and don't really care to. I'm not all that interested in the technical side of things. It's definitely more coming at it from the musician side of things, and I'm more interested in that. I think, again, that's one of the reasons that we got along, because everybody's had the engineers that are like, "We have to redo this because this moved." That's just not my thing at all. We like the same sort of sounds, and a lot of times I'd play things and dick around with stuff when people are gone. If they like it great, if they don't, fine. So that was part of it, too. Throwing stuff at it and seeing what worked.

SEN: Well, I've done some home recording stuff and I always liked getting the chance to just mess with stuff. I've read some books and things and got a couple tips on starterEQ things, but the exploration of it is nice. A lot of times, you get people who come out of learning to be an engineer and think they're an expert. Well, yeah, you can turn out the same thing that somebody else who went to that school can, but can you do something interesting with it?

BD: Yeah, I'm very averse to that kind of thinking. Most stuff I just don't like the way it sounds; it sounds boring. Or it sounds--I remember when we were getting the mastering done on this CD, which, the first time through we ended up sending it back because we didn't think it quite was right, but I remember telling the person that we wanted it to sound good on the radio, but to not sound radio-y, you know what I mean? There's just this certain kind of radio-y sound that I personally hate. And other people, that's the deal. But that's not my cup of tea.

SEN: Yeah--the album's got such a nice, warm--warm is the kind of thing that when I listen to stuff, that's a lot of what I like to get out of things: a sense of place about it, a character, and that warmth, which is sort of antithetical to what you hear on radio-ready stuff. It's crisp and clean, cold. Here's the guitar, here's the kick drum.

BD: I remember afterwards listening to [Armchair Apocrypha] and thinking that it didn't jump at you in the same way that Eggs does. Both the songs and the way that it was done. I remember sitting down and listening to it all the way through and thinking that it doesn't say, "Pay attention to me," in the same way that that one does. And that was all right. At least for my way of thinking, that it rewards sitting down and listening to in its entirety. Ideally a couple of times and that then you really start to get the layering of things. And I think it's really sort of comforting if you can do that. But if you're wanting it to bonk, it just doesn't. Some of the songs are that way, but I think even in the way it's mixed, it's maybe not as glossy and that's me, I guess.

SEN: It seems like a good match for his stuff, because I know that I had at least one Bowl of Fire CD and I'd heard stuff on and off, and it never really totally grabbed me. I saw him at the Pitchfork Music Festival two years ago and that was the first time where I realized--he's an amazing singer and I got more of an appreciation for the looping thing, but then it takes time. Despite the fact that his stuff is really pretty--you know, it's not difficult--he's got a great voice, his stuff is a little elusive. It's not the type of music that's gonna jump up and grab you and say, "This is what I am," and I think matching those things is a good thing for his stuff.

BD: Exactly, because he's a little elusive, too. It just makes sense that his music would be also. I think that's the same reason why he changes stuff live so much, because he gets bored with it. He wants to keep it interesting for him because I think if he's not interested--and this was true for recording, too--he's got to be in the right mind frame to give it up. And seeing him live, too, you can tell--at least I can--when he's in the groove or not.

SEN: Is it strange for you to have done an album where it's getting so much attention? Where you can read reviews of it all over the web and in major publications? Have you done anything that was like that before?

BD: No. It's really strange. I wouldn't have at all been surprised if it didn't get very good reviews. I think I personally was prepared for that and I think he was, too. Just because it is pretty different--there's guitars and it's in some ways kind of more indie and in other ways is a little more accessible. Whatever, it's hard to describe. But I was prepared for a lot of people being like, "What's with the guitar? Why isn't there more violins or whatever?" I hadn't listened to it in six months; I think that was part of it, too. When we got done, I was like, "It's done; I don't want to obsess about it." Didn't want to think about it, and how it would end up getting reviewed. It is what it is. It just represents this period of six months and, at least for me, a lot of work. So yeah, it's been wild, but it doesn't affect me day-to-day. It's been interesting ... and my mom is excited.

SEN: Going back to working with Dosh and Ylvisaker, it's great to hear that he's so able to be influenced by what happens around him. I think that's a great quality--it can be a difficult quality, like you said, but it's really good to be able to have so that you can constantly change what you're doing and he's already been like that through his career.

BD: That was definitely the most fun thing about it: He's totally not afraid to just scrap things. There's different versions of most of that stuff, some of which started out a lot more like the older stuff. Whether it's from different environments or Marty or me--you know, I like distorted guitars--most of the stuff on there is him playing my old Jag[uar]. It just kind of lends itself to a certain thing and next thing you know, "Dark Matter" is more that kind of song. There's another version that was more like the old one, and it's fun with people like that that are not afraid of trying things different ways, whether it's new instruments or new sounds. Speed, slowing down, all that stuff is fun, because most people are so ...

SEN: Well, I think with most people you get attached to a certain sound you have an idea for and you get so tenacious with it, you don't want to let it go. It's tough, it's one of those upper level things about making creative stuff that you can't just teach somebody to be able to give up stuff like that. You either need to be like that or just sort of acquire through experience that that's the best way to work. You're never going to go study music and have them tell you to just give up on an arrangement and do something else. It's such a meta way to think about this--how do you think about thinking about this stuff? To have somebody with that ability is great.

BD: Yeah, the idea of not being that precious about things and to just do it this whole different way was pretty neat. But then there were things that got scrapped that I still don't think should have gotten scrapped and there was this one song ("Sycophants") that was totally one of my favorites, that got scratched and sort of replaced with another one, "Cataracts." When I saw him in New York I told him, "Taking that off there was a bad idea, that was a mistake," and he said, "Yeah, in hindsight we would have cut that one and kept the other one on there." Then there was another one--and I still bug him about this, too--another version of "Sparrows" that's completely different and super-sparse and that's still my favorite of all the stuff and it didn't end up on there because they wanted something a little more upbeat. Not that I don't like the one that's on there; I like that one a lot.

Building Better Bombs Feature in City Pages

Building Better Bombs feature right here, yo.

I had a CD review of the Bad Plus up in there a couple weeks back, but it was a treat to get to do a whole feature on Bombs, who are aboslutely ruining my life with Freak Out Squares right now. I need to listen to it all the time. And oh yeah, A-List for local rapper Golden.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I'll be putting up a feature on Andrew Bird.

Veronica Mars cancelled

All right, apparently I'm late to this party, but it's shitty that the CW pulled the plug on Veronica Mars. Apparently, creator Rob Thomas had pitched a possible story jump arc for next season which would leave the rest of Veronica's college career to the imagination, and jump forward to Veronica's first year at the FBI academy. Unfortunately, it looks like they didn't go for it.

A shame really, that we're not going to get to see Veronica at the Academy, but I have to say the college thing wasn't going so well. Havrilesky is right: Veronica's better than finding the lost football playbook. When the show was based in high school, it was tapping into the long line of great high school shows like Freaks and Geeks and, to some extent, The Wonder Years. The drama on those shows could be ramped up so high because we forgive teenagers their trespasses into the realm of hysterics because they are, first and foremost, the most solipsistic creatures on the planet. Rob Thomas crafted the stories for the first two years out of a fantastic blend of real world tragedy (Lilly's murder, the bus crash) and social anxiety (Veronica's balancing act at Neptune High's periphery, her everyday problems with relationships), conflating and equating the two in the process, and you believed it. Thomas was very much in touch with the way high schoolers have this sense that everything happens to them, and are never very good at telling the difference between a real disaster and their own problems.

Witness the way Logan stumbled again and again into trouble without ever learning his lesson. When he was a senior in high school, it was almost endearing to the viewers, even as it was alternately threatening and seductive to Veronica. Now that he's in college, though? His puppy dog eyes and inability to man up have worn thin.

And then there's Veronica herself, a character in the model of Jimmy McNulty from the Wire in that she's amazingly good at her job--taking her job as sleuthing, getting revenge and doing it all while looking great--and absolutely abysmal at personal relationships. She keeps being drawn to the bad boys, and even when she isn't--that is, when she was with Duncan or during her current dalliance with Piz--she's clearly ill-suited to them. It's a masterful tone that's been struck in the series: she's a classic perfectionist who's completely out of her element when forced to yield to someone else's needs and desires.

If you haven't yet, you should really check out the series on DVD. Season 1is maybe the better of the two, although Season 2does have a couple of the best episodes, like the one where Wallace and Veronica visit Hearst College.

To make this at least somewhat music-related, I should mention that VM has always done a great job with music. Britt Daniel from Spoon appeared as a cafe customer who sings a karaoke version of "Veronica" by Elvis Costello and they've also championed (albeit slyly) the music of Austin's Cotton Mather, a band that put out one absolutely killer album called Kontikiback in 1997. It's just about the best slice of Beatles-tinged indie psychedlia you could imagine, with Robert Harrison's lyrical world populated by strange characters like Aurora Bori Alice and places like the Church of Wilson. They first popped up in VM at the end of the first season, where their song "Lily Dreams On" played over the last scene, and then they popped up again two weeks ago. Paul Rudd appeared as a quasi-washed up rocker who was still peddling the songs written by his dead bandmate when he came to Hearst College to play a show. Of course, the tapes he used as backing tracks (well, they were CDs, actually) were stolen and Veronica had to find them. When she did, they included a disc labeled "New Crap," and when she put it on, what should come out but a re-recorded version of "My Before and After" by--you got it--Cotton Mather.

Robert Harrison is currently playing with a group called Future Clouds and Radar, and I just got their CD last week. Expect a review soon.

[sigh] I'll miss Vron-vron. Personally, I think it's all the fault of that ridiculous outfit they made Kristen Bell wear for the promos.

Housecleaning

I spent a couple hours today going back through all the posts on here and labeling them in some kind of way that makes sense, so now you can move your eyes slightly to the right and see a list of topics like CD Reviews, Show Reviews and my personal favorite, Uncategorizable. Those are the things that weren't completely off-topic (that'd be Non-Music Related), but nor were they strictly related to a particular album or show. Hopefully, this will make everything just way easier to deal with.

Coming soon: review of II Daggers by Digitata and a review of the Arcade Fire show in Chicago last Saturday, if I can ever figure out what I have to say about them, precisely.

Tapes 'n' Tapes to play Urban Outfitters

Hey, just got word that hometown heroes Tapes 'n' Tapes will be playing at the Urban Outfitters on Hennepin in Uptown on June 5 at 7 p.m. as a benefit for the Current. It's all part of a campaign called Free Yr Radio (which means, I believe, Free Your Radio) that's been mounted by Urban Outfitters and Toyota (?!) to support non-commercial radio stations across the country. I love the Current, guys, but you might want to consider some non-commercial radio stations whose coffers are a little less full. I'm just saying. Still though, we're talking the lesser of two goods here.

Tapes 'n' Tapes are riding a wave of sponsorship deals after landing on the soundtrack to 2K Sports' MLB 2K7 and headlining the national tour package put together to promote said soundtrack. You might have heard of a couple of the other bands on the soundtrack: Nirvana, The Pixies and others make appearances. I guess Nirvana weren't available for the tour.

So now they're going to be playing a hometown shindig at UO that's co-sponsored by Toyota. Apparently, you can also win a car or something. Details (as well as tickets you can print out for free entry to the show) are available over at freeyrradio.com.

Arcade Fire :: Chicago Theater :: 05.19.07

A SIGNAL EATS NOISE SPECIAL ROAD TRIP REPORT FROM CHICAGO

Before Arcade Fire's sold out show at the Chicago Theater last Saturday (the second of three such shows), my father asked me how they got to be so big.

"They made a great record," I replied.

"Well, making a great record isn't enough on its own to get a band this kind of success, right?" he replied. And he's right. Plenty of amazing albums languish on shelves, still shrink-wrapped, and lots of mediocre records sell millions. Arcade Fire certainly benefited from rave reviews on Pitchfork and other sites, and the buzz that came trotting along behind, but it sure doesn't hurt that they're a transcendent live band, the kind of group that has acolytes instead of fans.

As we found our way to our seats (sort of just stage right of center, about 20 rows back), openers Electrelane were working their way through a set of noisy and largely instrumental rock. General consensus was that the British quartet of women looked like a band straight out of the mid- to late-'90s, an association reinforced by their music, which shared roots with Sleater Kinney. Their set showed flashes of inspiration--Arcade Fire singer Win Butler couldn't say enough good things about them--but the Chicago Theater's a big space, the mix was not the greatest, and they just didn't seem to connect to the audience, although they were definitely warmly received. They were certainly interesting enough to warrant a closer look at their new album, No Shouts, No Calls.

As the lights came up and we found the other members of our party, it became clear what a phenomenal space the Chicago is. I've been to a handful of theater shows in my day--Sigur Ros, New Pornographers, and Belle and Sebastian recently, Robert Cray and, yup, Spin Doctors--and they're the best. You get a seat, you're usually guaranteed a pretty good sight line, and I'm pretty sure that bands love them.

The stage is strewn with instruments, including pipes from a pipe organ suspended from the rafters, and more amps than you can shake a stick at. A set of circular screens are arrayed around its edge, and a line of flexible lights attached to poles stand at the front of the stage.

After a mercifully short wait, the lights drop and Arcade Fire take the stage, launching immediately into "Keep the Car Running" from their latest, Neon Bible. There are 10 people up there, including two horn players, one with a bass clarinet and one with a french horn, and they hit the ground running. Win Butler, sporting the latest in 19th c. strongman fashion, manifests very little of a frontman mentality, and yet he's clearly leading the band. Like their countrymen (and women) Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire are masters at broadcasting an all-in-the-family vibe from the stage, and the audience responded immediately.

By their third song, "Haiti," from Funeral,it was clear that they were playing each song as if it were their last. A lot of bands throw themselves into their music, but it can often come off as spectacle. Arcade Fire, however, made it feel, for lack of a better word, like church. There were plenty of stage dressings, including fiber optic cameras mounted around the stage that would send fisheye images of the band to be projected on the circular screens and on the curtains at the back of the stage, but none of the lights or the video took over the power of the music.

The set was drawn in equal parts from Funeral and Neon Bible, and, as is often the case, the live setting erased a lot of the distinction between the two records. Funeral may have been more directed, concerned primarily with the transfer of responsibility from one generation to the next, and Neon Bible might sound bigger and bolder, but it's clear that even if their second effort hasn't been lauded in the same way as their first, they're still mining a rich vein of material.

Personally, I couldn't get past Regine Chassagne's onstage antics. Dolled up like a cross between Madonna or Cyndi Lauper circa 1984, and dancing awkardly, drawing attention to herself constantly, she came off like a Canadian Bjork, which is to the real Bjork as the Canadian dollar is to the American. However, she kicked some serious ass on the drums, especially on "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)", and her vocal performance was uniformly great, although especially on "Haiti." Learning that Chassagne (who's married to Win Butler, in case you didn't know) was born and raised in Haiti definitely makes the song resonate more deeply, and it also nicely complexifies the French bits of their songs, since the band is not just French-Canadian, but also Haitian. In any case, I can see that she's clearly a love her or hate her proposition, and a necessary counterweight in the band, so that's a push.

The rest of the band was going absolutely apeshit by the time they closed the set proper with the one-two punch of "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" and "Rebellion (Lies)". Tim Kingsbury was tossing a mic stand with a megaphone mounted on it high into the air again and again, and when they came back out for the encore ("My Body is a Cage" and "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)"), Kingsbury and Richard Reed Parry had begun to hit anything they had handy--the stage, the monitors, an a la carte crash cymbal. The crowd was itching for "Wake Up," but it was not to be on this night.

Some shows are nearly overwhelming, displaying the true power not only of the band performing, but of all music everywhere. Arcade Fire did make a great record, and then made at least a very good one, but it's clear from their live show that they've tapped into much more than just a successful formula for crafting wordless sing-along hooks and ramshackle narratives of loss and growth--they've made their own world, miraculously connecting the dots from '70s David Bowie to '80s Bruce Springsteen to the mossy glory of Neutral Milk Hotel. The trick is that they've made music that makes this path seem obvious and natural, even when no one ever really followed the path before.

It's a popular opinion that there's nothing truly new to say with music, that the borders are set and it's getting harder--if not impossible--to be original. But maybe there's still space in between to say the old things in a new way, to re-energize the old forms in bright new ways. Arcade Fire are living, breathing proof that tradition doesn't have to be an albatross and that the power of song and performance are enduring.

I caught Kyle Matteson, who runs arcadefire.net, at the show, so I'm sure he'll have a full setlist up over there pretty soon.

'Round the Dial - 05.16.07

When I was music editor at Pulse (Remember that? Last week?), Tom Hallett and I had our issues, but they were mostly caused by me being stuck between him and his check, which was handed down from on high, so naturally, he had to be dogged in his pursuit of funds.

And lord knows we don't share the same taste in music and don't have the same opinions on a lot of topics, but over the almost two years I read and edited his column every week, I gained a lot of respect for the man, not least of all for his ability to keep up a weekly column for nearly all of Pulse's 10-year tenure in the local print media. He always got the same amount, no matter how much he wrote, but he never shied away from turning in 2500 or 3000 word columns when he was really fired up about something.

The point is, he and I have had our differences, but I made it a policy to publish Hallett's full 'Round the Dial column on the web every week, even when I had to trim here and there to get it on the page in the print edition. It seems this practice has been discontinued, because here's a link to Hallett's full final column for the final print edition of Pulse, as he wanted it.

'Round the Dial - 05.16.07

We moved!

Sorry I haven't been able to get more content up here over the past couple of days, but I've been dealing with some techincal issues related to the blog, plus my brother graduated from college this past weekend, so I was a little caught up with that.

So quick: You know what are some still awesome albums you may have forgotten about? God Fodderby Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Relationship of Commandby At the Drive-In, and Blue Johnby Big John Patton.

I'm not saying run out and buy these-- okay, I am, but I'll be posting stuff about these albums soon and also a new CD review or two within the next couple of days.

We're moving!

I'm going to leave things as they are for the moment, but next Wednesday, I'm going to be switching some technical stuff around with the site. The upshot of this is that pulsetcmusic.blogspot.com will no longer be the underlying address of the site-- signaleatsnoise.com will still work, as will pulsemusicblog.com, at least for the time being. Heck, signaleatsnoise.org will work. So if there's anybody out there who has this bookmarked (as opposed to on their RSS feed, which, really, that's what you should be doing), if something looks funky next week, just try signaleatsnoise.com, and it'll get you there.

Severing ties ...

Well, I was just officially fired from Pulse of the Twin Cities, ostensibly for converting this blog from the Pulse Music Blog to Signal Eats Noise, which is patently ludicrous. The Pulse has one print edition left that's supposedly going to come out next Wednesday, and I'll be impressed if it happens.

I don't have any interest in tearing anybody down over this, so I'd just like to thank the great people I worked with there and all the fantastic writers I got to work with during my time at the paper. I'd also like to offer you a bit of advice: when Pulse comes knocking looking for writers for their new online venture, don't write for them. After two years of hard work above and beyond the call of what I was hired to do, with one week left before I could leave on good terms, Ed Felien decided to can me for trying to walk away with my own body of work, which he claimed he "owned." I offered him the pulsemusicblog.com name, which he declined, saying I could have it and he wouldn't fight me over it. That's all I really wanted anyways, and now I can look forward to building this as its own entity.

Welcome, if I haven't said it already, to Signal Eats Noise.

We're getting the band back together

The rock reunion has long been the subject of scorn and ridicule, and for good reason. Jane's Addiction seemed to embody everything that was great about alternative music in the '90s while they were around: they were dark and depraved, but catchy and expansive. Daring, artsy, funny, devil-may-care-- and then, at the height of their popularity following the release of Ritual de lo Habitual and the first Lollapalooza tour, they broke up. Much as I knew I was going to miss them, I had to kind of admire them for going out on top.

And then they reformed for a reunion tour with Flea on bass because original bassist Eric Avery was the only with sense enough to leave their legacy alone. And Jane's Addiction is only one example in the endless parade of bands that are flogging their crusty reputations to make a buck.

But a really odd thing has been happening over the past few years: A handful of significant alternative bands from the '80s and '90s have been reforming and putting out records that, while perhaps not the classics that their early stuff is, are vibrant, current and excellent albums that deepen and refine their earlier efforts.

I could be wrong, but it seems like the trend really began with Wire, who put out the LP Send back in 2003, garnering a 7.5 from Pitchfork and even then only because they'd already released most of the album on two previous EPs.

Then came Mission of Burma, the Boston stalwarts who re-formed to put out OnOffOn, then arguably bettered that already solid comeback effort with last year's The Obliterati.

Now, just this past week, Dinosaur Jr's Beyond arrived in my box. This disc even looks like an old Dinosaur Jr record, complete with handwritten band name and title on the front cover. The album's also resolutely lo-fi, and it sounds like they J. Mascis and company picked up right where they left out.

Of course, I'm not hear to review Beyond, which will happen later when I've gotten more familiar with it, but rather to talk a little bit about what makes bands like Wire, Mission of Burma and Dino Jr able to come back to relevance (well, at least critical relevance) when Jane's Addiction put out Strays, which basically sucked.

Music fans of an older generation are enamored of pronouncing rock and roll dead. They point to things like classic rock songs in car commercials as a sign of the death of rebellion in rock and roll, as if that were what rock and roll were about. Now, I'm not going to argue that rock songs in commercials is a good thing per se, but I think we have to face facts and acknowledge that rock and roll stopped being rebellious a long long time ago, and consider the fact that it may just have grown up, and more gracefully than a lot of boomers have managed.

For groups like Wire, Mission of Burma and Dinosaur Jr, I really don't think rock was some kind of tool to be used against the man. For Wire, it was maybe a way to rail against the mores of upper class England. And for MOB and Dino Jr, it was maybe a way to carve out their own niches in New England (which, let me tell you, is harder than it looks), but I think these bands were primarily interested in the freedom granted them by the idea of being in a band, by the idea of making something personal into something they could share.

But I guess maybe I doubt that that separates them from Jane's Addiction. Again, we've circled back into a discussion of authenticity, which is something I'd generally like to avoid whenever possible. I don't believe my ideas about who's realer than who are very illuminating.

Maybe-- just maybe-- what lets a band hold on to whatever made them great in the first place is as elusive as what made them great. It probably works better for bands that were ahead of their time than bands that were distinctively of their time-- for instance, a lot of Jane's Addiction's stuff now sounds awfully tinny and metally and kind of bombastically huge in a way that hasn't held up very well, whereas Wire and MOB made albums in the early '80s that sound like they could have come out yesterday.

To continue down that line, I have little doubt that Fugazi could reform five years from now and put out a great record. I doubt the same could be said for Smashing Pumpkins.

I'm still working on it. Dinosaur Jr review to follow soon.

Signal Eats Noise media taster

So there's this fantastic little company here in the Twin Cities called Intelligent Media Platform. They're all about delivering great audio and video content that's curated by reputable websites like this one, and also The Bottle Gang, which is less than reputable, really, but I'm partially responsible for that.

ANYWAYS ... Signal Eats Noise's media taster is going to live over there on the sidebar to the right, but I'm also posting the wider version right here.



What's beautiful about this is that IMP has already worked with a lot of bands to put up free, downloadable content-- in fact, all the tracks that are on there right now I found in about ten minutes of initially setting this up last night. I'm particularly excited to have Grizzly Bear's version of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" up there. My plan is to try and bring you new content (local and national) that relates to the stuff I'm covering on the site. It might not always be the songs I'm talking about, but they'll always be great. I swear.

If you choose to download the full version of the player, which you can do by clicking download, then the version on your computer will be updated whenever the one online gets updated, plus you'll have the opportunity to buy music by these artists and to support creative endeavor, which is about the best thing you can do.

I'm brimming with joy.

Drive 105 to become Love 105

According to Chris Riemenschneider in a story in the Star Tribune, Drive 105 will be changing to Love 105, which wouldn't mean much, given Drive 105's middling brand of alternative rock, if it weren't for the fact that that means no more Homegrown on Sunday nights at 10 p.m. I had a great time during my tenure on the show as a co-host, and as guest host the couple of times I got to do it.

Homegrown, my hat's off to you, and may you land on your feet, whatever that means.

So at this point, in the last couple months, the Strib has cut 145 employees, the Pulse has ceased print publication, Jim Walsh got unceremoniously axed from City Pages, and now Homegrown's done?

Just what in God's name is the world coming to?

CD Review: Six Parts Seven

Six Parts Seven
Casually Smashed to Pieces
Suicide Squeeze Records

I see a lot of CDs, and this necessarily entails seeing a lot of crappy CDs. Red flags tend to include the following: blackletter typefaces, pictures of vikings and song titles like "Awaiting Elemental Meltdown." Things were not looking good for Casually Smashed to Pieces, the latest release from Ohio quartet-and-then-some Six Parts Seven, but I trust Suicide Squeeze, so in it went.

For a moment, I thought I had once again failed to remove the previous CD from the cut-rate CD boombox on my desk, creating an album sandwich up in there (it's happened), but no: "Conversation Heart" really does begin with a gently pulsing electric guitar motif that ably sets the tone. When it's joined by a banjo, the interplay of the parts sets in motion the model that will dominate the songs here: simple, well-crafted melodic lines will be spread across guitars, lovingly passed over to keyboards, and gently handed off to the sweetly yearning harmonies of a modest horn section. If you've come looking for messy, sprawling masses of orchestration, best look elsewhere. This is wallpaper music, and I mean that in the most generous way possible. Any given three seconds off this record could have been lifted out of the careful and crystalline confines of Sufan's Illinois, but as they cohere into entire mini-suites, they call to mind other products born of the Land of Lincoln, erstwhile Tortoise member Bundy K. Brown's Directions in Music and his later albums under the name Pullman.

I first heard Directions in Music under unusual circumstances. I was at an Indian restaurant in Los Feliz in Los Angeles back in 2000 or so with a small group of friends. A DJ (in a restaurant-- how L.A.!) was spinning instrumental rock music built from spare melodies and suspended chords, and it sounded, for lack of something more appropriately critical, magical. It was languorous and lush, beautiful in an understated way that eschewed sentiment. In short, a perfect soundtrack for a twentysomething's night out in a foreign town, and to someone who wasn't far removed from the snobbery of a degree in jazz performance, it came as a shock that you could even make music like this. That was Directions in Music, but Casually Smashed to Pieces could be an able understudy for the part.

Six Parts Seven display a great deal more intentionality than Brown's project. Where DIM often seemed willfully aimless, its improvisatory roots showing through when the music got away from the players a bit, CSTP simply bleeds careful planning. The songs blend gracefully into one another, drifting across dynamic shifts with a minimum of fanfare. Since the band began as a duo consisting of brothers Allen and Jay Karpinski on guitar and drums, respectively, it only makes sense that the compositions proceed forward from the guitars. "Confusing Possibilities" builds itself up around harmonics and stumblingly unresolved strums before revealing a rising-then-falling central riff composed of slippery hammer-ons and pull-offs. The stateliness of the arrangement presses up tightly against the casual charm of the execution, and the band works the pressure back and forth. The flesh and blood players behind the music are present throughout, revealing themselves through slightly muffed notes, the hum of tubes in amps (particularly noticeable on the very beginning of the opening track) and the barely audible click of effects kicking in. What makes "Confusing Possibilities" the highlight of the disc is the way it seems to draw to a close on a shimmering triplet guitar figure that goes from ornament to foundation as the song finds its legs once again. And then it happens again, the tempo slowing around that same figure, taking the song in yet another direction. The casual yet measured progression from idea to idea belies the tune's title, and this is when the album is at its best, holding your hand on the musical equivalent of a twilit, late-summer stroll.

The danger here, of course, is that an album of modest instrumental numbers is apt to come off as same-y, and that's a fair criticism of Six Parts Seven's approach. If you've spent a goodly amount of time digesting any of the other artists mentioned in this review so far, none of this album is going to come as a revelation. The best way to enjoy it is via a kind of middle distance focus that lets you absorb it without looking directly at it. Or better yet, drop it on someone who hasn't heard all those other bands yet, ideally at a hip Indian restaurant, where it might end up making him rethink his idea of what makes instrumental music interesting. It could happen.

A Hot Ticket retrospective ...

Standing now in the cockshut (and you're crazy if you think I'm not going to use that word every chance I get until the Pulse actually closes up the print edition on May 16) of Pulse's tenure on the local media scene, I thought it would be a good idea to comb through past Hot Tickets I've written and collect them in one spot for safekeeping. The beauty of Hot Tickets, which are the little blurbs we write about upcoming events in the front of Pulse each week, is that I tend to write up to four a week, and once they're written, I tend to forget all about them. As such, it was kind of fun to look back at these. Maybe you'll enjoy it, too. They're in reverse chronological order.

STEVE'S HOTTEST TICKETS

SATURDAY, APRIL 21
Missing Numbers CD Release Show
Turf Club
If there's a band at the end of the world, that band is probably Missing Numbers. Since their first album in 2004, this Jimmy Peterson (of Bellwether) project has broken and weathered from a spaciously unspooling classic rock outfit into a clattering rattle bag. In a slick, streamlined age, Missing Numbers' new disc, More Salt?, is defiantly hydraulic, steam-powered and rusty, grinding along on a shot of Morphine (thanks to the tenor and baritone saxes of Hall Sanders) and co-piloted by the ghost of Bone Machine-era Tom Waits. Layers of grime and distortion transform Peterson's voice into the calls of a carnival barker, and John Crist's drums sound like they've been replaced with the burnt out shells of Volkswagens and discarded gas stoves. Echoing voices drift through "Clean Living," Mike Derrick's slinkily frayed bassline anchors the handclap groove of "Unlucky Numbers," and "10,000 Tens" drifts through a smokey blue haze of beatnik-leaning poetry and free blowing sax, completing a central triptych that would be at home soundtracking a Jarmusch, Wenders or Lynch film. This is ghostly, burning stuff. With Rank Strangers, The Slats and Faux Jean. 9 p.m $5. 21+. Corner of University and Snelling Aves., St. Paul. 651-647-0486.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007
Grizzly Bear
7th Street Entry
I've long suspected that there's a perfect word out there to describe Grizzly Bear's aesthetic, and I think I've got it now: susurrating. I didn't make that up-- I swear. For a long time I was going with mossy, given the overgrown and organic sonic sprawl of last year's Yellow House, but mossy also suggests a kind of reticence, whereas I'm looking for something with a little more restlessness in it. Susurrating means "issuing soft noises," and that's what all the space around the music does on their record. Curtains gently rustle in drafts, chests rise and fall in loamy late-morning sleep and blades of grass flick to and fro the way they do when you get up real close to your lawn. Plus there's the onomatopoetic suggestion of a slurred, stuttery mumble in sussurating that captures tentative forward motion, forever arrested in mid-stumble. I missed them opening for TV on the Radio, a mistake I don't intend to repeat. With Portastatic and The Dirty Projectors. 8 p.m. $12. 21+. 29 N. 7th St., Mpls. 612-332-1775.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2006
Staying Home
Your House
Come on, admit it: New Year’s Eve is a disappointment nine times out of 10. I spent a good six years as a musician living by my brother’s motto: “Everyone has to have a gig New Year’s Eve.” Enough. I’m getting old, damnit, so here’s my recipe for a great New Year’s Eve: diminshed expectations. When I was growing up, my family took the opportunity of staying up late to watch a really long movie: for a few years it was “The Right Stuff,” then it was “Lawrence of Arabia.” Of course, these days, 153 minutes and 228 minutes (respectively) hardly constitute a long movie. Maybe you could watch all of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 10-part miniseries, where each part focuses on one of the Ten Commandments, “Decalogue.” That’s 550 minutes right there, and Stanley Kubrick called it the only masterpiece he could name that was made during his lifetime. Or how about every single episode of the woefully underrated “Freaks and Geeks?” It’s kind of like “The Wonder Years” if “The Wonder Years” were actually as good as you remember it being. Plus it features the wit and wisdom of everyone’s favorite lanky geek, Bill Haverchuck. And it will last you about 792 minutes. That’s probably what I’ll be doing; sitting on the couch with my fee-ance, some eggnog, maybe a glass of champagne, vicariously reliving my high school years through Lindsey and Sam Weir and turning in shortly after the big ball drops in Times Square. Admit it: you’re jealous. 8 p.m. - 12:15 a.m. Free. All Ages, 21+ to drink.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2006
Deftones
First Ave
The sublime, as a Romantic notion, concerns that which is terrifying and dangerous—think tornado—but which, through the remove of fiction, can be appreciated aesthetically for the very qualities that make it threatening. More than any other band out there today, the propulsively aggressive yet melodically angelic Deftones embody this grotesque beauty. “Kimdracula,” from their recently-released album Saturday Night Wrist, is a good example: Singer Chino Moreno whips from a hushed croon to towering falsetto to guttural howl and back again—it’s enough to give you whiplash, and that’s exactly the point. Since 2000’s White Pony, Deftones have milked that knife edge between the visceral and the ethereal, making forays into ambient textural territory and sound collaging. It’s not so much tied together as loosely bound by Moreno’s animalistic and sometimes violent imagery, all teeth, red leather and, yup, ball gags. For me, they occupy a strange oxbow in my musical taste; I listen to nothing else that’s even vaguely close to them in sound, aside from Japanese art-metal band Boris. Still, I’ll maintain my stance that they’re far more than just noise and fury signifying nothing: They’re an overwhelming amount of noise and fury signifying a vast and yawning emptiness—and it scares me, in the best way possible. 8 p.m. $20. 18+. 701 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2006
Timberwolves vs. Nuggets
Target Center
Nothing lasts forever, but I’m way more torn up inside than I expected to be at the thought that not only may Kevin Garnett soon be leaving for greener pastures, but that he actually needs to. Being a fan of a team is a messy business: I love the T’wolves, and I love KG, and for as long as I’ve been a fan, those two things have been synonymous. Thus was sportswriter Bill Simmons’ article in the Dec. 4 issue of ESPN the Magazine all the more painful for being right: Garnett is missing out on a chance to be recognized as one of the all-time greats if he stays here. I was there when the T’wolves came back in the last eight minutes of the fourth quarter against the Los Angeles Clippers last Saturday night, and I was momentarily buoyed by the win, re-energized by the resolve shown by a team notorious for phoning in fourth quarters, but it was ultimately as hollow a victory as a peaceful, romantic dinner in the middle of a failing relationship. I know what has to happen: KG has to leave and find his championship ring with another team (please don’t let it be the Lakers) and, in the end, I know it’s right. The Timberwolves’ playoff run in ’04 will forever stand second in my heart only to the Red Sox winning the championship that same year as the defining sports experience of my life (I was born in Massachusetts). While he’s still here, you better get over to the Target Center and see him in person. In case you’re not up on your T’wolves history, we hate the Denver Nuggets, and this one’s bound to be a knock-down, drag-out fight. Kevin: It’s been a pleasure and an honor. 7 p.m. $10 - $700. 600 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-337-DUNK ext. 1 or timberwolves.com.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2006
Jeremy Messersmith
Nomad World Pub
I’ve had Jeremy Messersmith on the brain lately. I don’t know if you’ve read “The Twenty-seventh City” by Jonathan Franzen (don’t bother, by the way—it was terrible), but in it, a successful man is brought low by a carefully orchestrated set of disasters that appear to him to be mere chance. Occasionally, I feel that bands are doing this to me, albeit with less disastrous results than the death of my dog or the wooing of my daughter by some ne’er-do-well. Since the first time I caught wind of Mr. Messersmith’s disc Alcatraz Kid via a CD review by Andrea Myers here in the Pulse, he’s gotten love in the City Pages and various other pubs in town, and his careworn blend of introspection and pop savvy has been popping up everywhere I’ve turned. There he is on the Current, and there he is in the pile of CDs I’m about to bring to Homegrown to play this week, and there he is appearing live in person on Homegrown this very Sunday. Not that he should have to embark on a clandestine campaign to win the affections of music critics: His tuneful melodies are the kind that make you stop short when they come on the radio, beguiling and enchanting, but straightforward and honest. You’ve done it, Mr. Messersmith: You’ve won me over, so you can tell your goons to stop rooting through my trash. With Jayber Crow, The Dale Hush Hush (Coach Said Not To side project) and Harbor. 9 p.m. $5. 21+. 501 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-338-6424.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2006
Band of Horses
Fine Line Music Cafe
Some bands make albums that only blossom when you strap on a pair of headphones and patiently soak them in. Dial in the mood lighting, crack open a bottle of Argentinean Malbec and kick back on your chaise lounge if you want to get the most out of the slow-growers, but Band of Horses is not a band to kill you softly with their songs. Anthems like “The Funeral” and “Wicked Gil” promise to rock your face off live, and that’s just what they did when Band of Horses hit the Entry on their first trip to the Twin Cities. Ben Bridwell and Matt Brooke fashioned the band out of the ashes of Seattle indie rock stalwart Carissa’s Wierd and their debut disc Everything All the Time is just the kind of sentimental arrow that aims for the chinks in every hipster’s emotional armor. In the gorgeous “Part One,” Bridwell sings, “I’d like to think that I’m a mess you’d wear with pride / like some empty dress you laid out on the bed for tonight.” I’m generally not one to quote other reviews, but Aaron Newell at cokemachineglow.com hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “When that’s sung over a slight, high school country waltz, by that voice, you can gauge how thick your skin is by how much you start missing someone.” His point was that Band of Horses aren’t experimental or daring, but rather messily and mercilessly precise in their harnessing of a certain adolescent emotion that never really leaves you. They go for the jugular again and again, and isn’t that why we’re paying attention in the first place? I doubt any rock writer worth his or her salt got into this racket to wax philosophical about popular music, even if that’s what we end up doing. We love music because way back in junior high, in a past beyond reach because we can’t feel ourselves as other than we are now, we heard a song that made the hair stand up on our necks, or pins and needles flood our cheeks, and wanted to feel like that as often as possible for as long as possible for the rest of our lives. With Chad VanGaalen. 7:30 p.m. $14. 18+. 318 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8100.

MONDAY, MAY 8, 2006
Sigur Ros
Orpheum Theater
Sigur Ros is a band that fairly demands to be the soundtrack to your life in moments of need and transition. Their lyrics, written in a phonetic jumble called Hopelandic, aren’t statements so much as empty vessels into which you inject yourself, and the swell of orchestration that accompanies their dynamic peaks would be overwhelming if they hadn’t been so careful in bringing you along on the journey. Their latest, Takk…, could be called more of the same, but this is a band that knows the power of motif, that creates impact not from aping the frenetic kineticism of modern life, but by applying a steady hand to our musical pressure points: melody, minor-major resolution, dynamic movement. I can’t recall exactly when, but I remember being on a bus in Chicago, mid-fall, headed down Lake Shore Drive late at night, Ágætis Byrjun (their first LP) streaming through my headphones, sodium streetlights flashing by. That night, they were the sound of something beginning curled up inside the sound of something ending. Had I left the East Coast already? Had my band broken up? What is it about buses at night that inspires gentle melancholy and wistful whenandifying (as in, when and if I ever figure this all out)? I can’t tell you; just keep some Sigur Ros handy in case you ever find yourself in similar straits. With Amiina. 7:30 p.m. $30-$40. 805 Hennepin Ave., Mpls. 612-339-7007.

MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2006
The Wedding Present
400 Bar
I feel bad for any woman who’s been involved with David Gedge: Judging by his songs, he either cheated on you, broke your heart and then went on to immortalize it in song or you cheated on him, broke his heart and you still got immortalized in song. Either way, you’ll never live it down—not when Gedge plants his lyrical daggers inside of sticky, bittersweet hooks. After years of fronting the high-fidelity-meets-infidelity Cinerama, Gedge returned to the gritty, guitar-driven fold of his first band, The Wedding Present, who’ve been on hiatus since 1997. If you’ve been watching Tom Hallett’s space, you read his glowing review of Take Fountain, but I’ll sum it up for you: The Wedding Present are as toothy and toothsome as ever, Gedge spinning tales of heartbreak with clear- and cold-eyed honesty. You can bring your girl, but if Gedge has anything to do with it, you won’t be leaving with her. With Sally Crewe & the Sudden Moves. 8 p.m. 21+. $15. 400 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-332-2903.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2006
Alvin Lucier
The Spark Festival at the School of Music
What is music? No, seriously: ask yourself. My Intro to Experimental Music class at Wesleyan, taught by Alvin Lucier, changed my answer to that question considerably. Lucier has pioneered many new methods of music making, but is best known for his piece “I Am Sitting in a Room,” in which the performer reads a short text into an empty room. The performance is recorded, played back into the room and recorded again. And again and again. It’s an amazing enough concept that’s laid out in the performance’s text (“I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves”), but what’s truly stunning is how unexpectedly beautiful the result is. With the sparest of concepts and tools, Lucier creates a sonic painting of the sounds that lie dormant inside every space we inhabit and in the process makes us realize that music is so much more than arpeggios and appoggiaturas. Lucier is the keynote speaker at the Spark Festival, and several of his pieces will be performed as well. The schedule of performances is extensive and sure to shift your paradigm if you’re willing to open yourself up. Lucier’s keynote lecture is at 11:15 a.m. in Anderson Hall, Rom 370. All events are free. For a complete listing, visit spark.cla.umn.edu.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2006
An Early Evening with John Corbett
The Fine Line Music Café
Actor John Corbett made his name playing a range of characters—from that ruggedly handsome and offbeat nonconformist DJ on “Northern Exposure” to Carrie’s ruggedly handsome and offbeat nonconformist boyfriend on “Sex and the City” to the ruggedly handsome and offbeat nonconformist male lead in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” But his true passion is music: “When I was on the set of my last movie,” Corbett muses in his bio, “all I wanted to do was get back to making music. I wanted to be with my guys on stage, rocking the house.” When he first appeared on “The Tonight Show,” he asked if he could bring his band, and despite not having anything recorded to play for the talent director, they got their shot—“a rare case of a musician getting a coveted performance on the late-night talk show without a record deal, or even a record at all.” Being John Corbett probably didn’t have anything to do with that. His bio has a lot of other heartwarming stories like that, too, but don’t feel alienated if you haven’t yet fallen for his charms. “A lot of my fans are women,” he says, “but when they’re [sic] husbands and boyfriends hear the album or see us live, they’re going to like it, too. When we play, the guys come up and say, ‘Dude, I didn’t know you were going to rock like that.’” His blend of country and Southern rock starts early so you should be able to make it home to catch him in “Raising Helen” at 8 p.m. on Encore. 6 p.m. $16. 21+. 318 First Ave., N. Mpls. 612-338-8100.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2006
Roy Haynes
The Artists’ Quarter
When it comes to jazz, there are legends, and then there’s everybody else. Haynes is firmly in that first category, and in his five-decade-long career he’s shared the stage with fellow giants Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and too many others to mention. But his long list of credits and plaudits don’t really do justice to what the man has done for jazz in our time. Where Max Roach approached the drums from a rhythmic foundation that allowed for crisp melodic improvisation, and Elvin Jones didn’t abandon so much as steamroll through notions of traditional melody to create a cascading, roiling rhythmic force to match Coltrane’s improvisation, Haynes fuses melody and rhythm in equal parts to create a style that is as comfortable in the bop of Parker as it is in the context of Andrew Hill’s Black Fire (my favorite Haynes performance). The marriage of Hill’s deft and spooky piano work to Haynes’ simpatico backing is emblematic of the phenomenal syncreticism of avant garde jazz in the early ’60s, when rules were stretched without being broken, and free jazz still meant you didn’t have to pay. His three-night stand at the AQ is being recorded for a live album, but you should go see for yourself: There’s a special magic that happens when a drummer who’s swung his whole life hits that ride cymbal with the first triplet of the evening. Suddenly, everything swings. Fri. & Sat. 8:30 & 10:30 p.m.; Sun. 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. $25. 18+. 408 St. Peter St., St. Paul. 651-292-1359.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2005
The Oranges Band
The Triple Rock Social Club
From the instant the chunky sparkle guitars and rehearsal-space drums kick in on “Believe,” you won’t have a hard time believing that The Oranges Band leader Roman Kuebler spent time playing bass on the road with minimalist juggernauts Spoon. “Believe” is something of a red herring, though, as their latest album comes off as decidedly sunny over the long-haul and works as a kind of companion to Broken Social Scene’s self-titled slice of summer breeze. If BSS is the van full of cool kids heading to a beach party, Oranges are the brooding wallflowers reluctantly following in their VW Golf. They’re blasting their Nuggets box set and arguing about whether Morissey could take Robert Smith in a fight. Along for the ride are a couple local vets, including Tad Kubler, who took their promo photos and raved about the band in a recent interview, and Craig Finn, who wrote their press release. With winter fast descending here in lake country, you should take the opportunity to snatch up as much sunshine as possible. With Die Electric and headliners Askeleton. 10 p.m. 21+. $7. 629 Cedar Ave., Mpls. 612-333-7499.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2005
The New Pornographers
First Avenue
I have to admit: I wanted to hold the horrible interview I had with Carl Newman against the New Pornographers and their new album Twin Cinema, but I just can’t. Once you get past the twists and turns and some of the spikiness which separates Twin Cinema from the sunny smackdown of Electric Version, you’ll find a record brimming with fantastic melodies, crisp production and some of the best damned drum beats and fills you’ll hear this year. The kind that make you (or at least, me) look like an idiot while waiting for stoplights to change. Yup, that’s me flailing my arms in the air and trying to hit the high harmonies on Neko Case vehicle “These Are the Fables.” The usually non-touring Dan Bejar will be joining them on this outing, and that’s great news, because his angular and difficult compositions make for great and slightly bitter palette cleansers between Newman’s relentlessly (if nonsensically) sanguine pop gems. You’ve probably heard “Use It” on the Current and even though I can’t make heads or tails of the lyrics, I still shout along. So if you see me at Marshall and Cretin making a fool of myself, laugh quietly to yourself, and if you run into Carl Newman, tell him I’m not taking it personally that he didn’t feel like talking much. 6 p.m. 21+. $15. 701 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.

Parts and Labor: Building steam

"It's interesting to try combine things," says Parts & Labor vocalist/bassist BJ Warshaw, "but I also think we alienate a lot of people out there. The people that really like harsh noisy music can't get with us because we're too melodic and we sing. And also your average indie rock band-- we're a little too ballistic and strange for the average listener. But people that get into it really get into it and that's kind of a rewarding aspect of doing what we do."

Straddling that divide between noise music and indie rock seems to be what Parts & Labor are all about. The Brooklyn trio's getting set to release their latest LP, Mapmaker, and to call it bracing would be an understatement. To put it plainly, Parts & Labor are not fucking around. Atop a high-pitched cycling drone that echoes Pete Townsend's looped keyboard at the start of The Who's "Baba O'Riley," album opener "Fractured Skies" bursts forth with a manic drum pattern that seems on the edge of running the song right off the rails. More loops-- of static, of climbing, oscillator-generated noise-- come in for support, but rather than push the song further out, they seem to bring it closer, and when the vocals come in, climbing in lockstep up a major scale, you begin to sense that this is a wall of sound built not to keep you out, but to give you something to climb and raise a flag of victory on. It's easy to see how it might be a troublesome sound for sensitive ears and people who demand more abstraction, but Warshaw's right: for the right listener (me, apparently) it's a heady mix of seemingly disparate musical influences.

"That's kind of been there from the very beginning," Warshaw replies when I ask about how this clash of sounds developed. "When people ask us this question, we sort of have the same stock reply that it has a lot to do with the music that we listen to. It's really as simple as that and kind of boring. [Vocalist/guitarist] Dan [Friel] grew up listening to a lot of grindcore and harsh noise stuff and free jazz and then also Sonic Youth, but then also got into indie rock in the late '90s-- later than most people. I played music since I was really little. I played saxophone as my first instrument and in jazz band, concert band. My parents liked Peter, Paul and Mary and Simon & Garfunkel and were a folk duo when they first met. And later on I got into a lot of punk and noise. It's sort of this combination of all the things we like about music mushed together in as interesting a way as possible."

Friel and Warshaw are the primary songwriters in the band, splitting songs and vocal duties. Friel's voice is slightly froggier than Warshaw's, lending tracks like the churning "Brighter Days" a tinge of Bob Mould, while Warshaw's slightly clearer tenor guides "Long Way Down" along a fractured groove into a noise rock freakout. The thread that connects all the songs on the disc is a chunky arrangement style that bundles the songs around little pieces of melody or rhythm and then basically playing the shit out of them.

"For the most part," Warshaw explains, "[Dan] and I will come up with a melody or an entire song and then arrange it on our own and then bring it to the band. And then from there, we collectively figure out how we're going to turn it into a Parts & Labor song. We'll collectively talk about what the drum beat and the feel is going to be. We're a little bit all over the place with the feels of our songs. We have a lot of straight pop-punk anthems and also some more pummeling Boredoms-y style or more Krautrock repetitive stuff, too. The long process is really just deciding what noises we're gonna put underneath the vocal melodies. I'm playing electronics and bass and Dan's playing electronics and guitar so we've got this pretty enormous vocabulary of sounds and textures we can use. It's a long process.

"To give you a more concrete example," he continues, "I wrote the melody for the song 'Long Way Down' on Mapmaker and originally intended that to be a straight psych-Krautrock jam-- like, really heavy and really loud and kind of midtempo. And we originally started playing it like that, but it didn't feel right. So we slowed it down and it ended up being this more pastoral, quieter song for us. Arranging kind of has everything to do with how a song ends up sounding for us in the end."

I might take issue with calling "Long Way Down" pastoral, but I get where he's coming from. For bands that rely on samples and loops, there's a real dilemma when it comes to putting the song together in a way that can be performed live and stay true to the studio sounds. It's a problem that first reared its head when drum machines came to prominence in the early '80s, but as the ability to replicate studio trickery in an organic way on stage has become more accessible, band's have solved it in many different ways. The Books create nearly full arrangements of music on DVD to go with their videos, contributing only vocals, guitar and cello to the live setting. Menomena compose their songs around whatever seems right at the time, feeding the bits into a sampling computer program, arranging them, and then doing their best to replicate the finished compositions live, in essence covering their own songs. Dosh recreates his loops from the ground up each time out, and Parts & Labor's approach is probably closest in spirit to that.

"We tend to put a lot of emphasis of being able to do what we do live," says Warshaw. "So pretty much what you hear on our records, we're able to duplicate live and just with three people. We have looping pedals, so we'll create our drones live and then they go through volume pedals so we can swell them in and out and we haven't done much where we're arranging while we're recording, while we're putting it into a computer. There's some exceptions to that rule-- for Mapmaker we recorded all our vocals and electronics ourselves and then went back to the studio for mixing and recorded all the drums in the studio. But the songs were like 90 percent completed and then we think it'd be cool if there were a keyboard melody in the background. We did a couple overdubs, but we really write for the live show, more than the studio record."

Ever since I got Mapmaker back in early March, I've had their show at the Entry circled on my calendar, because it's obvious from the record that they're absolutely going to bring it live. At SxSW, Menomena were fairly impressive in recreating the sounds on their album with just three members, but you could tell they were stretching beyond their reach on a couple numbers. If Parts & Labor can deliver on the live show promise displayed on Mapmaker, they'll be picking up bricks from the Entry off of tables in the Hard Rock Cafe and windows will be shattering on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, just like when the Washburn A Mill blew its top in 1878.

Parts & Labor play Wed., May 2 at The Seventh St. Entry with headliners ADULT. 8 p.m. $10/$12. 21+. 29 N. 7th St., Mpls. 612-332-1775. Mapmaker comes out on Jagjaguwar Records on May 22. For more info on Parts & Labor, check out their official website at partsandlabor.net.