The Post-Rockist

Os Mutantes
Webster Hall
New York, NY: July 21, 2006 

I went to the Os Mutantes show as something of an outsider. I had been given a ticket basically as a bribe so that my apartment could be used for sleep, eating, and, perhaps, sex (alas, not with me). I knew they were from Brazil, that Pitchfork loved them, and that the Everything is Possible Luaka Bop comp I acquired at the last minute was intruiging. That was it. It also seemed like they might be goddamn hippies, but I was reserving judgment.

They were, of course, goddamn hippies. With clothes (capes, cravats) and attitudes (peace, love, whatever) straight out of the School of Donovan. However, much like the Sunshine Superman, they were charming, completely irrepressible characters.

Most importantly, they knew how to put on a show. This was a band (two-thirds of the band, technically, as Zelia Duncan took over the vocals in Rita Lee’s absence) that seemed truly excited to be playing in front of us. They were smiling and happy and the place was instantly awash in good feeling.

Sergio Dias Baptista, the guitarist, was the heart of the show. It was he that did most of the talking with the audience and provided much of the show’s humor with ridiculous guitar-hero antics during some of the longer numbers. His brother Arnaldo, he of the failed suicide attempt and clearly still a bit of a wreck, provided the unintentional comedy highlights of the show. Whether it was delicately applying his bifocals (really!) right before the show began or awkwardly attempting to clap without right hand ever actually touching left, he was there to help remind us kids of the dangerous effects of drug abuse and excess.

(Continued)

Recently I had the pleasure of seeing Jolie Holland live in her native San Francisco, along with a band made up of her favorite local backing musicians. The show took place in the posh Bimbo’s 365 Club with its elegant seating and two drink minimum. However, it was clear from the very start of the show that this was no fancy recital. I felt like I was in the prescence of royalty, although Ms. Holland has to be the most foul-mouthed queen that ever lived. On the opening track of her fantastic new album, Springtime Can Kill You, she sings, “I feel like a queen on this dirty city bus, look what you’ve done to me.” This line seems to sum up the mystery of Jolie Holland. She’s constantly characterized as an elegant songbird with a voice so beautiful and heartbreaking that she frequently gets compared to Billie Holiday, even though they sound nothing alike. The reason they are so often compared must lie in the degree of beautiful sadness with which they sing. The two of them sound so haunted that the only thing left for them to do is sing. That “lady sings the blues” cliché works for Ms. Holland as well since she looks and sings like an angel, but one that can be found passed out drunk in an alley.

Early into her set, Ms. Holland found herself distracted by a young woman in the front row who was doing her best to get attention and disrupt the show. She handled the heckler in her hometown like a cabdriver would. “Baby girl, if you’re going to be loud you’re gonna have to move and get as far away from me as possible,” she sneered with vehemence. After the crowd cheered to show their support, the heckler promptly shut the hell up, probably out of fear that Ms. Holland wouldn’t hesitate to drop kick her with high heels. Ms. Holland handled the situation with such unwavering confidence that I thought she might be the boldest woman I have ever seen. However, I was proven wrong shortly thereafter when she had a difficult time going into the next song, apparently shaken up from the incident. She may be a street-smart queen, but that doesn’t make her a goddess.

Ms. Holland’s humanity is in fact the best part of her music. The way she attempts to create the most gut-wrenching, emotional performance possible, no matter how many mistakes there are, proves that she is interested in making real human music with a beating heart. Several of the tracks on her recent album were recorded live in front of an audience, in an attempt to get the most honest performances possible, instead of being inhibited by a lifeless studio atmosphere. Judging from the Jolie Holland live experience, she seems to crave the human interaction that occurs between audience member and performer. Throughout all of her songs she seemed to be singing from the bottom of her gut, creating a loud and forceful sound, but one filled with heartbreak, sort of like how Hank Williams used to sing. Live and on record, the phrasing with which she sings has an elastic quality that twists each sound until it fits the exact feeling she’s trying to convey. This technique gives her music its loose, improvisational feel, while she attempts to get to the deepest, darkest place that she can with her voice and her melody.

(Continued)

Jens Lekman
The Southgate House
Newport, KY: July 25, 2006

As usual, I was in a hurry for no good reason.  One would think that when melancholy Swedish pop sensation Jens Lekman is planning a performance in a medium-sized Midwestern city that the venue would be packed to the gills with sensible, well-dressed pop enthusiasts and Jonathan Richman acolytes, politely trampling over one another in a frenzied rush to be first in line.  Such was not the case, however, as I pulled up to the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky.  I parked, considered the seemingly deserted venue, crossed the street and ordered a chocolate milk shake, and then waited a little while longer.  Perhaps it was the lure of the Tuesday night television line-up, but in my book when Gothenburg’s ablest songwriter comes a-knockin’ on your door, you turn off that Law & Order: SVU rerun and make him feel at home.

The intimate gathering, accented by red velvet drapes and shattered windows, kicked off with a short set by Frida Hyvönen. Go ahead, big shot, you try pronouncing it. Frida confidently strode up to the piano in a bright red cat suit offset with a shock of platinum blonde hair and, with a voice that was whispery and melodic, she beckoned the audience to pull up their chairs. After much squeaking on the audience’s behalf, she began to play a series of simplistic, marching rhythms, and, with a voice that was whispery and melodic, sang simple songs.

Now, before I go into detail about Jens’ performance, let me clear up one thing. Did I say that he was melancholy earlier? Well, scratch that. That was my mistake. Allow me to modify that description. He was very happy to be there with us that evening. So happy, one might even say he was bouncing with giddiness. One might. In fact, with his boyish grin, Gary Busey shirt, rubbery knees, and rounded fedora, he gave the impression of a young Buster Keaton on stage: daffy, hopelessly romantic, and with just a slight touch of unmistakable melancholy, but not enough to sour the mood.

He sings with a familiar air, writing songs with strong echoes of Phil Spector, the Magnetic Fields, and all the old love letters you wished you had written. With so many obvious reference points it’s tempting to write him off as a well-versed copycat, but upon seeing Lekman in person it’s hard to imagine him as anything other than sincere. As soon as he stepped on stage he promised to perform exactly 12 songs in honor of the beautiful countryside surrounding us. Accompanying Lekman were six gorgeous, presumably Swedish, female musicians decked in white, who, over the course of the night, would play trumpet, trombone, saxophone, tambourine, cowbell, piano, accordian, bass, and snare drum. Occasionally he would play his iPod for a backing track. Suddenly, it was a party!

Click below for more!

(Continued)

When the Replacements released Don’t Tell a Soul in 1989, their core base of fans received the record like a swift sucker punch to the abdomen. While devotees were expecting another set of drunkenly perceptive riffs and verses, instead they  received a cohesive series of earnest rockers and pared-down AOR anthems that seemed to beg more comparisons to jean jacket balladeer Bryan Adams than to their hardcore contemporaries Hüsker Dü. With founding guitarist Bob Stinson kicked out two years earlier due to addiction problems, and with him the band’s brash and ironic disdain for contemporary music, Don’t Tell a Soul was perceived as a shameless power grab by singer Paul Westerberg in this last ditch acquiesence to mainstream radio.  Still, despite cries of foul play akin to Dylan going electric or the brothers Reid going acoustic, the Replacements’ sixth studio album turned out to be their most commercially succesful effort.

Of course, this was all back in 1989: George Herbert Walker Bush was president; Nirvana hadn’t yet become a household name; and this Post-Rockist was probably just learning his multiplication tables. So what effect do these historical dramas and conflicts have on today’s listener, who’s casually familiar with the ‘Mats’ “classic” output (Let It Be, Tim) and happens upon this melancholy black-and-white cover while searching for other historical artifacts at the local library, like Chuck Berry or the Yardbirds? Did the critics of yore have a valid argument, or were they merely building an insurmountable argument, holding the band to an impossible standard of repeatedly accomplishing what they had already done earlier in their career?

(Continued)

Cost of 500 analog reel-to-reel tapes, circa 1969: £7,500. Attempted retail price of said tapes in 21st Century Dutch black market: £250,000.  Discovering that the tapes composed the long lost original studio recordings of the Beatles’ Get Back Sessions: Priceless, according to authorities who recovered the tapes in a series of raids in West London and the Netherlands back in 2003.  The tapes capture The Beatles in Twickenham Studios in 1969, attempting to reconnect as men and to rekindle the original rock’n'roll flame that made the lads famous in the beginning.  Over 200 songs and covers were recorded, including takes on Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire,” Little Richards’ “Lucille,” Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” as well as songs by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly.  The album that emerged from these recordinds was later shelved, put in storage, and then mysteriously disappeared.  A year later, the album was put together by Phil Spector as Let It Be. 

An undercover sting operation nabbed Nigel Oliver, the 55 year-old former engineer at Twickenham Studios, in Slough, England, who was attempting to sell the tapes.  Evidence found at his home sparked a raid at a warehouse in the Netherlands, where the tapes were recovered along with George Harrison’s 1960 passport.  Oliver, who was found mentally unfit to stand trial, was sentenced last Friday to a two years supervision order for handling stolen goods.  Colin Dillon, 39, who was also arrested in the sting, was sentenced to a four-month prison sentence along with a two-year suspension. 

With the culprits now safely behind bars, or, wait… let off with a slap on the wrist, we can all pray that Sir Paul will put this tawdry divorce business behind him and focus all his energies on culling numerous box sets of alternate Get Backs and studio banter from these reels and reels of previously unreleased goodness.

(Continued)

On their fourth album, Martyn Leaper and company return with a sound that, thankfully, can be identified as a distant cousin of earlier Minders’ records.  Call it maturing, re-inventing, or gracefully aging, but The Minders are definitely not the same band that their fans have come to love. It’s a Bright Guilty World shows The Minders to be a band that has outgrown their earlier warm, fuzzy, child-like exuberance and embraced a delightfully refined, albeit less exciting, pop sound. 

A majority of this album bounces along at roughly the same tempo, and Leaper rarely ventures into the minor key, but these musical consistencies avoid boring the listener.  Each song is endowed with a fairly distinct melodic hook, a fairly unique interplay of male-female vocals, and a fairly creative arrangement that work well with the Minders seemingly-official tempo.  And, all these elements lead to…a fair pop album.

(Continued)

As the final image of a seventy-year old austere Leonard Cohen fades to black and the credits commence, the viewer is confronted with a credit that reveals Mel Gibson to be the executive producer of this film. No wonder there were a few unwarranted shadow images of Jesus on the cross, too many discussions of the Biblical and the Christian elements of Cohen’s music (although certainly they are there). At least at one point the director allows Cohen to announce that he is a Jew, a fact that is essential to understanding the poet-songwriter. I guess I do have to give Gibson some credit: He loves the music of Cohen so much that he would fund a sub-par film about a man whose ancestors killed Gibson’s Savior.

That aside, the film is a must see for any Cohen fan, although I might suggest you wait for the DVD version to hit the shelves of Netflix (do they have shelves at Netflix?). The DVD will probably include bonus features and, I can only hope, more interview footage with Cohen. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect upon entering the theatre. I had read that much of the film consisted of a tribute concert staged in Sidney, Australia in January 2005, featuring artists such as Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton, and others. That was in there. I also heard that the film would outline the basic facts of Cohen’s life and would feature short commentaries upon the genesis of the songs by the writer himself. This was in there too. I also heard that the director wanted to make the film arty. Yeah, that was kind of there too.

However, all of these elements didn’t blend as well as one would wish. The performances were often cut in half with short commentary by the singer of a particular song or by a soundbite from a Cohen interview. The director often chose to film the performer from neck up for most of their performances, which was just kind of weird and a bit disappointing since such a technique cuts the panorama view that we enjoy when attending a real show. In addition, the camera captured many artists at so close a proximity and for such long increments of time that I would begin to focus more on the facial transfigurations of the performer instead of focusing on the song. Martha Wainwright’s rendition of “The Traitor” was particularly irksome on film. I couldn’t concentrate on her voice, on her interpretation, or on the lyrics, so drawn were my eyes to the slightly grotesque transfigurations of her mouth and cheeks while singing and the close-up of the pores on her face and spaces between her teeth (not that she’s unattractive in the least). The director would have been wise to follow the maxim that a film about music must not allow images to get in the way of sound.

(Continued)