PROUD EVOLUTION: Liars at the Temple of Dendur, Saturday May 18th

If the Ramones had broken up in 1976 right after their debut came out, the world would never have been blessed with Rocket to Russia, but it would still know what the Ramones sounded like. All the same adjectives would be used to describe them in either case. Liars are not such a band. “Mr. Your on Fire Mr.” did not clearly set the stage for everything to come after it. Liars are the Liars we know because of a decade's worth of evolution and hindsight, and what they are now will be different after another decade passes. The self-appointed folks piecing together the truth about Liars on the innacuracy minefield that is Wikipedia can’t even decide what kind of band they are from album to album. In the page on their first record they are “dance-punk band Liars.” For the follow-up, they are “noise rock band Liars.” For their third, “experimental rock band Liars.” After that they are simply “the band Liars,” before being pegged more specifically as an “experimental rock trio” for their most recent two albums, including WIXIW, which probably should have been made by “experimental electronic trio Liars.”

Funny as it may be, that progression of descriptions actually illustrates well the notion that a band has to earn, or grow in to, the distinction of being “experimental.” Aside from the long song titles (which read a bit more like Piebald than Amon Duul) and the awesome half-hour closer “This Dust Makes That Mud,” there wasn’t much that was truly out-there about They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. You can almost hear Monument as Liars bluffing their way into the right early-00’s NYC clubs with the first eight tracks, and then ripping off the masks with the last one: “Gotcha! We were art the whole time!”

After that, they seemed to make all the right 'experimental band' moves. They got on Mute Records. Then they released an album (They Were Wrong, So We Drowned) that was widely disliked upon its release, but which will ultimately be recognized as ahead of its time in one way or another, likely receiving positive reevaluations when its tenth anniversary rolls around next year. Then they moved to freaking Berlin. Then, in said art capital, they chose not to make an even-more-difficult record than Drowned, but instead made a widely-enjoyed, vaguely-conceptual album that has possibly the best known Liars song on it (“The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack,” or ‘the one from that movie’) and cover art that looks like a hamburger made out of words, at least if you squint. 

From there, naturally, it was the self-titled, stripped-down record. At this point, it’s difficult to say if history will ultimately view Sisterworld or WIXIW as the “transitional” album. It probably depends on whether Liars stick with the path they’ve gone down on WIXIW, which points to one surprise in the Liars story: they took over a decade to make their “electronic album" -- if this is even necessarily that record; it depends on how much more (or less) “electronic” their next record is.

 We won’t fully know where WIXIW stands for some time to come, but, in the Temple of Dendur last Saturday night, it made a lot of sense. Liars have by now more than earned the art-stripes required to play a 7:00pm gig adjacent to an old Egyptian temple at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was hard to tell if the blazers and short-ish haircuts were intentional for the show or not, but looking cleaned up works in a room with ancient relics and a fifty-foot-tall glass wall. 

WIXIW is Liars' most accessible record since take-your-pick, and almost definitely the most danceable since their debut. The band have noted in interviews that they like how the palindromic nature of the title suggests a returning to the place one started. Go figure. The perfectly understated tension of "No. 1 Against the Rush" makes you wish they'd write another dozen songs just like it, even though you know that's not how they work. A friend at the show mentioned that the last time he saw Liars they were incredibly loud. At this show they swapped abrasiveness for refinement, volume for rhythm, battery for beats. This newest suit fits them nicely, whether they wear it for long or not.

Apropos of nothing, we saw this sign on Park Ave after the show. This reads like a Liars EP track list, though.

  

Pitchfork Gets in on the National Arbor Day Action

If you thought that Dear Jerks was the only music enthusiast site that was also giving big props to National Arbor Day (see our previous two posts), you have probably been right...until today. As of this morning, Pitchfork has also stepped up, reviewing not just one, but two albums with trees on the cover -- side by side, no less! Witness these tastefully artistic images of nature that grace the covers of the Appleseed Cast's Illumination Ritual (left) and Blackout Beach's Blues Trip (right):


Not only that, guess what? Both of these bands of bonafide tree aficianados came away with pretty darn decent reductive numerical appraisals of their life's artistic pursuits! The Appleseed Cast got a 6.9, which is pretty much the sexiest gymnastics score you can get, amiright? Blackout Beach got a slightly less sexy 6.1 (though maybe it is sexy, if you use your imagination?), but they are almost surely going to get a rave review, in the form of five or six paragraphs of excellent esoteric musings, from Cokemachineglow, so it's all good. 

     

Night Falls on Hoboken, Part 2: Yo La Tengo in Berlin, March 13th 2013

Our two-week-long celebration of National Arbor Day continues with a photographic stroll down recent-memory lane. Last month we had the good fortune to be on vacation in Berlin at the same time as Yo La Tengo were swinging through the city on tour. What does that have to do with Arbor Day? Well, if the cover of the band's latest album isn't enough to convince you that Hoboken's finest are a tree-friendly bunch, then witness their stage props...

A different tree for each member of YLT.

The band played the Volksbuhne, an architecturally imposing theater in Mitte, the center of Berlin. Having never been, we assumed the Volksbuhne would be a space like Terminal 5 or Irving Plaza, not a century-old national treasure. We also assumed there would be an opening act, and so we hung around sipping German wine in our hotel room until the new Pope was announced live on television. Thus, we walked in to muted capacity crowd, and took a seat on the stairs just inside the theater door. Ira, Georgia, and James sat close to one another not too far from the lip of the stage, playing quiet renditions of some of their favorites, including a gorgeous rendition of "Tom Courtenay."  They took their leave for a break not long after, and we lamented missing such a significant chunk of their set. It turned out we had little to lament.

Kaplan making some serious squall; Hubley and McNew keeping it cool.

Yo La Tengo played for the better part of three hours that night. There was the first set, the "quiet" set, followed by a "loud" set, followed by a sizable encore, followed by a second encore. There were hits, classics, and favorites. There was one fifteen minute jam followed by another fifteen minute jam, giving guitarist Ira Kaplan all the room he could want to  do some improvisational sprawling out. There was their cover of the oldie "Who Loves the Sun" so bassist James McNew could take a turn on lead vocals. Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley -- one of the most endearing of the enduring indie rock royalty couples -- played a hushed and beautiful "Center of Gravity" (which is possibly in every YLT fan's 'Top 10'), allowing them a chance to sing together.

Killin' the keyboard freakout on "Moby Octopad"

If Yo La Tengo aren't planning to retire soon, you could be forgiven for thinking that some of the signs point to 'yes'. Beyond naming their new album Fade, a thorough and engaging biography of the group was published last year. (How much does the band love barbecue? Possibly more than you think.) More or less indicative, the setlist that frigid March night at the Volksbuhne (not to mention the length of the combined sets) seemed designed to provide as cohesive a retrospective as possible while still keeping the on-stage energy vital and inspired. In the rare times he did speak, Kaplan at times seemed almost wistful. Mentioning how much they always love to play Berlin, he noted that they'd been coming to the city for twenty years. The city and the venue's own history (the Volksbuhne is located in what was the former East Berlin) gave the anecdote a touching significance: twenty years is about as long as any foreign band could possibly claim to have been coming to this part of Berlin.

Night falls on Yo La Tengo's departing audience in Berlin.

Even if Yo La Tengo seemed to be playing the Volksbuhne like it was their last show there, we're holding out hope to catch them in town again the next time we're in the Berlin area. Which will probably be in no less than another twenty years...

Happy Arbor Day!


Some more shots from the very back of the theater (naturally) follow, or you can go here for far superior pics of the show.

Arbor Day, Y'all: Top 14 Albums with Trees on the Cover (that Rateyourmusic.com Doesn't Want You to Know About)

Now that SXSW has come and gone, and an oddly Britpop-reunion-tastic Coachella is mere hours away, it can only mean one thing: Arbor Day is here! Well, technically, it depends. National Arbor Day is the last Friday in April, which is when New York, along with many others, observes it. However, every state is allowed to set its own Arbor Day, because yeeehaw states’ rights. In Washington State, for instance, Arbor Day already happened this past Wednesday. Therefore, we will be personally celebrating Mother Nature’s ladders-to-nowhere for the entire two weeks in between. In our hearts, at least.

What better way could there be for Dear Jerks to proclaim their love for our lanky-and-leafy friends than with a good old-fashioned list of albums with trees on the cover, you ask? You make an excellent point. In fact, Rateyourmusic.com already thought about your point, and subsequently scoured the last ten years of their unwanted promo copy bins for albums of that sort. What they found is irrefutable: indie bands have much love for the timber. Rateyourmusic's supposedly thorough survey may have even proved that, collectively, the indie music world's fondness for trees knows no canopy. In the process, though, Rateyourmusic inadvertently tipped their hand, showing how much they themselves hate them.

Confused? Good. So are we. If Rateyourmusic truly loved the baums, how in the world could they have made so many glaring omissions? Putting in the first Bon Iver album but not the second might have just been them taking a passive-aggressive stance against "Beth/Rest," but there's no excuse for not including all of the below. At this rate, they might consider changing their slogan to “Rate Your Music, Hate Your Trees”...

14:  Sonna  -  Smile and the World Smiles with You

The bulk of Rateyourmusic's list seems to come from 2006 and afterward, but let's look at 2003. They include some random compilation from that year called Heat & Birds, but not this album from Baltimore's finest instrumental post-rock quartet, Sonna (now long on hiatus) from the same year. Smile was recorded by Steve Albini in roughly three days. What did you do that weekend?...

13:  Edaline  -  I Wrote the Last Chapter for You

...Rateyourmusic probably spent that weekend brainstorming ways to attack trees. At some point, they must have decided that a good way to do so would be to drown them. Maybe they didn't put this album on their list because they thought people would catch on to their evil plan...


12:  Traindodge  -  On a Lake of Dead Trees

...Which would also explain why they omitted this one.

11:  Dodgy  -  Free Peace Sweet

This, on the other hand, must be Rateyourmusic's worst nightmare: a big, aggressive tree with a badass scarification piece getting right up in its face. Don't let the hippie message of the trunk-tat fool you, it's like when huge dudes are nicknamed "Tiny"...

10:  Yo La Tengo  -  Fade

...Speaking of, here comes Tiny now. He looks pissed that he didn't make Rateyourmusic's list, but he shouldn't be, because it seems to be an arboreal hit list of sorts.

9:  The Eagles  -  Hotel California

Did someone say "hit list"? Oh right, us. Hits don't come much hit-ier than this. So why no love from Rateyourmusic? Surely because they despise the palm tree above all others. Need more proof?...

8:  The Gun Club  -  Miami

...Even this pair of scrawny palm trees lurking behind this band is enough to raise Rateyourmusic's hateful hackles...

7:  The Cure  -  Boys Don't Cry

...Make that a drawing of some scrawny palm trees. Is there nothing worse to Rateyourmusic than a drawing of a palm tree? Why yes...

6:  The Silver Jews  -  Starlite Walker

...A drawing of many trees in their natural habitat. And what could be worse than that?...

5:  Chad VanGaalen  -  Skelliconnection/Diaper Island

...Two of them. VanGaalen is the undisputed champ of putting drawings of weird forests on album covers. In fact, there may only be one man out there who loves putting forests on his album covers more...

4:  Mount Eerie  -  Lost Wisdom/Mount Eerie Pts. 6 & 7/White Stag/Wind's Poem/Song Islands Vol. 2

...To Rateyourmusic's credit, they did remember that Mount Eerie's No Flashlight has trees on the cover (which is why it's not included here). However, they forgot the part where almost all of Mount Eerie's albums have trees on them. Phil Elverum's love of forests makes John Denver look like Joseph Aspdin.


3:  Eluvium  -  Talk Amongst the Trees

If there's one thing Rateyourmusic hates more than trees, it's metaphorical trees. Those are people, you say? Think on it. Seeing trees equated with humans must have driven Rateyourmusic bonkers. "What's next?!" They surely shrieked. "Trees getting married?!"... 

2.  Oneida  -  The Wedding

..."Well, now I've seen everything!" But even that isn't the worst offense to Rateyourmusic...

1:  U2  -  The Joshua Tree

...No, the worst offense is creating the impression of trees where there are none. Sure, the back cover does have a picture with an actual tree in it. But how many of you, when conjuring this album cover in your memory, remember that tree being on the front? Such is the persuasive, mind-effing power of Mr. Bono's vox and The Edge's hypnotic stereo-delayed arpeggios.

Dishonorable Mention:  Jurassic 5  -  Quality Control

Seeing this tree-atrocity exhibition must have made Rateyourmusic's day. For all of the J5's good vibes, their posi-core attitude apparently didn't extend to some stupid plant that just provides humans with oxygen. It's like Jarvis Cocker said: "Yeah, the trees, those useless trees/produce the air that I am breathing." 

The Breeders Play to a Bunch of Breeders: Live at The Bell House, 3/29/13

A warmly rapturous opening applause.

Electrified yelps of excitement only minutes later, after the Deal sisters and Co. started from the start with a brick-solid charge through "New Year," when Kim started doing the 'awoooha' opening of "Cannonball" into the white crushed-paper-cup-looking thing attached to her mic.

Later, a man in the crowd yells, "Thank you for doing this!"

Later still, in response to a few audience requests, another yells, "Play whatever you want!"

Tickets for the show had sold out quickly -- within somewhere between two and five minutes, depending on where you read it -- many weeks before, but, even with all that time to get used to the idea of the Breeders reuniting to play Last Splash live, it was still as if the audience couldn't believe its good luck. Twenty years later, one more chance to pogo to "Divine Hammer."

Not that everyone at the Bell House was old enough to qualify for an Alternative Nation lifetime membership. Last Splash's saturated green and red cover may have been a ubiquitous fixture of a specific long gone time and place, but its songs, like most of those graced by Kim Deal's own particular Midas touch from the '80s and '90s, have aged well. Or, really, the album hasn't aged much at all. Its let's-try-anything energy gives it a perpetual youthfulness. In 1993, a life raft adrift in a sea of self-serious grunge, Last Splash was a rare thing; a predominantly fun rock record that also went on to sell over one million copies.

Doesn't look a day over 10 years old

Watching them resurrect the album from start to finish wouldn't have been nearly as rewarding if it were merely a rote recitation. Fortunately, it was the opposite of the monastic backstage vibe seen on loudQUIETloud, the Pixies reunion tour documentary. It felt more like being privy to, say, their third practice back together: some parts here and there were maybe still a little loose in a good way, but overall things were really starting to click, and you could tell they were excited simply to be on the same stage with one another again. The palpable joy and freewheeling banter (Kim confirming with bassist Josephine Wiggs that she could have walked to the gig from her house) was underscored by the pains they went through (swapping instruments for certain songs, having to get a new minimoog for just one bit) to faithfully reenact the record as it was made. The attention to detail showed how much affection they still have for the music.

They don't always ban photography

They must have been taping the show for historical purposes, given all the signs posted insisting that photography would be punished by immediate ejection. After seeing a couple of  iPhone-tographers get shut down, this writer went with the rules, hence none of the blurry from-the-back-of-the-room pics you'd normally find here. However, bigger, or braver, fish took pics: here and here, for two. It should make a great DVD whenever it comes out. Hopefully they will keep in all the songs from Pod (their debut, which is every bit as good as its successor) that made up the extended encore.

Here is the exact moment I decided to love the Breeders: It was the fall of 1993. I was in the car with my dad, driving west along Roxbury Ave. up the hill to our house in Arbor Heights (the name sounds fancy, but the neighborhood was, and is, not) in ass-end of West Seattle. "Cannonball" came on the radio. As we ambled toward the stoplight at the intersection of 35th, my dad made the very fatherly statement, "This isn't even music." 

The thing is, my dad rarely said that kind of thing. Thanks to him, the first music I remember hearing as a child was the Clash and the Smiths. He bought Nevermind when it first came out, as well as Alice in Chains' Dirt. In fact, two years earlier, when we were driving around the San Juan Islands on a heat-baked family weekend trip in the summer of 1991, he cranked up "Man in the Box" on the car radio after I complained that it wasn't music. His positions had never left me much to rebel against, so I had to take it where I could get it. Asserting my fandom, it might have been the first time I had listened to "Cannonball" all the way through. 

A parting thought: Pacer, the one and only album released by the Amps, is ripe for rediscovery. A temporary outlet started as a way to keep active while the Breeders were short a couple of members, Kim Deal's 1995-96 endeavor received a mixed reception in its day. For an artist from two high-profile bands notable for sounding chaotic and spontaneous, the Amps still managed to come off as a little bit more chaotic and spontaneous. "Tipp City" made it on the radio, but it should have been bigger than it was. Now that all things 'lo-fi' and 'side project' are held in generally higher esteem than they perhaps once were, it might not be a bad idea for 4AD to at least consider a similar 20th anniversary re-release in 2015...

 

Why so sad?

Despite it's name, it turns out that Beach House's "Wedding Bell" would not be a particularly appropriate tune to play at, you know, a wedding. I came by this little nugget of insight a few weeks ago, near the beginning of my (still ongoing) quest to put together some songs to be played at my own wedding.

It started out well enough, pretty instrumental for a processional, check. Background-y reception dinner time stuff, check. Crowd pleasing stuff to get people dancing, check. Selections to be played after the parents and relatives retire for the night, check.

The trouble came when my fiance and I decided that, yes, we would do the whole first dance thing. "Great" I thought, "a chance to pick more songs!" I was so confident that we'd have a hard time narrowing down our choices, I convinced my very patient betrothed to conduct a March Madness style song elimination bracket to choose a winner from among the pool... and that's how I found myself searching for "Wedding" in my iTunes library as a place to start.

I was initially hopeful when I saw "Wedding Bell" bubble up in my search results. We both like Beach House quite a bit, and upon first inspection it seems like it'd be nice to dance to. Then I listened to the lyrics. Turns out this song has a little bridge where Victoria Legrand sings:

I

Enjoy 

Nothing

Ahhh

Whelp, that won't do. 

This little pattern repeated itself over and over: Think of a song we'd both like, put song on list, get excited, listen to song, realize lyrics are sad and/or full of f-bombs, cross song off list. Now I know why people phone this stuff in.

As I eliminated song after song, album after album, and band after band from consideration, I realized that I just didn't have much to choose from amongst my personal library. At some point, I started to wonder whether this was a personal problem. Is it that I have always disliked love songs but wasn't conscious of the fact until, at 33, I really needed one?

Then, I tuned on the bands. I mean, come on you guys. Shouldn't Songs of Faith and Devotion have one song that's just about, you know, that? Look. We'd dance to The National. We'd dance to Iron & Wine. We'd dance to Modest Mouse! All we needed was one good song about how one person loves some other person AND other person loves them back AND other person is not dead, with someone else, in prison, a zombie, etc.

Oh, Robert Smith definitely gets a point for "Lovesong", which he wrote  as a wedding present for his future wife and is great, it is way too upbeat to be considered first dance material.

How about this. If not a love song, how about just something generally happy that I can slow dance to with my bride? Great, expand the scope. Let's see... nope, not many songs to commemorate my marriage to here either. Like, hey Animal Collective! I hate single you guys out, but by now shouldn't you have accidentally written a song that meets that criteria?

Oh well, It's not all bad news. While the 64 song tournament was quickly cut to 32, then scrapped altogether, we did both eventually find a few good choices, and picked a clear favorite that we're both thrilled with. Once we get hitched in June, I'll reveal the winner, and discuss a few songs that didn't quite make the cut.

Night Falls on Hoboken, Part 1: Chelsea Light Moving at Mawell's, 3/2/13

This past Saturday, Hoboken, NJ, officially celebrated St. Patrick's Day. The 'zombie' thing is played out by now, but it's hard to conjur a more apt description of the experience of walking up Washington Street from the PATH train station to Maxwell's than to compare it to the scene in Shaun of the Dead where the gang have to pretend to be zombies as well in order to get down the street safely. Adrift in a swirling bright green haze of staggering boys, collapsing girls, and the dim bellowing of quite-uncalled-for language -- muted only slightly by a tranquil fat-flaked snowfall -- I recalled the first piece of advice I was ever given in New York, by the family member I was visiting back in 1999: "don't make eye contact with anyone."  

If you were hoping for good pics of the show, please see Brooklyn Vegan

Not since the days of Jawbreaker has it been more endearing to see a frontman wearing his own band's T-shirt on stage. Speaking of, the punk and hardcore turns of Chelsea Light Moving shouldn't be much of a surprise coming from a man who immediately changed into a Void T-shirt after his own wedding ceremony. If anything, the prevalence of those turns has been a little overstated. There's the Germs cover, and "Lip," but even in those there are equal measures of appreciation for history and humor in, say, the jabbing riff and repetition of "too fucking bad/too fucking bad." As welcome as a whole album's worth of "Winner's Blues"-type quiet would be, it's a relief that Moore seems still a ways off from going soft.

Live, Chelsea Light Moving sound like a mohawked cousin of Psychic Hearts, Moore's rapidly written and recorded, and rightfully revered, 1995 solo album, which was given an excellent 'Don't Look Back' performance at the first All Tomorrow's Parties in the US a few years ago. When the band encore later with "Staring Statues," a highlight from that album, it fits in to the set seamlessly. That there was a time when "Ono Soul" got played on major FM radio stations seems absurd now, but 98% of the audience at Maxwell's surely remembers that time vividly. 


It's best to pretend that we were taking artsy photos on purpose

One of the funnier aspects of the show is that, for a punk band "from New Jersey" (as Moore deadpans at the start) that's premiering their debut album in a small club, there's a beyond-impressive wealth of talent and experience between the Moore, bassist Samara Lubelski, guitarist Keith Wood (Hush Arbors), drummer John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man). Notably, the veteran Lubelski released one of the finer albums of last year, Wavelength.

Late into the show, Moore becomes talkative, and, awesomely, it diverges into what might be the closest thing to a VH1 Storytellers episode that we'll get out of him - though there's always hope. A guy in the audience calls out to Moore that he owes him a tape of a show from fifteen years ago. After a short clarifying back and forth, Moore recalls the episode and the exact Feelies show in question, and tells the guy to send him his email and he'll finally make good on the promise.

The mood even gets a bit wistful when Moore gives a shout out to Bob Bert, a longtime Hoboken resident and the drummer for Sonic Youth in the formative early-to-mid 80's years from Confusion is Sex to Bad Moon Rising, who is in the audience. He segues from there into an anecdote, also told in the Sonic Youth biography Goodbye 20th Century, about a 'wanted' flyer that the band posted up on St. Mark's Place back in the day that said "Sonic Youth Needs Drummer," on which someone had crossed out "drummer" and written "ideas." It was a jarring reminder of who we were watching: a legend with little left to prove, but still hungry all the same.
 

 Coming soon-ish: Night Falls on Hoboken, Part 2: Yo La Tengo in Berlin...