Concert Reviews
Pinback
/ somewhere
in Boston / May 26, 2005
I showed up late
for the show because an old
friend was in
town visiting. Was torn between wanting to see her and wanting to see
the band.
I opted to do both and missed out equally on both ends. 
This
was the first time
I saw Pinback and they looked nothing like I'd expected of them. I'd
expected
some college rock types with glasses and self-conscious artfulness; I
got a
Black Francis-like lead singer wearing a Black Flag t-shirt with a
chain to his
wallet. They looked even less like people who are in a band called
Goblin Cock,
which believe it or not, they are. (They actually released an album
titled Bagged
and Boarded
last year. Check out
the album
cover).
Sleater-Kinney and Dead
Meadow / Roseland Ballroom, New York / June 23, 2005
See Sleater-Kinney (The Woods)
and Dead Meadow (Feathers)
record reviews here
(where I discuss their live shows).
Royksopp
/ Irving
Plaza, New York / July 13, 2005
I loved the last album
Melody A.M. from a few years
back—especially the
lovely "Eple" and the ingenious videos from various singles. The two
men behind
Royksopp (from Norway) toil in a sub genre of electronic music that
might be
best characterized as more popular than innovative. They're not cutting
edge
but they do a great job of balancing the two primary motivations of
interesting
electronic music, the urge to dance and the sense of pensiveness. The
show,
supporting their new album The
Understanding, was much more
geared towards the former,
and it
essentially felt like a two-hour long dance party. As an act of
performance,
it's always weird watching two men on stage twiddling knobs or pressing
their
body weight against a tiny switch on a consol as if the degree of
pressure had
anything to do with the change in music. 
Located in a "rock"
context, at a
venue like the Irving Plaza where rock bands play, acts like Royksopp
(or any
electronic act really, beginning with post-punk acts such as Throbbing
Gristle
or New Order) either have to reinvent the relationship between
performer and
audience or try and retrofit their "act" within traditional "rock"
relationships of paying fans who stand/sit in rapt audience to
performers on
raised podiums. DJs who spin avoid this whole conundrum since, for the
most
part, fans of certain DJs don't go to see the DJs spin (although you
can) but
to hear their selection and mixing of music, a process that is
singularly dependent
on the skills of the DJ to have her/his finger on the pulse of a given
audience
at any given moment, feeding the surges, cushioning the ebbs. Not fully
DJs,
not traditional rock'n'roll, Royksopp fit themselves into that
netherworld
category, the dance act that uncomfortably fits on a rock stage. The
two dudes
came on stage and launched into one of their most frenetic tracks
"Royksopp's Night Out,"
and they did a nice job of being all kinetic; one of the guys used drum
sticks
to punctuate the track. But basically, this was like a dance party. The
crowd
stopped paying much attention to the stage—since there was nothing to
watch but the heads of the guys behind banks of computer consols—and
jostled and danced like at a club. Royksopp obliged by playing one
dance number
after another, avoiding their more moody pieces from Melody A.M. Once the band left the stage, I was done,
but I
completely misread the crowd. There was much cheering and stamping, two
encores, and a genuinely surprised Royksopp dude noted that they hadn't
been expecting
such a raucous response in New York. They ended their show by playing
"Royksopp's Night Out"
for the second time, and were gone. No doubt encouraged by the
response, they
returned to New York later in the year but I missed them. I love to
dance but
it might be more fun to spend that money going to see a favorite DJ
rather than
one single act.
Bloc Party
/ Roseland Ballroom, New York / September 9, 2005
See Bloc Party record review (of Silent
Alarm) here
where I discuss this show.
Sigur Ros
/ Beacon Theater, New York / September 13, 2005
I saw Sigur Ros sometime ago at Radio City Music Hall (in March 2003),
which was an amazing amazing show. This show was not at those halcyon
levels, maybe because of the lesser venue. Their new album Takk... is
also a completely
different animal from their earlier & brilliant (), one of
my favorite albums of
the past ten years or so. Where ()
comprised of long sweeping symphonic explorations, Takk... is focused on shorter
song-oriented samples. This in and of itself is not a bad thing; the
band also seems to have moved to add extra instrumental flourishes here
and there, making this a much more dense album than (). 
More
orchestra, more background vocals, trumpets, xylophones. Some of the
melodies are still heart-dropping beautiful. Knowing they're from
Iceland makes music critics gush with language about their "glacial" or
"arctic" nature but I think those are descriptors that come from
knowledge rather than essence. To me, they seem incredibly warm. Yes,
they are "sad" music, but sad in a way that is hugely orchestral and
not impersonal and self-obsessed. They began the show behind a giant
partially see-through curtain that obscured the band.
We saw only their shadows, shadows that overlapped from different light
sources. The band members said hardly a word 'tween songs, just
performing and doing their thing. Why bother with the audience? We're
from Iceland. By the middle of the show, a string quartet (or
triplet?), the band Amina, joined them on stage to provide the
orchestral backdrop to their music. The main lead guy, the man in the
center, plays his guitar like a violin, and there are moments in the
crescendo of their song climaxes, where you see his skinny elbow move
up and down with his violin bow, up and down, up and down, over and
over. If you focus on the elbow for too long, you forget the man, and
you start to see everybodys' body parts move in some crazy dance of
angles and wrists and knees. The music provides a lovely counterpoint
to this dance of bones, to express the inexpressible. There's nothing
like that visual spectacle.
Interpol
/ somewhere in New York / October 2, 2005
The show was
opened by a band I'd never heard of
called Boom
Bip who played long instrumental pieces which were post-rockish
(with
an accent
on the rock). Great two or three note riffs—some of them impossibly
unintuitive—were pounded into submission before mutating into
transcendent new riffs that arose out of the morass. 
Great band,
see
them live
if you can. Interpol was, of course, the reason I went to see the show,
them
being one of my favorite pop bands around. Such great songs, two great
albums,
lots of gravitas, nonsensical lyrics, killer hooks. I'd heard that they
were
not much of an "exciting" band to watch live: they reproduce their
songs
note-for-note, that performance is an act as impersonal as recording.
Their
show tonight was better than that. They—especially the lead
guitarist—looked like they were invested in playing and giving it their
all. The lead singer's voice flew over the crowd, communicating that
weird
combination of melody and tremolo, indifference and desperation. The
songs were
all indeed note perfect—and because the songs are so consistently
good—it made up for their lack of spontaneity. They did almost all of
the
two albums, an rare track here or there ("Song
Seven") [note: this is an iTunes link] and a few that I
didn't
recognize. If there was a sour note to the show, it was that the two
guitars
were slightly out of pitch, making much of the music off-kilter,
discordant at
moments when you would expect a perfect dance between the notes coming
from two
instruments. They didn't seem to notice. They didn't actually seem to
notice
much; they hardly said a word on stage and if initially they looked
distant,
disembodied, and disconnected from each other, at the end of the show,
Mr.
Goth-looking bass guitarist (looking vaguely like a young Daniel Ash),
leapt on
the rest of the band in a giggling bear hug. Interpol was human after
all.
U2
/
Madison Square
Garden, New York / October 10, 2005
They put on a
good show. I confess I don't know
much of
their new stuff, i.e., after Zooropa,
but it didn't matter. Each subsequent album contains one or two songs
that,
heard the first time, can still evoke/raise/inspire spirits at the
emptiest of
times. It was a big venue but there was a surprising intimacy to Bono's
shenanigans as he pranced about a circular stage that framed the band
at the
center. He spoke, cajoled, and engaged the crowd in every way that one
would
expect from a self-absorbed showman such as he. He asked people to
raise their
cell phones—the lights forming a constellation of lights across the
auditorium much as Zippo lighters used to back during Journey concerts
in 1982.
U2 are still firmly in "Phase 2.5" of their career, the one begun with Achtung
Baby in 1991
with the willful
adoption of
the persona of rock stars, and now into the "half" part of 2.5, where
they are comfortable being institutions with history. I saw them once
during their earnest Phase
1, when
their combination of gravitas and rock made them walk the fine line
between
silly and great. 
Nowadays, they mostly
just try and have
fun but there are
occasional flashbacks from the days in which Bono would preach about
the evils
of apartheid. On this night, the band displayed the United Nations
universal declaration
of human rights on a huge screen above the band, a message aimed
partly
at the
clowns of the current U.S. administration, their fingers dirtied by
torture.
Bono dedicated songs to Patti
Smith and Michael Stipe
(who were in the
audience) and had the crowd sing happy birthday to Luciano Pavarotti
(whose
birthday it was). He also asked audience members to contribute a dollar
each to
The ONE
Campaign (a "campaign to
make poverty history"). And the music?
Well,
the band were tight, a well-oiled machine, and they delivered a
symphonic
performance, helped by The Edge's echoes ringing out across the
auditorium.
They are (not surprisingly) great instrumentalists, reproducing much of
the new
album How
to Dismantle an Atomic
Bomb, none of
which I'd ever heard, except
"Vertigo" a good rock'n'roll
riff song, a stab at relevancy now that guitar bands seem to be
rediscovering
the garage. It also gave Bono a chance to make some imaginary kung fu
kicks;
the iPod commercial was somehow more exciting. No "New Year's Day" but
plenty
of good old stuff including some surprising selections such as "Zoo
Station,"
the brilliant opening song off of Achtung
Baby, an
album whose remainder was turgid,
mediocre, and
overrated. There were two encores, one (obviously) with "Bad," and the
other
with (duh) " '40'." Omitted entirely from the show was anything off of Zooropa, their last good
album, but the band now
have so
many good songs that they could do entirely different shows every night
and
still hit some striking highlights. Even their b-sides: what an amazing
roll of
them from 1984 to 1989. They were an incredible band from their Boy upto
the early 1990s, a competent one
since then,
and often incredibly annoying, but if the U2 men want to continue to
pretend to
put out relevant rock'n'roll, I'm happy to pretend to like them. I
guess until
they break up or stop making music, they will always be in the
background,
somewhere between genius and muzak.
Local
H
/ Tribeca
Rock Club, New York / October 21, 2005
OK, this was hands
down the best rock'n'roll show
I saw last
year. And Local H is the best rock'n'roll band in the world. I do not
lie. And
that's saying a lot for a band that has only two people, a maniacal
drummer and
a guitar player who, I have no idea how, plays both bass and lead
guitar on the
same guitar. Fuck the White
Stripes, go see Local H. You may remember
Local H
from the minor hit they had in the post-Nirvana "modern rock"
payola-radio-frenzy days—a song called "Bound for the Floor" with the
guy
singing something about being copacetic. Yeah, this is the same band,
and
they're still around. They continue to tour like madly in the face of
criminal
neglect from hipster rock critics. And even though I am practically a
senior
citizen, I can gleefully confess that I am not aging gracefully. 
I love
da
rock'n'roll and Local H deliver da rock'n'roll. I seem to remember
somewhere
that someone (pretty specific there) called them "meat and potatoes"
rock'n'roll. Superficially they are, but they are so much more. Local H
mastermind Scott Lucas (songwriter, vocalist, guitar player) is a
freakin'
genius, for better than anyone else in recent times, he taps into that
certain
nagging feeling that follows us everywhere, the one that is about
resigning
yourself to your limitations as an adult rather than pretend that there
is
something greater to achieve, despite your best talents, efforts,
intentions,
etc. It's not about how great you are. It's just that all of the good
stuff in
your life made no difference in the end. On the CD chronicling their
current
tour, you see "SoSo" written in the same font as the famous "Zoso" from
Led
Zeppelin. Ha ha. And that reference to Led Zeppelin is part of
Local
H's grand
narrative about the history of rock'n'roll, the idealistic narrative
that links
youth to rock'n'roll because nothing else made sense. Beyond that
sensibility,
they traffic in some of the same sonic byroads that Nirvana identified
on the
map—loud guitars, taut rhythms, killer riffs, three minute gems. But
where Nirvana combined art with depression and gloominess, Local H
channel all
of that sound into some fantasy space where you can be mad but
resigned, where
you can hate but be resigned, where you can love but be resigned. Of
course,
you don't have to take Local H on any level more complex than
meat-and-potatoes
rock'n'roll: you can rock out, have a couple of beers and spill it all
over
your neighbor. Beyond the spectacle aspect, Local H play incredibly
well. Lucas
is a very talented guitar player, handling so much sound, chords, lead
riffs,
and bass notes through one guitar simultaneously and singing with all
his guts
that I kept looking for some other background tape that was playing
supporting
music. This night, Local H played at a small venue. I saw a couple of
bozos
setting up their gear before the show, then in some awesome trick of
unselfconscious glory, those selfsame bozos began playing their
rock'n'roll.
They were their own roadies! Then after the show, Lucas jumped over the
crowd
and headed for the tables to sell t-shirts and CDs. I said "thanks for
the
show," he said "thanks for comin', dude" and I left. True ROCK'N'ROLL
PROFESSIONALS. For those who missed Local H on this tour, they've put
out a
recorded thing creatively called Live
'05
which includes 17 live songs, a studio cover of Britney Spear's
"Toxic," and
three fan-made videos. (They take their fans very seriously). Local H
are from
a small town in Illinois but now live in Chicago.
Explosions In The
Sky
/ Bowery Ballroom, New York / December 12, 2005
It's hard to
really convey the strange majesty of
seeing
these guys live. I've already described my feelings on seeing them late
last
year when they were touring in support of their last "proper" album, The
Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place.
The one
thing that struck me seeing them this second time was that it demands
something
of the audience in that you have to leave your expectations of a
"normal" rock
show behind. There are no typical musical cues (choruses, verses,
climaxes,
themes) that punctuate your time in neat segments. If you pay too much
attention to the detail of the music (that guitar figure, this drum
break) you
lose sense of the beauty of the music. In one sense to truly appreciate
their
music, you have to abandon the rules of musical showmanship behind.
Which I
suppose is why some call them post-rock (although I hate that tag in
general).
Explosions in the Sky is all instrumental music so some will be biased
against
them. 
But
if you have ever felt deeply sad in
your life, even if for a
short
while, sad (but not depressed), so sad that it dropped the heaviness in
your
chest deep into the pit of your stomach, you will probably be able to
relate to
this music. It is music deeply embedded in the essence of what makes
us sad,
and in knowing that what
makes us
utterly sad is often the exact same feeling that makes us exult and
euphoric.
Explosions in the Sky recently put out a limited edition mail order
only e.p.
entitled The
Rescue
which I
believe is no longer available (unless you go to one of their shows).
It's the
first new music by them since their slight work for the Friday
Night
Lights soundtrack last year. The
concept
behind it appealed to me: they walked into the studio every day for
eight
consecutive days and recorded a single piece of music each day without
rehearsal or preconceptions. What they turned out is pretty,
precocious,
without the drama of their prior work. It shows a new side to the band,
one
that is less and less afraid to embrace small joys instead of the grand
emotional statement. By the end of the eight days, they began producing
little
pieces of beauty again. At the show, as far as I could tell, they did
not play
anything from the e.p., and they also omitted "Your Hand In Mine," the
most
obviously melancholy piece of their oeuvre, a move that in some sense
was a
relief to me; I could walk out at the end of the night without having
felt the
emotions too deeply in the pit of my stomach. I could leave the show
and soon
forget about how deeply and profoundly I'd felt the visceral cycle of
emotions
standing about ten feet infront of the band a few hours before. What I
remembered were the three guitarists at the front of the stage
pouncing/pounding their instruments in unison at the end of "Memorial"
in a way
that suggested some unearthly dance of arms, some violence so fucking
loud that
I left the hallroom with a high pitch in my ears. How can music so sad
be so
loud that it'll rip your ears out? [The above is a photo from the
actual show that I saw; you can download complete songs from this very
show here]
[Watch videos of several
Explosions songs here]