By nature, live reviews seem to fall under the flag of exalted, sweat and near-gore fangirl accounts of the action or newspaperish, hypercivilized Arts section critiques. I aim to place myself between the two: make me a participant-observer, an I-lived-through-this-action-movie zombie with a brain. Onward, dear reader.

This past Friday night marked the final date on Pelican’s 26 city headlining tour with Black Cobra (San Francisco, CA) and Disappearer (Boston, MA). The Empty Bottle did not have a chance, Chicago’s dimly lit, premiere “experimental…post-this, pre-that” venue had to post a pink “Show Sold Out” notice sometime during opening act, Disappearer’s set.

Disappearer’s front man, Jebb Riley was politely heckling the crowd for staying their distance from the stage when I arrived. Disappearer falls neatly at the place between Hum and stoner metal. Cranked fuzz, chorus and distortion pedals put to power chords, deeper raspy vocals, however, there is a bit of something unidentifiably elegant and poppy about the arrangements. Disappearer is really nothing new, but they are a solid act.

Riley is quite possibly one of the tallest men that I have ever seen on stage and his bass lines swing the slower moving harmonies, adding definition and trading melody-carrying responsibilities with the fuzzed out guitar, over drummer Matt Spearin’s punchy/bright kick and snare. Vocals came in about a little less than half of the time. “Glassland”, which came somewhere near the middle of the set made for the best live track, changing the set mood a bit, coming to sound closer to the you-and-me-alone atmosphere that better Cure songs have. In direct opposition, though, the few songs that had unison vocals and some of the lyrics had me wincing or going for another drink.

Pretend scenario: I’ll come by, drop you off a copy of Chronomega, Black Cobra’s most recent LP. Let’s say you hadn’t heard them. I’ll give you three minutes to listen to the first track, then you tell me, how many people are in this band?

Black Cobra sounds like a 3-4 piece, but it’s just guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian and Rafael Martinez on drums on this Southern Lord release. The mix your ear makes between lower register of Landrian’s guitar and Martinez’s kick almost makes for an invisible bassist-presence. Not that I’m missing what isn’t here. While the record is tight, loud, and fast, the live show is quite different. There are additions and songs stretch on longer, certain songs gain intros, it’s just different, and the added length adds on greater dynamic depth to the ol’ in and out.

Fuck yes. This band is metal. It is fast as sin, and the kick moves faster than that. If the label’s called Southern Lord, as named for the devil, shouldn’t at least half of the roster bring you to your knees?

I have a classically-trained upbringing, which get me, works both for and against me. I do get bored when there isn’t enough there. Next time, Black Cobra headlines.

Landrian has one of the most beautiful and measured vibratos I’ve seen outside of recital halls (though he only used it twice, once in a quite intro, the other buried deep into the mix), and both Landrian and Martinez play like they were raised in the same small shoebox together – there’s a real native ability for these guys to hear each other. I’m still floored and gushing.

I signed on for Pelican. And they finally took the stage after Black Cobra and immediately, the stage was filled with their five members. Somehow, Black Cobra had an almost starkly, theatrical appeal. Two guys. Front and center downstage. One, with the hair, the other half-naked and killing the kit. Pelican had more amps, more members, just generally more props. I missed the Cobra.

The amount of unison in Pelican surprised me. Coming from the Doom and atmosphere of the dirgeful and sometimes acoustic The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. After last hearing Pelican guitarist Trevor de Brauw in Chord, a fantastic and seldom-touring drone collective, Pelican’s performance felt flat.

And maybe it wasn’t just me, subjectively, there were physical components that were not there live: I was standing out there sonically left waiting for the guest appearances from Greg Anderson (sunn0))) and Aaron Turner (Isis) from the LP. It’s this collaboratory aspect that had gone out of the mix, that which their PR copy states, “lend[s] the record organic diversity”. And the live set didn’t feel modified to compensate for the change. (Think Radiohead’s tour for Kid A)

The crowd was jumping, screaming, and the fellow in front of me was flailing and pumping his fists. I guess I’m missing it, right? I couldn’t see beyond the band’s start the riff—pass the riff from the guitars to the bass and back structure, this shorter, newer, and more simply direct turn. Truth be told, Southern Lord hired Pelican on for some good reason. And they’re changing. Maybe it’s the next record/tour that I’ll love.

I had given up. Tried to find it through the library, video sites, for sale anywhere and nothing. I gave up for good, and then, deciding to walk off my own self-pity and stupid anger, I walked into a little indie-ish video shop in my town of Chicago, and there was Berlin Babylon sitting on display. I gushed a little to the clerk, didn’t even try to hide my surprise, and rented the thing.

Berlin Babylon fits perfectly into a talk about Cinema Sounds — the film is noisy. It surprises me that the reviews I’ve seen (i.e. 1 & 2) on the film fail to mention that. It is clear that the director, Hubert Siegert, wanted the filmgoer-soundtrackgoer as close to the building process as possible. Berlin Babylon is a film about building a large-scale planned community overtop of the area where the old Berlin wall used to stand. When the wall fell, land between the former West and East halves of Germany opened up. In a city that had been jam-packed full of buildings and other structures since the 19th century, this was news. Somehow director Hubertus Sieger knew that this building process would make good film copy. And specifically, he must have intuited that a) the architects would want to talk and b) the move to build on the wall site would be historically important, very German, and controversial.

While other critics (and everyone is one) have mentioned that the film seems “cool” and “removed,” I don’t get that. Siegert and his crew bring the filmgoer straight to the nuts, bolts, and nails of the project. There are the teams of architects, who become the fleshed-out main players of the film, the constant workers and their noisiness, and lastly and most centrally, the city and its buildings, which achieve their own personality through the shots and duration of the movie.

Sounds. We’re here for sounds. In an artful, musically scored documentary you expect music and talking to go along with the non-fiction. You might expect to hear Brahms and Beethoven played over images of before-the-war, before-the-wall buildings, and old black and white movies where people dynamite beautiful old buildings standing in the way of progress, but the rest of the film is noise.

And it’s the rest of the music, the symphonic, beautiful Brahms and co. that you’re going to want to filter out. Because the noise is the poetry here. After Einsturzende’s quasi-overture opening music (that plays over the film’s first aerial shots), the real noise starts. Siegert starts shooting the physical building process. Siegert and what sounds like ten thousand condenser microphones pick up the workers’ hammering noises. Consecutive unmetered hammer hits, sounding like heavy hail hitting 2x4s bridges into the sounds of Einsturzende Neubauten’s slightly more melodic music made from steel pipes (tempered and arranged like orchestral chimes) and percussion instruments made from building-site metals, wood, truck wheel wells (which bring out a deeper, sharper, and more complex, steel-drum sort of sound), and other junkyard materials.

While at first Einsturzende’s music sounds like palatable industrial (in the true sense of the the word) cacophony, the construction workers’ banging develops into Einsturzende Neubauten’s own banging, which is more acoustically and elegantly tuned for the ears before coming to real music, with N.U. Unruh’s melodically solid basslines, and gasp, Blixa Bargeld’s smooth low singing with words.

Berlin Babylon is not all clanging and industrial sounds, or even true album-worthy Einsturzende Neubaten music. Frontman Blixa Bargeld and the rest of E.N. do write some documentary soundtrack music for the film. Light Kraftwerkian sort of fare plays over aerial shots of the highway. Sweeping shots of buildings are accompanied by light, neither here nor there instrumentals. I’m forgetting how to describe how this bit of scoring sounds, simply because it is meant to be background music to the shots. Siegert takes his camera and half-walks you, half-flies you through the Berlin’s streets. They are nearly empty in the morning shots, and the camera even walks you through the open door of an older, abandoned building, takes you up the stairs, and has you look up at the teardrop-shaped (think Guggenheim’s ceiling) arrangement of staircases, while barely there music plays on.

Siegert likes filming the project’s architects talking, most notably I.M. Pei (builder of the Louvre’s glass pyramid), and he likes filming the finished buildings of Berlin themselves, sans people, but somehow, I think he likes filming the process of crumbling, tearing down, and building best. Minutes and minutes of fluid footage of documentary-like conversation and planning talk or cityscape shooting always seems to come back to the noise of the workers’ jackhammers, cement pouring, and loud truck white noise. Just as central  to Siegert’s filming of the actual noise of the workers’ progress on the process (the hammer and nails of the project) seems to be Einsturzende Neubauten’s score. The half-junkyard sounds and artfully planned out arrangements of Einsturzende’s filmscore writings fit in perfectly with the whole of Berlin Babylon.  Who better than an industrial material-focused, formerly West German, German experimental band, whose name translates to “exploding new buildings,” to write the soundtrack for a documentary focused on the building project for the ex-Berlin Wall site? Genius, Hubertus Sieger, or whoever helped you along with choosing Einsturzende Neubauten.

Check Out:

Tom Wait’s “Take It With Me” makes me feel seasick-lovesick. That music box piano…

If you didn’t read it, please do, Mr. Caffrey’s list will warm your heart. Mine will make your heart feel like a cold rock.

Aptly, it’s raining now. It’s grey out and just starting to get cold after an oasis-like heat wave in Chicago. February is cold. Valentine’s Day might’ve only made it worse for you, but you can still fight back, without listening to “Love Hurts” or smashing PBR cans against your head.

“But you know, I’m young, I know/But even so/I know a thing/or two/I’ve learned a lot…”

…and I won’t say about what. Please continue reading if you’d like to find a few songs to make you feel like you’re not the only person who might’ve been more excited about Friday the 13th than Saturday the 14th.

Also please continue on if you like a well-done cover songs, like piano-driven songwriting and appreciate drooping lovesick songs, too. Stay with me here. It’s lonely out there.

10. The Who – “Substitute”

1966 must’ve been a hard luck year for romance.

In between recording, touring, and announcing that they were “bigger than Jesus”, the Beatles had time to sit down with a pile of steaks and dead-looking baby dolls for their famously recalled cover to Yesterday…and Today, Nancy Sinatra stomped all over the face of staying together with “These Boots are Made for Walking”, and somewhere in all of that, the Who released their single “Substitute”.

Have you ever had the sneaking feeling (only brought on by Valentine’s Day, of course) that you might’ve been born slightly bitter and twisted? [Also see #4] There might not be hope for you, but you’re still in good company.

Pete Townsend heard talk that that The Who were being taken for a Rolling Stones-substitute. This lead Townsend to counter The Stones’ “Satisfaction” with one of the catchiest riffs Keith Richards never wrote. Add Roger Daltrey’s yelling about being “born with a plastic spoon in [his] mouth” and talk about being “backdated,” half-black, and a “substitute for another guy” backed all the while by the jangliest, mod-est tambourine ever and there you are. Sweet revenge.

9. The White Stripes (Son House)— “Death Letter”

Sometimes you don’t have much say in a break-up. Sometimes no one’s there to break the news. You might just check the mail (email or snail), as you’re bound to do and find that someone’s left you a few small words saying that it’s over. Sometimes they keep it short and sweet (or bitter), like, say, “the gal you love is dead”, and then you’re left out in the cold. What to do? If you’re Son House/Jack White…

You leave your house –“pack up your suitcase,”

You attend a funeral if need be—“it looked like ten thousand people, standin’ around the burying ground.” Sometimes you don’t even know that you love ‘em ‘till they “let ‘er down”, and you’re left “huggin’ the pillows” where your “baby used to lay.” What then?

You write a damn good blues song.

8. Cake (Gloria Gaynor) – “I Will Survive”

The crucial thing to remember is that however much you get dragged through the mud, ultimately, you’ll survive. Even if you might be petrified at first.

Did you think I’d lay down and die? There’ll always be enough disco women and Cake to fix up me up right, especially with the ska-cum-Cake trumpets at 3:22.

7. The Smiths – “ I Know It’s Over”

Name your album The Queen is Dead and Her Highness won’t love you. See a song named “I Know It’s Over” and you know what you’re in for. Even so, beginning a song with the words “Oh, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head” and you’ve already cemented yourself into a corner “The Cask of Amontillado” style.

The Smiths are sure to compliment any rainy day (see “the sea wants to take me”) or still-lingering back of the palm to the forehead “woe is me” sort of feeling (“and as I climb into an empty bed/enough said”). In cassette tape, CD, or record form, the Moz will always be there for you to help along with living down (or living up) any school boy-esque trifles. That is, unless your “walkman started to melt”, or something.

6. The Magnetic Fields – Various

“I Thought You My Boyfriend” – dancefloor disco beats, showtunes piano, and straight-forward wit served up neat. Merrit may be a romantic: “I thought I thought I was just the guy for you and it would never end, I thought you were my boyfriend.” But still, even Stephin Merrit admits that he has nine other guys on hand anyway. Very adaptive advice.

“Epitaph for My Heart”– I have this space-heater. It recently quit working without telling me. I couldn’t handle it, and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone. Ultimately, the thing was never fixed and sits around in disrepair.

Situation worked out a lot like a break-up. The heater also had this label on the side that read

Caution: to prevent electric shock do not remove cover.
No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer servicing to qualified
service personnel.

Coincidentally, these are the opening lyrics to the “Epitaph for My Heart”, only Merrit sings them in three part harmony with himself. In “Epitaph…”, Merrit wonders who will mourn the passing of his heart and if “its little droppings will climb the pop chart”. Answer: yes. But not like they should’ve.

“Busby Berkeley Dreams” – I used to think that Merrit meant this song to be serious, albeit through a thick veneer of classic dead-pan assholism. I now realize that I don’t trust Mr. Merrit since finding out about his NPR-sponsored song project.

I wouldn’t call Busby Berkeley beautiful; women in sequins, synchronized high-kicking dance numbers, and lots of feathers don’t do it for me. But it’s fascinating to hear about Stephen Merrrit’s magazine glossy dreams. I really hope he has “outrageously beautiful Busby Berkeley dreams.”

But those heart-cripplingly sweet dreams would make life difficult, you know, so maybe it’s better if it’s just a song he wrote.

5. Billy Bragg – “New England”

Bragg’s “new England” doesn’t have anything to do with Connecticut and those other states.  Like Shane McGowan, Billy Bragg writes beautiful pub lyrics and gets away with never sounding like he’d be the type to cry into his drink: “I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them, but they were only satellites. I’ve grown to wish on space hardware. I wish, I wish you’d care.”

4. Smog – “I Break Horses”

You’d think that any man who might find himself playing opposite/lying alongside Joanna Newsome had got to be a lovely creature. Don ‘t let Mr. Callahan’s charm fool you. “I Break Horses” shows the master songwriter on his worst behavior. Callahan structures a song ripe with misogynist animal metaphors and analogies, Callahan sings that he “breaks horses,” “doesn’t tend to them” and repeatedly talks about gashes and scratches, pushing it to the limit with the line “at first her warmth felt good between my legs”. And here I thought we had a small-town gentleman on our hands. Why does this make me like him more?

3. John Cale (Elvis) – “Heartbreak Hotel”

In 1955, a man named Durden read about a suicide in the Miami Herald. The suicide, a well-dressed man, had removed all the labels from his clothing, leaving a note saying: “I walk a lonely street.” “Heartbreak Hotel” is all about that, as told from the perspective of a well-dressed man who decides that he cannot live without the woman who left him.

When Elvis sings the song, he sounds like Elvis. And in the live recordings I’ve heard, Elvis sings, plays a guitar, and plenty of women scream like crazy after each verse.

It must be all in the delivery, after all. John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame) pulls the song apart at the seams, reducing it to almost half speed and placing the harmony line onto the back of a baby grand piano. You’d never hear the line “The bell hop’s tears keep flowing, and the desk clock, he’s dressed in black.” In Elvis’ version, everything just happens too quickly. Cale’s version unsettling-ly creeps along.

2. Jacques Brel – “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

Please don’t read my commentary until after listening to the song. It cannot tell you how delicate the piano trills sound at the end of the song or how sweaty Jacques Brel looks when he sings.

Quick. Let’s get out a translation for you. Over here. “Ne me quitte pas” roughly translates to “don’t leave me” in French. But the lyrics aren’t that important, although they’re very good. Listen to the piano set the song up–kind of campy, yes, but somehow that makes Brel seem all the more genuine. When is it that life gives you a break after a solid break up? I’ve never really known it to happen. Think about it. You might be sitting in a little coffee shop, drooping over a coffee that don’t have any appetite to drink, but the table next to you talks about what they had for dinner the night before, their favorite color, the sort of thing the person sitting across from them doesn’t even have the patience for. Likewise, the piano sets up Jacques Brel in “Ne Me Quitte Pas”.

According to the usual unreliable sources, The lyrics “Moi, je t’offrirai des perles de pluie venues de pays où il ne pleut pas” (“Me, I’ll give you pearls of rain from countries where it doesn’t rain”) quotes the lightest theme from Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt.

1. Smashing Pumpkins – “Blank Page”

There are songs meant for dancing and then there are songs that mean to strike you sideways. I’ve never been able to listen to “Blank Page” standing up. Before listening, make yourself comfortable. It’s best if you can find a small town park bench under the trees, a tall-grassed and thickly-wooded area, or childhood friend’s bed to lie down on. This song can transform a room, but it’s meant for headphones.

A continually rocking piano progression, watery sounding strings, and a Billy Corgan you might not now recognize (pre-diva days) drives across the state line, against his better judgment (“stop sign sign told me stay at home/told me you were not alone.”) to catch a glimpse of a deliberately undescribed girl at the five and dime store. An easy synopsis, a hard place to be.

The piano finds a place to repeat itself and seems to stutter elegantly at “The rain falls, my friends call, leaking rain on the phone” This song is the film negative of “Ava Adore”, and I always find myself revisiting it.

My exit music: Smog – “Rock Bottom Riser” might just make you feel like a person again.

Afterword:

Songs I would have included, had I the space:

1) Leonard Cohen- “Famous Blue Raincoat” breaks me in half. Please listen.
2) Nico – “These Days” for the Tenenbaums.
3) ? and the Mysterians – “96 Tears” for good measure.

Couldn’t we’ve had a lucky mix up of the top 13 un-Valentine’s Day songs? Just this once?

]]> Yesterday…and Today, Nancy Sinatra stomped all over the face of staying together with “These Boots are Made for Walking”, and somewhere in all of that, the Who released their single “Substitute”. Have you ever had the sneaking feeling (only brought on by Valentine’s Day, of course) that you might’ve been born slightly bitter and twisted? [Also see #4] There might not be hope for you, but you’re still in good company. Pete Townsend heard talk that that The Who were being taken for a Rolling Stones-substitute. This lead Townsend to counter The Stones' “Satisfaction” with one of the catchiest riffs Keith Richards never wrote. Add Roger Daltrey’s yelling about being “born with a plastic spoon in [his] mouth” and talk about being “backdated,” half-black, and a “substitute for another guy” backed all the while by the jangliest, mod-est tambourine ever and there you are. Sweet revenge. 9. The White Stripes (Son House)— “Death Letter” Sometimes you don’t have much say in a break-up. Sometimes no one’s there to break the news. You might just check the mail (email or snail), as you’re bound to do and find that someone’s left you a few small words saying that it’s over. Sometimes they keep it short and sweet (or bitter), like, say, “the gal you love is dead”, and then you’re left out in the cold. What to do? If you're Son House/Jack White... You leave your house –“pack up your suitcase,” You attend a funeral if need be—“it looked like ten thousand people, standin’ around the burying ground.” Sometimes you don’t even know that you love ‘em ‘till they “let ‘er down”, and you’re left “huggin’ the pillows” where your “baby used to lay.” What then? You write a damn good blues song. 8. Cake (Gloria Gaynor) – “I Will Survive” The crucial thing to remember is that however much you get dragged through the mud, ultimately, you’ll survive. Even if you might be petrified at first. Did you think I’d lay down and die? There’ll always be enough disco women and Cake to fix up me up right, especially with the ska-cum-Cake trumpets at 3:22. 7. The Smiths – “ I Know It’s Over" Name your album The Queen is Dead and Her Highness won’t love you. See a song named “I Know It’s Over” and you know what you’re in for. Even so, beginning a song with the words “Oh, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head” and you’ve already cemented yourself into a corner “The Cask of Amontillado” style. The Smiths are sure to compliment any rainy day (see “the sea wants to take me”) or still-lingering back of the palm to the forehead “woe is me” sort of feeling (“and as I climb into an empty bed/enough said”). In cassette tape, CD, or record form, the Moz will always be there for you to help along with living down (or living up) any school boy-esque trifles. That is, unless your "walkman started to melt", or something. 6. The Magnetic Fields - Various In honor of the song “Three Way” off of 2008’s Distortion. I thought that it might be appropriate to pick three Magnetic Fields songs to stand in for #6 on our list. Originally, I had thought it would be best to narrow it down to a single song off of 69 Love Songs, but that’s easier said than done. A brief over-overview of the chosen ones: “I Thought You My Boyfriend” – dancefloor disco beats, showtunes piano, and straight-forward wit served up neat. Merrit may be a romantic: “I thought I thought I was just the guy for you and it would never end, I thought you were my boyfriend.” But still, even Stephin Merrit admits that he has nine other guys on hand anyway. Very adaptive advice. “Epitaph for My Heart”– I have this space-heater. It recently quit working without telling me. I couldn’t handle it, and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone. Ultimately, the thing was never fixed and sits around in disrepair. Situation worked out a lot like a break-up. The heater also had this label on the side that read Caution: to prevent electric shock do not remove cover. No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer servicing to qualified service personnel. Coincidentally, these are the opening lyrics to the “Epitaph for My Heart”, only Merrit sings them in three part harmony with himself. In "Epitaph...", Merrit wonders who will mourn the passing of his heart and if “its little droppings will climb the pop chart”. Answer: yes. But not like they should’ve. “Busby Berkeley Dreams” – I used to think that Merrit meant this song to be serious, albeit through a thick veneer of classic dead-pan assholism. I now realize that I don’t trust Mr. Merrit since finding out about his NPR-sponsored song project. I wouldn’t call Busby Berkeley beautiful; women in sequins, synchronized high-kicking dance numbers, and lots of feathers don’t do it for me. But it’s fascinating to hear about Stephen Merrrit’s magazine glossy dreams. I really hope he has “outrageously beautiful Busby Berkeley dreams.” But those heart-cripplingly sweet dreams would make life difficult, you know, so maybe it’s better if it’s just a song he wrote. 5. Billy Bragg – “New England” Bragg’s “new England” doesn’t have anything to do with Connecticut and those other states.  Like Shane McGowan, Billy Bragg writes beautiful pub lyrics and gets away with never sounding like he’d be the type to cry into his drink: “I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them, but they were only satellites. I’ve grown to wish on space hardware. I wish, I wish you’d care.” 4. Smog – “I Break Horses” You’d think that any man who might find himself playing opposite/lying alongside Joanna Newsome had got to be a lovely creature. Don ‘t let Mr. Callahan’s charm fool you. “I Break Horses” shows the master songwriter on his worst behavior. Callahan structures a song ripe with misogynist animal metaphors and analogies, Callahan sings that he “breaks horses,” “doesn’t tend to them” and repeatedly talks about gashes and scratches, pushing it to the limit with the line “at first her warmth felt good between my legs”. And here I thought we had a small-town gentleman on our hands. Why does this make me like him more? From here we switch things up, but only after a brief intermission. *** 3. John Cale (Elvis) – “Heartbreak Hotel” In 1955, a man named Durden read about a suicide in the Miami Herald. The suicide, a well-dressed man, had removed all the labels from his clothing, leaving a note saying: “I walk a lonely street.” "Heartbreak Hotel" is all about that, as told from the perspective of a well-dressed man who decides that he cannot live without the woman who left him. When Elvis sings the song, he sounds like Elvis. And in the live recordings I’ve heard, Elvis sings, plays a guitar, and plenty of women scream like crazy after each verse. It must be all in the delivery, after all. John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame) pulls the song apart at the seams, reducing it to almost half speed and placing the harmony line onto the back of a baby grand piano. You’d never hear the line “The bell hop’s tears keep flowing, and the desk clock, he’s dressed in black.” In Elvis’ version, everything just happens too quickly. Cale's version unsettling-ly creeps along. 2. Jacques Brel – “Ne Me Quitte Pas” Please don’t read my commentary until after listening to the song. It cannot tell you how delicate the piano trills sound at the end of the song or how sweaty Jacques Brel looks when he sings. [youtube lfegOxTCuOQ] Quick. Let’s get out a translation for you. Over here. “Ne me quitte pas” roughly translates to “don’t leave me” in French. But the lyrics aren’t that important, although they’re very good. Listen to the piano set the song up--kind of campy, yes, but somehow that makes Brel seem all the more genuine. When is it that life gives you a break after a solid break up? I’ve never really known it to happen. Think about it. You might be sitting in a little coffee shop, drooping over a coffee that don’t have any appetite to drink, but the table next to you talks about what they had for dinner the night before, their favorite color, the sort of thing the person sitting across from them doesn’t even have the patience for. Likewise, the piano sets up Jacques Brel in “Ne Me Quitte Pas”. According to the usual unreliable sources, The lyrics "Moi, je t'offrirai des perles de pluie venues de pays où il ne pleut pas" ("Me, I'll give you pearls of rain from countries where it doesn't rain") quotes the lightest theme from Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt. 1. Smashing Pumpkins – “Blank Page” There are songs meant for dancing and then there are songs that mean to strike you sideways. I’ve never been able to listen to “Blank Page” standing up. Before listening, make yourself comfortable. It’s best if you can find a small town park bench under the trees, a tall-grassed and thickly-wooded area, or childhood friend’s bed to lie down on. This song can transform a room, but it’s meant for headphones. A continually rocking piano progression, watery sounding strings, and a Billy Corgan you might not now recognize (pre-diva days) drives across the state line, against his better judgment (“stop sign sign told me stay at home/told me you were not alone.”) to catch a glimpse of a deliberately undescribed girl at the five and dime store. An easy synopsis, a hard place to be. The piano finds a place to repeat itself and seems to stutter elegantly at “The rain falls, my friends call, leaking rain on the phone” This song is the film negative of “Ava Adore”, and I always find myself revisiting it. My exit music: Smog – “Rock Bottom Riser” might just make you feel like a person again. [youtube 5J-WpgOzW9A] Afterword: Songs I would have included, had I the space: 1) Leonard Cohen- “Famous Blue Raincoat” breaks me in half. Please listen. 2) Nico – “These Days” for the Tenenbaums. 3) ? and the Mysterians – “96 Tears” for good measure. Couldn’t we’ve had a lucky mix up of the top 13 un-Valentine’s Day songs? Just this once? ]]> http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/02/list-em-carefully-top-10-songs-about-break-ups-and-a-song-of-hope/feed/ 7 http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/02/listen-love-is-all/ http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/02/listen-love-is-all/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:30:33 +0000 Sarah Luczko http://consequenceofsound.net/?p=10882 With current temperatures in Chicago still sitting in the 30s, why not consider traveling further north? Heck, it might even be warmer.

Gothenburg, Sweden lies at 57º 47′ N, making it a good 16 degrees and then some closer to the Arctic Circle, and yet, its winter lows are moderate-right now, it’s 40º F out-and the city’s home to “Northern Europe’s largest and most beautiful amusement park” (at Liesberg Park) in addition to being ground zero for all things melodic death metal with bands like At the Gates and In Flames.

How supremely poppy bands like Love is All fit in there, I’m not sure, but somewhere between signing to NYC indie label What’s Your Rupture? and getting released by Parlophone Records in the UK someone else must have heard about them. And then sometime after that, I did.

I’m happy about that last part.

You could say that listening to Love is All would be a lot like drinking a double-shot espresso, that is, if you could count on the barista to rim your cup with neon pink martini sugar. I’m hedging here. I don’t want to say “twee”, but I’ll let the dirty word slip. Love is All sound like a blender mix of Dressy Bessy, Deerhoof, the live volume of a band like Crystal Castles, and the tartness of lingonberry jam. Basically, if twee could “grow a pair” and still hold onto having a female vocalist.

If you might have been hiding under a rock, it’ll take you little time to familiarize the band. Any pop group with the guts and foresight to name their (2006) debut record Nine Times That Same Song must know what they’re up against, and they’re not wasting your time. Standout track “Busy Doing Nothing”, which includes the titular lyric, would make for perfect roller skating music, with its jittery hi-hat and lyrics like “five! movie marathon!”, even so, this would be music for the “adult skate”; Love is All may be Swedish, but Abba this ain’t.

2008 found Love is All back in the studio cranking out A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night. While Love is All tricked me into listening to the same sort of song over and over again with Nine Times, it’s nice to find pop varied and dense enough to sink your teeth in. Punked out track 9, “Big Bangs, Black Holes, Meteorites” features the catchiest hooks the band has put down, and “19 Floors” sums up living in the city pretty well “There were 19 floors and a 1,000 doors, and one of them of is mine. A million names that all seem the same, but that’s just fine”.

All of that aside, I still think that the band’s biggest challenge will be living down Josephine Olausson’s slinked-out yet squeally cover of Prince’s “Darling Nikki”. Good luck, Love is All.

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“Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up”

]]> and the city's home to "Northern Europe's largest and most beautiful amusement park" (at Liesberg Park) in addition to being ground zero for all things melodic death metal with bands like At the Gates and In Flames. How supremely poppy bands like Love is All fit in there, I'm not sure, but somewhere between signing to NYC indie label What's Your Rupture? and getting released by Parlophone Records in the UK someone else must have heard about them. And then sometime after that, I did. I’m happy about that last part. You could say that listening to Love is All would be a lot like drinking a double-shot espresso, that is, if you could count on the barista to rim your cup with neon pink martini sugar. I’m hedging here. I don’t want to say “twee”, but I’ll let the dirty word slip. Love is All sound like a blender mix of Dressy Bessy, Deerhoof, the live volume of a band like Crystal Castles, and the tartness of lingonberry jam. Basically, if twee could “grow a pair” and still hold onto having a female vocalist. If you might have been hiding under a rock, it’ll take you little time to familiarize the band. Any pop group with the guts and foresight to name their (2006) debut record Nine Times That Same Song must know what they’re up against, and they’re not wasting your time. Standout track “Busy Doing Nothing”, which includes the titular lyric, would make for perfect roller skating music, with its jittery hi-hat and lyrics like “five! movie marathon!”, even so, this would be music for the “adult skate”; Love is All may be Swedish, but Abba this ain’t. 2008 found Love is All back in the studio cranking out A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night. While Love is All tricked me into listening to the same sort of song over and over again with Nine Times, it’s nice to find pop varied and dense enough to sink your teeth in. Punked out track 9, “Big Bangs, Black Holes, Meteorites” features the catchiest hooks the band has put down, and “19 Floors” sums up living in the city pretty well “There were 19 floors and a 1,000 doors, and one of them of is mine. A million names that all seem the same, but that’s just fine”. All of that aside, I still think that the band’s biggest challenge will be living down Josephine Olausson’s slinked-out yet squeally cover of Prince’s “Darling Nikki”. Good luck, Love is All. Check Out: "Make Out, Fall Out, Make Up" [youtube QQfQBZDNJJk ] ]]> http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/02/listen-love-is-all/feed/ 2 http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/01/youtube-live-jolie-hollands-mad-tom-of-bedlam/ http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/01/youtube-live-jolie-hollands-mad-tom-of-bedlam/#comments Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:00:51 +0000 Sarah Luczko http://consequenceofsound.net/?p=10638 The fiddle she plays on “Mad Tom of Bedlam” sounds like an old metal cereal box, the inside sounding resonantly hollow, like the acoustics you’d find in a cement-floored recital hall. This is enough to make me swoon, but you might say that these are minor details. Wait, let’s start again.

Jolie Holland knows her instruments, and for all the fuss going around about her voice, I think it’s her violin, not her too-much-Texas-sweet-tea phrasings that bring me in. This is particular no more evident than in this live rendition of the Escondida‘s classic number, “Mad Tom of Bedlam”.

Now that I say that, though, I want to take it back. You, dear viewer, should listen close at 3:04, the lyrics here are “Tonight I’ll go murdering/the man in the moon to a powder/His staff I’ll break and his dog I’ll shake/And there’ll howl no demon louder.”

Confused? Perhaps words really can’t describe this below number or any of Holland’s award-winning repertoire. So rather than try to explain it, check out this Short List nominated singer/songwriter out for yourself…

Café Annapurna, more simply called “Annapurna” by the locals, is conveniently located across the street from Florida State’s primary all-night Strozier library, and just up the hill from an odd assortment of dorms, lofts, and student apartments. And until just recently, I, too, lived in one of those awkward and identical student apartments, and let me tell you, my apartment’s closeness to Annapurna was among its very few saving graces.

For those of you who might simply be passing through Tallahassee en route to wherever, Annapurna may just be another place with fantastic Lhasa noodles (a kind of stir-fry noodle dish with lime) and Achar (a tumeric-yellow potato salad). But for those of you who either live in Tallahassee or might be looking to plan your visit soon, let me let you in on a secret: Annapurna represents a crucial link in Tallahassee’s home spun, DIY, house show-oriented music scene.

Though the Café’s site doesn’t list any upcoming show, chances are good that any Annapurna event will be listed up on Tallahasseeshows.org (a local music events list) and/or announced on the WVFS 89.7 FM’s concert lineup beforehand.

In my time in the city, I not only sat around eating Dal under the watch of the incredibly patient and sweet tempered owners watching print-worthy local acts like Dead Legs (think about a slower tempoed Explosions in the Sky) and the dark turntablism of bands like KEEPBULLFIGHTING (blippy dance pop) and The Penetralia (Burroughs-soaked lyrics and beats), I saw metal bands from Oregon, beautiful orchestral pop bands from Sweden, and most recently, I got to see Ariel Pink of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti play two songs at Annapurna before he stalked off stage complaining about the P.A. And this October, I missed out on seeing the Sunburned Hand of the Man play for much less than his Chicago performances must cost. Damn.

Though you might have to wait until after the start of 2009 for the next Annapurna event, as the café’s schedule very loosely follows that of the Florida State school year, do be vigilant, as much like aura-borealis, you might be able to see something that doesn’t happen too often. I miss this place. Oh, and Namaste.

It’s sorely unfair that Juana Molina’s work gets the “world music” label slapped onto most of what she does. I admit, I hadn’t heard of her until a record-sifting friend of mine mentioned that he couldn’t get her latest album Un Dia off of his station playlists. I had wait for him to repeat her name again before I could write it down.

After searching her name, her music, official sites (Spanish and English) and all you might ask for (YouTube, Wikipedia) came up immediately. A bit of research reveals that she was born in Argentina and is best known by Latinas and Latinos for her sketch-comedy show, though she lived as an ex-pat in Paris and currently calls California home.

Now that you’ve been given that information, feel free to clear most of it out of your mind, all that back there was just background information. Yes, Juana Molina’s culture definitely defines her music, there’s a lot there, salsa rhythms, electronic beats, finger-style and strummed acoustic guitar, critical people are quick to say that her work must be latin or jazz or one thing or the other…but what is it about Juana Molina do I find striking?

Across the entire album, it is her voice that allows all of her tracks off Un Dia to come together so well. Even on the softer and slightly sing-songy tracks, she sings so variedly, not particularly high or low and almost stridently, it’s difficult to say where her voices take the tracks on this album, though one thing is certainly true: each track seamlessly ends somewhere far off from where it began.

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The band’s recent debut, Forget About Never, features some sort of snake/roadkill design on the front and it sure doesn’t sound like a debut album. Speaking of sounds, The Terminals want you to know that they’re solid vox devotees, listing the order of their album instruments as “vox, guitar, drums, keys/organ” on their MySpace.

And if you’d like an aural picture, just go listen to the organ—er, I mean sounds-on “Wild Bill’s Social Club”. Or, take my word for it that the Terminals sound like late ’60s punk rock meets ZZ Top, through the lens of a love of Delta Blues… and lo-fi recording and banging shit out, of course.

Who knew such sounds lay out in the hearts of men from Lincoln, Nebraska?

Have a listen! Interested enough? Buy the debut off Dead Beat Records.

Yet…even as I type out this long, mentally-overdue review and hope to god (“Hey, God!”) I’m not accidentally ghetto blasting out Nine Inch Nail’s “Head Like a Hole” into the quiet library where I sit typing, I still have some difficulty understanding why that wouldn’t be the best idea. I like that the fluttery drum machine beats, the ever-present Roland 808 synths, the pseudo-African tinged beats (think George Bush in Africa) could have only been put down by a semi-savvy white boy from Mercer, PA.

Sorry to say, I haven’t listened to Pretty Hate Machine, or “Halo 2“, as it’s called by devoted ninnys, in a few years, and though I do still know all the words (note: try me), I’m a bit rusty. I don’t even know if I could make it through the record without sitting here red-faced and wincing just a little. So, in order to determine if this should be categorized as a “guilty pleasure,” I propose to make myself your guinea pig. I, a former 15-year-old Trent Reznor expert, will take on my current much older, “improved” self. Track by track, I’ll write up my initial thoughts on each track, “Head Like a Hole” through “Ringfinger” (1 thru 10, for the uninitiated). And if I die, dear god, please know that I donated myself, body and soul, to science.

That being said, feel free to listen along with me! (Run time is 49:00)

“Head Like a Hole” - At 0:26, that Roland synth “bass” riff kills me. Not sorry about that. Wince-good lyric: “God Money, let’s go dancin’ on the backs of the bruised!”

“Terrible Lie” - Tinkly industrial music boxy sounds fall off at the very beginning to Reznor-rap break beat supporting some of the best angular synth hooks of the album, albeit hindered by an awfully audible keyboard choir patch. Reznor goes from screaming to whispering a very quiet, desperate lyric (“my sweet everything/I need someone to hold onto…”) for the outro. It’s kind of sweet.

“Down In It” - Here my inner 15 year-old self notes that even among ninnys, liking this track is kind of like loving a lame dog, considering that Reznor semi-raps and/or chants a vocally-distorted “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day …nah na na nah na…” at the end. However, that still isn’t enough to make me turn up my nose.

“Sanctified” - Oh, for the bridge there’s some real porno sounding bass guitar that’s working against two samples: a melismatic monk’s prayer call and some confessional booth ovie-dialogue. Without a doubt a guilty pleasure. Lyrics: “Heaven’s just a rumor she’ll dispel, as she takes you through the nicest parts of hell.”

“Something I Can Never Have” - Reznor, truly a skilled pianist, finally breaks down and plays a stage piano for the first time in the record. Otherwise simple and pretty, the song features weird weight-room, weight-lifting (sexy?) breathing. Not sure how I feel about this. The part near the end to listen for: de-tuning and lifting background string sounds.

“Kinda I Want To” - There is some serious stereo panning going on here, alongside some wonderfully hooky but dated synths and programmed drum loop samples. Song scenario: Reznor runs across some lady he really shouldn’t, but really still wants to bed. Still, I’m putty.

“Sin” -This track pairs with “Kind of I Want To” thematically and serves as a response. Here Reznor sings about fisting and (obliquely) about dominate/submissive power relationships. You bet this earned the record a Parental Advisory label.

“That’s What I Get” - This one opens with video-game sounding synth noises, sounding kind of like what we’d get if the two slabs in Pong could talk to each other.

“The Only Time” - Can’t tell you how I like the sultry opening lyric. It’s too dirty. But the next lyric! Oh, wait for it! “Lay my hands on heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars while the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car,” directly followed by a Soul-sistah “ooh” sample. One word: AMAZING. I pity you who are not listening along. And while plenty of fun is being poked here, when Reznor does sing “This is the only time I really feel alive,” it isn’t hard to believe him.

“Ringfinger” – I recommend this song to you. It’s solid work. (Aside from a few painful lyrics at 1:32 and 2:41.) And there is plenty of Pixies-styled, cryptically Biblical dirty talk for any naysayer.

Conclusion: There is no way that I’m too-good for this record. I love it. Pretty much all of it. And I’m going to be dragging out my Closure live box set soon, so if you’d like to come over and watch it, please do. Oh, and also: Trent Reznor’s favorite color is green and he once had a dearly-loved golden retriever named Daisy Mae that got ripped apart by mad fans. Just so you know.

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