Portishead

Third
(Island)

Having established oneself as an innovator and a misunderstood genius, and then disappearing for a decade, what does one do next?

(In my case, I ran off to a small mill town outside of Berlin, where I coached a scrappy-but-determined softball team, drank boxes of rum and wrote the greatest graphic novel about homosexual minotaurs that the world will ever see.)

Try, as they do here, to escape from the cliché that the world has boxed them into — Whole Foods, spa weekend background soundtrack for yuppies — Portishead, like all of us, can only change people’s perceptions of who they are to a slight degree.



Despite getting the record off to an exciting start with funky, percussion-heavy swinger, “Silence,” the rest of the tunes tend to bend into a relatively tame, mid-tempo pace and offer few surprises. While it’s a nice collection, they’ve done better already, and that’s why so many have been waiting so long for this one.

Fans of the ’60s futurists the Silver Apples will hear a big influence, especially in the song “We Carry On.”

When the ninth song, “Small,” kicks in and kicks ass, one had almost forgotten that surprise was supposed to be on the menu. It’s a crazy, thrilling ride best heard either on drugs or in a car ride, but hopefully not at the same time.

C. 2008 LEO Weekly

The Breeders

Mountain Battles
(4AD)

“Overglazed” — Stoner intro; repeats “I can feel it.”
“Bang On” — Clean, Pod-era funk jazzercise workout jam.
“Night of Joy” — Trippy Free Design/Carpenters Pod-era, sounds like The Cardigans if Liv Ullmann had been their singer.
“We’re Gonna Rise” — Slow-burning slow-core, sister harmonies.
“German Studies” — Like walking around in the dark, vocals everywhere. Really in German? Extra creep.
“Spark” — Crawls sexy.
“Istanbul” — Melodica? Harmonica? Melonica? My favorite already. Exotica. Duh. Cheerleader raps? Wow.

“Walk It Off” — It’s a hit. NY attitude, dude.
“Regalame Esta Noche” — Mid-’60s country = Freddie Fender … Wait, what’s going on here?
“Here No More” — Gorgeous sister harmonies. Everly bratz.
“No Way” — A rock song.
“It’s the Love” — Another hit, poppoppoprockrockrock.
“Mountain Battles” — Letting the air out of the tires

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Destroyer

Trouble in Dreams
(Merge)

Poor Dan Bejar. The hirsute Canadian should have been a fiery Latin. Not to get all cliché on that ass (though white people do do this), but Bejar is a passionate, passionate man whose lust for words, women, his own always just-out-of-reach ambition, and its unattainable goal — The Perfect Song — burns burns burns.
Listening to what begins to seem like the same nine-minute epic over and over reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall, where naïve young Annie falls for the transparently pretentious, self-styled artiste whose interest in the arts is overshadowed by his interest in nailing chicks, man.

Having survived my 20s, painfully, I had to know many guys like this, who teetered on the edge of bipolar disorder. Some could play instruments well, or write or sing like a more glam-inspired Bob Dylan, but most didn't get as far as this fiery Canuck. I guess that counts for something.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

The Photographic

Pictures of a Changing World
(Galaxia)

The Photographic is an all-instrumental duo from Louisville who follow in the tradition of groups such as Mono, Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, as well as minimalist forefathers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. At times an undercurrent of teen heavy metal love (trying to be restrained) can also be detected.

The music of The Photographic most resembles the sounds of the waves, crashing against the water and the bodies, struggling against what is natural and what is necessary to survive. The struggle is always necessary and, even in death, important.



So to Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Eddie Vedder and all the other open-toe sandal-wearing bummeroos who aren’t content to merely surf; who blemish every surf DVD, skate video and college radio station you get near with your unrighteous neo-James Taylor frat boy slow jamz: Bros, please start soaking up the rays from these Kentucky cave-dwellers instead.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Retribution Gospel Choir

Retribution Gospel Choir
(Caldo Verde)

Alan Sparkhawk and Matt Livingston might want to think about building those ships that people put inside bottles. They seem to want to have a hobby. For most people, being in Low would be enough. Even after almost 15 years, Low remain one of the most beautiful bands around.
With this side band, presumably formed in the garage, the boys go back to the basics and just play some pretty basic rock music. Nothing special.

It’s well played by experienced professionals, but lacking in blood, spirit and heart. When Sparkhawk’s wife, Mimi Parker, occasionally pops in to add her vocals, they become Low, and all is forgiven. Producer Mark Kozelek does a fine job of recording the band, but one also misses his songwriting abilities.
I’m not mad, just a bit disappointed. I might be less forgiving if I’d had to pay for my copy, though.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Anonymous comments are awesome!

I've been writing about music for the Louisville papers for almost 4 years now, ever since I stumbled upon Jeffrey Lee Puckett in a Germantown bar. In that time, I've also worked at the ear x-Tacy record store, and I ran the Old Louisville Coffeehouse, where we hosted 130 all-ages concerts (somewhere around 500 bands) in 13 months, before being shut down by a cranky yuppie neighbor with a lust for calling in noise complaints.

I tried to book every kind of music I could there - mostly punk and hardcore, but also indie rock, folk, jazz, hip hop and random weirdos. Wax Fang played their second show there, in November 2005, many months before they even had a name. My assistant manager played with Second Story Man and Joe Manning; customers would ask my other best employee, "Didn't I see you singing last night at the Jazz Factory with Liberation Prophecy?"
Everyone was welcome, not only to watch but also to play, whether they were 5 or 85. It was a glorious, but ultimately, failed experiment.

I had fun trying to support the local music scene, trying to provide an outlet that it was otherwise lacking. I met lots of people, most of whom were very nice and/or interesting. One of my favorites was Brandon Skipworth, an exceptionally decent fellow who's done wonderful, necessary work over many years as a partner in the Noise Pollution record label.
They put the out the great collection Bold Beginnings: An Incomplete Collection of Louisville Punk 1978 - 1983, which you might have heard about on a series on WFPK, and they've put out excellent discs by VRKTM, Tyrone, Out. and many others.

Noise Pollution recently released a disc by The Teeth. I wrote a review of it, assuming that - as usual - I would hear no direct response to my essay. Once it's out there, it's out, and hopefully people get the idea. I always assume that bands - or anyone trying to make their name known to the public and trying to sell their product in exchange for money - would know that any publicity is good publicity. Well, two months later, I found that I was being discussed on a message board. Oddly enough, it was more positive that hateful!

I am not bringing this topic to this forum to continue the discussion, or backtrack from my review or anything else I've written in the past in any way. I write this because
a) I find it highly amusing
and
b) One of the main reasons why I do this (besides the paycheck) is because I love music,
and I love the Louisville music scene, and being able to shine a light on all the gorgeously unique sounds and ideas that come out of here and, all too often, never leave here.

To you, the Louisvillian who is 21 and older, who isn't going to do anything more exciting tonight, I would ask you to listen to this band, The Teeth, for free, on their MySpace page and decide for yourself if you like them. I'm just one person. My opinion is important but yours is, too (unless you like Sheryl Crow or Lenny Kravitz - in that case, you have no rights).
The Teeth are playing at Cahoots at 1047 Bardstown Road in the Highlands with One Small Step at 10 p.m.

Oh, and tell 'em Berkowsh**z sent you.



C. 2008 Velocity Weekly

The Gutter Twins

Saturnalia
(Sub Pop)

What is it with our middle-aged Alternative Nation icons turning to mid-’90s trip-hop beats in the later days of the George W. era?
Perhaps The Gutter Twins, Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan, can go on tour with Bob Mould — We’re 40-something and Fierce! co-sponsored by Paste magazine and Zima, for those of you who used to rock but are now in recovery and/or too sore.

Though their press release brags them up as “The Satanic Everly Brothers,” Dulli and Lanegan are caught in the purgatory of their own creations. No longer 20-something hellions, not yet The Next Tom Waits — these aging bad boys are still vital artistically, yet more known commercially to people who haven’t watched MTV since Kennedy was introducing the next hot bands.
Lanegan, still one of the best singers in the world, is wise to share the stage with Dulli. The whiny Dulli tries hard and emotes often, but can’t sound much better than Alanis Morissette next to the bluesy, poetic Lanegan, a David Lynch muse whom Lynch just hasn’t discovered yet.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Matt Messina interview

His bio:
Matt Messina is a native Seattle symphony composer now living in Los Angeles scoring music to film and television.

"His purpose as a composer is to help his directors and producers tell their stories and his dramatic sense in writing for the screen is solid." - Julie Gustafson, 20th Century Fox

His inimitable style of songwriting and composition has earned him accolades within the recording industry (ASCAP, NARIS, BAFTA). Recently, he took home 2 Best Score awards; The Festival Tous Courts in France and The One reel Film festival in the US.

His unique style of scoring film has earned him recognition on his most recent scores for Fox Searchlight's Juno and MGM's Bumper.



Peter Berkowitz:
I've got a few questions about the upcoming local screening of JUMP! here. How did you get hooked up with this project?

Matt Messina:
A wonderful production executive over at Warner Brothers put (director) Helen (Hood Scheer) and I together. She had heard some of my music and when Helen was looking for a composer, she suggested me. As it turns out, I was scheduled on a flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina that Friday, so when I heard on a Wednesday that she wanted me to do it, I sort of switched gears and got to work on her film.

How did you get into scoring movies in the first place?
I got into scoring because I have a love for storytelling. As a composer, I see my job as helping each director tell their story. I love the challenge of writing for different genres, different emotions, using different ensembles. I started dabbling in film scoring while I lived in Seattle, but I quickly moved to Hollywood as I realized this is where a lot of it happens.

What kind of sounds did you hear in your head when you saw/ thought of jumpers?
I loved the sounds their ropes made as they whip over their heads. I was inspired by the fact these very different groups were all together for one sport. So, I knew we could tell the story from many different angles musically. That said, overall we decided on a hip hop feel early on. There is such energy in what the jumpers are doing that it's infectious.

Do you see (hear) any direct connection between jumping and other sports like basketball, or skating? Or do you see it more like math or chess?
I definitely see a connection between Jumping and other sports we know as 'common' in America. I think it's clearly a form of self expression as well as endurance, skill, balance, rhythm, and drive.

Do you think of jump rope as being more Hip Hop or more Rock 'n' Roll?
Either or. Both Hip Hop and Rock n Roll carry an energy and spirit to them that is at times exciting and other times just 'cool."

JUMP! and JUNO both have 4 letters, the first 2 of which are the same. Coincidence?
Yes. Coincidence.

Congratulations on the Academy Awards! What's it like to win for Best Screenplay?
It's fantastic! I am so happy for Diablo. She's a great girl and I am proud of her.

What's Ellen Page really like?
Very sweet, incredibly sharp.

What do you have lined up next?
I'm wrapping up a Thriller for MGM. Next up is coming down to about 5 projects. They all spin in the air and depending on timing, sensibilities, luck, and determination one of them will end up being my next project.

Thanks, I appreciate it.
Thank you, I appreciate your good questions!

Mateo Messina
Composer/Producer
www.mateomessina.com


JUMP! is an award-winning feature-length documentary about competitive jump rope that follows five teams of kids from around the country who push physical and psychological limits in pursuit of winning the World Championship. Part extreme sport, part art form, their moves are masterfully choreographed and bursting with rhythm, sweat and originality. These teens sacrifice everything to get where they are and each has his or her own reason to be so driven. After arduous drilling and mind-boggling performances, rivalry and collaboration have dramatic, unexpected results.

visit the movie's site here for more info...





c. 2008 Velocity Weekly

Bon Iver

For Emma, Forever Ago
(Jagjaguwar)

Bon Iver is not a poodle-haired wimp rocker from the streets of Jersey, always chasing the legend of Bruce Springstreen, forever out of reach due to a lack of vision and distracted by poon.
Bon Iver is not a schoolboy ball rocker from Australia, determined to do nothing but rock, drink and score some trim.
Bon Iver, aka Justin Vernon, is a nice young man who probably wrote poetry in high school. He probably did it to get girls, but pretended like he did it just because he was, like, really deep. Next, he probably went to art school, mostly to get girls.
At this point, you probably can tell how you’d feel about this record.

Make no mistake — the music is lovely. He probably would like to be Jeff Buckley or Peter Gabriel when he grows up. Vernon can create moods, paint pictures with his guitar; it’s his incessant, forced falsetto that loses the contest for him. Like a 12-year-old with a beard, it weighs him down and makes you forget there’s a person buried underneath.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

The Whigs

Mission Control
(ATO)

Are you half of a two-piece rock band?
Possible answers are: a) Of course. b) No. I’m lame. c) No. I do many other interesting and/or necessary things with my life.
For the latter, I say, buddy, relax. Have a rock record. It’s good, and your girl will like it. With focused marketing, you might even hear it on that radio station you like, the one with those loud, car-dealer commercials that you don’t mind listening to.

Parker Gispert sings exactly like a rock band singer should — like he’s here to make girls want to make sex with him. Song titles include “Like a Vibration,” “Hot Bed,” “Already Young,” “I Got Ideas” and “Need You Need You.” Can’t you smell his leather pants already?
No politics, no religion, just … “Hey, what are you doing after the show?”
It’s all there in his voice. I even thought it was the other guy singing on two songs, “I Never Want to Go Home” and “1,000 Wives,” but it turns out that was just him faking sensitivity like the Foo Fighters to get even more tail. Right on!
File under: Dude, just let me rock, OK?

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Times New Viking

Rip It Off
(Matador

1993: A triumphant time. Our authentic rock star was Layne Staley, not that poseur Jon Bon Jovi; our president was Clinton, not that asshole Bush. While the popular kids hated Shannen Doherty, music nerds argued passionately about Kurt and Eddie, licensing your song to a car commercial meant career suicide, and nothing was hipper than burying your pop songs under a mountain of hiss, as if the tapes had fallen into a toilet 30 years before and just been rediscovered.
"Rip It Off" (a title which should’ve been reconsidered) is an enjoyable (if more challenging than necessary in 2008) pop record. It owes a debt to Superchunk primus inter pares (mostly considering the chipmunk quality of the vocals, which is not to everyone’s taste). Otherwise, they are a fine band who probably sound fun live.

While they’re working on their rip-offs, they might consider following the path of Pavement, a band that began making lo-fi rumbles and evolved into a mature, beloved band that will, undoubtedly, reunite in about four years and make millions.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Cat Power

Jukebox
(Matador)

The woman that Christina Ricci wanted to be in the accidental comedy “Black Snake Moan,” Catherine Power has lately found new strength in her Southern roots. Thankfully, her father must be Dan Penn or Steve Cropper, and her brother isn’t Kid Rock.
Once perceived as an indie rock/folk bird, time has revealed Chan Marshall (Cat Power’s lone constant) to have more in common spiritually, if less so sonically, with Mary J. Blige.

While cover albums are usually horrible, and no one should ever do them, ever, Marshall is one who should do more. On this, her second covers album, she proves again able to pump blues, jazz and soul into moribund songs like “New York, New York” (trust me), dares and wins taking on Janis and Joni, and, OK, like everyone else, attempts to jump genders and become Bob Dylan — by singing his song, singing a new song about him and singing everyone else’s songs kinda like him.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

King's Daughters and Sons bio

From the first note heard in August 2004, I was in love with the music that came from the barrels of Joe Manning. A city boy who can easily fool tourists into seeing him as a rustic, Manning is both a true writer and a vocal marvel. What's amazing about King's Daughters & Sons, though, is how Manning here has surrounded himself with the very best other musical marvels in the region - all of whom have been utilized in other ways, and one of whom has never had a chance to truly shine before, who emerges as a star against the odds, like Leif Garrett in a '70's TV movie...

There's the rhythm section - bassist Todd Cook and drummer Kyle Crabtree. Both are thunderous yet calm, stable yet always moving forward. Both began in heavy rock but few can play more subtly; it is this versatility that they call on here, with Shipping News and with Shannon Wright.

Keyboardist and vocalist Rachel Grimes sings like she looks - like a porcelain, Victorian-era queen that Cate Blanchett should get an Academy award for playing. With the Rachel's band, she has seen the world and she has absorbed it. Mike Heineman is the aforementioned rising star, with an angelic voice that needs to be heard by every mother and father and their housebroken pet. I even heard that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan himself is coming back to life just to hear Mike sing - he's just that good. People used to talk about the harmonies of Crosby, Stills & Nash - imagine how good that was supposed to be, multiply that by 18, cut out the cheese and what you've got is what happens when Rachel, Mike and Joe sing together.

If this isn't what God and Rodney Dangerfield are listening to together up in Heaven, then I say, never mind, I'll go to Hell instead.

The Teeth

In Minutes
(Noise Pollution)

In the 1960s, the term “garage band” referred to a gaggle of young men, often American and/or Caucasian, attempting to play that one fairly generic Rock Band sound common in the days when the Beatles were popular but not yet creative. (Sorry, Ferris Bueller, they didn’t write all those blues songs).
Perhaps the phenomenon was most popular in the Midwest, because, gosh golly, there’s just more of them (insert birth control joke here). But where would we be without those mutant strains — exemplified in this example by the Stooges, MC5, Styrenes, Electric Eels, Pagans and Pere Ubu? You know, the guys in high school who were freaks, not geeks.

You’ll feel like they’re smoking in your boys’ room again while injecting The Teeth's In Minutes, a post-proto-blast of uncomplicated rock ’n’ roll made by guys who don’t sound like they know, yet, what it feels like when you realize your dreams will never come true.

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Foxhole

Push/Pull
(Burnt Toast Vinyl)

As a teen trying to become more cultured, I went to a Wynton Marsalis concert. I’d heard that adults with taste and brains listened to jazz music. Later I would realize that not all jazz is the same, and that Wynton Marsalis is not really much like John Coltrane. I was acting like an adult, but not the type of adult I wanted to be.
At the concert, Marsalis introduced a piece, “This one’s about education.” At that point, I had no choice but to laugh. How could instrumental music be “about” something? Now, I’m twice as old as I was then, and I still don’t understand.

Four of the five pieces here are inspired by the death of a friend. The fifth piece was inspired by the death of Wesley Willis, a man of color who made a lot of well-off white kids laugh because he was mentally ill. Oh, and their music is also inspired by their, uh, religious beliefs. (If you know what I mean).

c. 2008 LEO Weekly

Best-Ofs: LEO critics tout their Top 5

1) Wax Fang "La La Land" (Don't Panic) — The exciting disc by the exciting band is now available for everyone to discover. I’m talking to you, scouts at Sub Pop or Merge or whomever else can help this trio spread their sound around the world. (We still owe the world a giant apology for Days of the New, anyway.)

2) Radiohead "In Rainbows" (Radiohead) — For the first time in 10 years, they play to their strengths — a bunch of really good songs, played extremely well.

3) "You’re Gonna Miss Me: A Film About Roky Erickson" (Palm Pictures) — I don’t know why Daniel Johnston gets more lip service from the kids today (Is Kurt Cobain’s influence really still felt? Or is it Bright Eyes now?). Roky was and still is the much more musical, fascinating Texan crazy freak. You don’t love him yet? Watch this inspiring, bewildering story unfold.

4) Battles "Mirrored" (Warp) — Older and younger dudes joining forces, melding heavy rock and weird electronics. It shouldn’t work but it does, uniting trendy girls who just wanna have fun and awkward guys with no social skills who want the girls to appreciate how smart they are, god damn it.

5) Marissa Nadler "Songs III: Bird on the Water" (Kemado) — Suddenly elvish girls who do the opposite of rock are everywhere, and most have already been sent back to their local Ren Fair. Marissa Nadler pulls off sounding ancient and modern simultaneously, can compose songs that offer lovely substance over hip attitude, and can even cover a Leonard Cohen song without embarrassing herself.


C. 2007 LEO Weekly

Merle Haggard

The Bluegrass Sessions
(McCoury)

Plenty today pay lip service to Johnny & Hank and ask, “Why can’t nobody do it like they used to?” Yet the same people can’t be bothered to keep up with the likes of Merle Haggard, unless he’s being promoted by a punk rock label.
Perhaps Hag himself is partly to blame: He releases a new one annually, like Neil Young or Woody Allen, though he’s more consistent. He might not reach as high, but you can be sure that he’ll never collaborate with Madonna or go crazy with robots.

Here, he revisits old songs, sings some new ones, and finds himself unable to stay within the strict parameters of bluegrass regulations, in the best way.
Willie Nelson might have proven to be more versatile (ever hear his reggae disc?), but Haggard keeps returning as the most emotionally and instinctually awake songwriter left amongst what used to be called country music.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Tiny Vipers

Hands Across the Void
(Sub Pop)

Sub Pop’s website helpfully describes this album by Seattle-based singer and guitarist Jesy Fortino as Tiny Vipers as “acoustic/goth.”
Fortino is a guitarist seemingly more inspired by the ambient textures of John Fahey and British psych influences that have inspired fellow “goths” Current 93, than by anyone else more interested in catchy pop hooks.

Without any other musicians around, there is a constant sparseness to the songs on Void that can often leave one wanting more. Perhaps, for example, a more pleasing voice to help make the crazy go down easier. Fortino’s voice is similar to, but not as horrifyingly atonal — sorry, “artful” — as Joanna Newsom’s. When she stumbles onto a catchy verse, in the song “Swastika,” no less, it goes away quickly.
In an 11-minute song performed by her alone (could she be a Jandek fan?), it requires more patience than usual. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Except when it is.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

"Louisville Babylon 2"

Louisville Babylon 2
(Louisville Is for Lovers)

In high school in Florida in the 1990's, my (few) friends and I had what we thought was a secret love - the comically over-the-top, doo wop-inflected horror punk of a band from New Jersey who had broken up before they got too boring or, worse, popular. What we didn't know then, in those awkward days between the fall of Communism and the mainstreaming of the internet, was that the Misfits were a secret shared by kids everywhere.

Up in Louisville, a 1994 Misfits tribute was lovingly complied and now, 13 years later, the new generation is at it. The new versions of old favorites range from hillbilly to goth synths to preppy pop. While it's interesting to hear My Morning Jacket reduced to a too-reverential copycat, the collection peaks when Ronnie Mack and Ponty's Camper put some Kentucky on 'em, and Dave Pajo and Wax Fang slow 'em down like 30-somethings should.

C. 2007 LEO Weekly

Pissed Jeans

Hope for Men
(Sub Pop)

Overheard at a Pissed Jeans gig:
“My mom thinks that me and my boyfriend Tony are having sex, which we completely are. And when I turn 18, we’re getting married. Tony’s not the first guy I’ve been with. That was Omar, this total skank counselor I had last summer at Camp Okeechobee. I didn’t really want to screw Omar, I just wanted to do it with somebody, and he promised to buy me a 4-track. What a liar. He didn’t buy me anything, he just laughed at me. That’s why I had my friend Jessica key his car while I was screwing him the second time. What a loser.

“I need a 4-track so bad! My band, Abortion Barbie, needs to make a demo and get the fuck out of here! This town is so dead! Thank God for Spencer, my meth dealer. He thinks he’s all from the hood. He’s a douche bag, but he gets the best drugs. He wants to screw me. Gross.”

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Tomahawk

Anonymous
(Ipecac)

If you have followed Mike Patton’s journey from late-’80s backward-baseball cap-wearing, funk-rocking frontman for the never truly understood Faith No More on to Century 21 middle-aged, experimental, underground art screamturbator, then you’ve been witness to an ever surprising, uniquely inspiring voyage of risk-taking and discovery.
Tomahawk has existed, arguably, under the beer-belly shadow cast by Patton’s other heavy music supergroup, Fantomas. The latter, under Patton’s direction, has had more unique concepts. Tomahawk, led artistically by guitar ace Duane Denison (Hank III, The Jesus Lizard), has stood out as a (relatively) more subtle prog/jam/space project.

Anonymous bills itself as a collection of early 1900s songs from Native American tribes, found while researching their culture. Representative song titles include “Ghost Dance” and “Song of Victory.”
Most vocals are predictably wordless and/or screamed, at times chanted. When the vocals are understandable, as in the suggestive “Mescal Rite 2,” they seem inauthentic as native hymns. While respectful in general, the band often brings their fast and heavy rock sledgehammer to the ceremony, which might be misunderstood by teen boy fans as mockery.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Bryan Ferry

Dylanesque
(Virgin)

While some folks might consider Bryan Ferry’s biggest blunder of 2007 to be his ill-stated comment about how much he admired Hitler’s influence on fashion, I prefer that to this collection of Bob Dylan songs, surprisingly not recorded for Starbucks.
Comments about Hitler’s coats might also miss the point, but at least they don’t last an hour. Ferry, long known to baby boomers as a stylish and once purposeful man, tackles some of Dylan’s less obscure songs with the same finesse that a Bahamian hotel lounge singer might while slightly buzzed on Bartles & Jaymes.

The backing band, led by the expected British never-weres likely to show up at the next Live Earth concert (Paul Carrack, Chris Spedding, Robin Trower), speeds through most of the material as if eager to finish the session by lunch time.
Finally, before Brian Eno fans get excited about his “electronics” on “If Not for You,” let me save you the trouble of continuing that feeling.

Pinback

Autumn of the Seraphs
(Touch & Go)

A still point in the rapidly shifting world, Pinback returns — officially — with its fourth studio album, Autumn of the Seraphs. Officially because singer Rob Crow has been perhaps the busiest band whore in the Western world recently, jumping from project to project like the dealers on “The Wire.” Fans worried that Crow’s extra-curricular efforts (especially a solo disc that dropped mere months ago) might take away from the quality of Pinback’s records need not worry.

The band, always a bit wispy, is a bit more muscular this time around. Rest assured, though — while the album title might suggest heavy metal (a genre that Crow has tackled recently), it’s not — it’s more like Skinny Jeans Pop.
With Pinback, Crow and partner Zach Smith have built an almost enviable machine: a band that always sounds pretty much the same. Rarely better, rarely worse, but always consistent. It wouldn’t be an impressive power on “Heroes,” but it’s comforting.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

"Kurt Cobain: About a Son"

"Kurt Cobain: About a Son", Music from the Motion Picture
(Barsuk)

We can blame Nirvana for the existence of so many bad bands. On the other hand, leader Kurt Cobain’s consistent name-dropping of dozens of favorite bands helped introduce a generation to numerous artists that could have been otherwise forgotten. A.J. Schnack, director of the equally unlikely They Might Be Giants doc “Gigantic,” has crafted “About a Son” from audiotapes of Cobain talking to his biographer, Michael Azerrad. The film features visual footage of the Washington state towns in which Cobain spent his life.

This disc serves as an intro to the bands whose influences were fused together by Cobain to create the Nirvana sound: sugary pop, weirdo singer-songwriters, children’s songs, classic rock, folk rock, blues folk, hillbilly psych, fiery punk, glitter, sludge, Iggy and grungy, heroin-shooting peers. A fan with a huge appetite, Cobain absorbed everything from R.E.M. to Scratch Acid, Leadbelly to Bad Brains. A few snippets of him speaking add context, and equally unlikely pop star Ben Gibbard acknowledges the debt his career owes to Cobain’s example.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

The Brunettes

Structure and Cosmetics
(Sub Pop)

First, I’ll tell you what this band sounds like: Belle and Sebastian, The Cardigans. Rilo Kiley, Stars.
Do you like those? Will you buy this because of that? Then buy this, and move along.
Are you intrigued but need more insight into this New Zealand cute overload misfire? Here’s some:
Throw in a thick load of Beach Boys, a smattering of J-Pop and ABBA and a little Go! Team; I’ll go on to tell you more about a band who would've been trendy in 1995.

Do individual songs even matter? Yes, as always.
OK: The opener, “B-A-B-Y,” aka “Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth,” is the worst.
In “If You Were Alien,” a women who sounds like Kim Gordon asks, “But what if the world went pop?” as if she were serious. In 1990, Kim Gordon and Chuck D traded lines on a Sonic Youth record about race and gender. The Brunettes declare, “Sha-la-la-la-la.”
This is the kind of record that Laura Bush would like.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Will Garrison interview

Singer-songwriter Will Garrison makes a sort-of hometown return
appearance this weekend. Never heard of him? Let's hear what some of
our best singer-songwriters say about him:

"Absolutely the best songwriter who ever lived in the Deer Park
neighborhood and high, high in the running for best from this city
ever. Seriously." - Joe Manning.
"His music strikes me as independent among independents - at once
removed from fashion, and plugged in to a vast, peculiarly American
cultural landscape." - Joe O'Connell of Elephant Micah.

I asked the man himself to address some important issues:

Q: Do you consider yourself to be a Louisvillian?
A: Well, I moved around a lot growing up. So I guess I've never really
associated myself with any one place geographically. There is
something special for me about Louisville, though. It's where I spent
my earliest and arguably most formidable years artistically.

Q: What are some things you like about Louisville?
A: It's a humble place. It has a sharp wit and uses that to keep
itself as unpretentious as possible. People in Louisville know they
have something special but they'd never make a person feel small for
it. Oh, and I like that everyone enjoys drinking.

Q: You're touring with The Absent Arch, also from Minneapolis. What do
you like about them?
A They're willing to throw everything they've got into this. I've
found that to be something that's really hard to find. To me, their
sound is sort of how it would sound if John Prine was fronting
Calexico and they had a really solid jazz drummer. But they aren't
defined by their sound. They want to go all over the place, always
trying to go farther and reinvent themselves.

Q: We're having a huge heat wave. Do you wish that you were in
Minneapolis this month?
A: All of us are just happy about being on the road. No matter the
weather, we're really excited about Louisville. I'll be able to see
some family and friends that I haven't seen in too long, show the guys
some great guitars, and get a chance to play with The Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth is one of my favorite bands. (Bandleader) Daniel
(Duncan) has been a friend of mine for, I guess, seven or eight years
now. His style of writing has always inspired me and stuck melodies in
my head.

Q: How would you describe your music to, say, a friend's mother?
A: We're trying our best on an acoustic guitar and a cello.

Q: Will you have the cello guy with you?
A: Yes, absolutely. His name is James Waldo. He and I come from such
different directions. His classical background has left him unfamiliar
with music that has been highly influential to me, and allows him to
bring a variety of musical ideas separate from my own self-imposed
limitations. James doesn't think in verse-chorus-verse or in
traditional song structures. So we have a lot to learn from each other
and we're both so excited to learn.

Will Garrison and friends will play an all-ages show at the 930
Listening Room (www.the930.org), at 930 Mary St. in Germantown, on
Friday August 31st, at 8 pm. Tickets are $5.



c. 2007 LEO Weekly

"A Tribute to Joni Mitchell"

A Tribute to Joni Mitchell
(Nonesuch)

A well-compiled tribute to the music of Joni Mitchell is a welcome and necessary thing. To discuss her in full takes a book, or at least a well-lubed long night at a bar - issues of gender, race, nationality and psychology all become intertwined. This record merely hints at such themes, but helps spotlight her influence on some surprising artists.

Bjork - a fellow icy Northern country oddball who also paints her songs outside of the lines of pop music - makes "The Boho Dance" her own. Cassandra Wilson, Emmylou Harris and Elvis Costello demonstrate how much she freed them to also travel outside of their genre borders.
Brad Mehldau beautifully reminds the listener of her years spent playing with jazzbos. Caetano Veloso makes sense of the Afro-tribal drums that outpaced her in "Dreamland". Prince takes "A Case of You" and proceeds to melt panties and makes gay hearts flutter simultaneously. Sufjan Stevens misses his mark, but should at least give young hipsters a reason to examine her catalog.

C. 2007 LEO Weekly

Mark Olson

“Can you hold on a minute? Victoria is on the other line.”
It’s unclear which is more surprising — the fact that the musician on the phone assumes that I know about his personal life, or the fact that the musician is still friendly with the woman whom I, in fact, know to be his now ex-wife.

The musician, Mark Olson, is hardly a household name, though he has spent the last two decades accumulating fans around the world with a mature, heartfelt blend of folk, pop and rock music.
From 1986 through 1996, he led the Minneapolis-based band The Jayhawks with partner Gary Louris. On the way to gaining some minor radio play with the single “Blue,” The Jayhawks had become an unfortunate embodiment of the excesses of the major record companies. Expenses for recording albums and filming videos had put the band in debt for more than $1 million. Though Olson had been the main songwriter in the early days, Louris had become an equally strong leader, pushing the band in a poppier direction than Olson had envisioned.

Olson married singer-songwriter Victoria Williams, and the couple moved to the California town of Joshua Tree. “It’s gotten more commercialized, more strip malls, but in general, it’s still a very beautiful, more relaxed, small-town kind of place,” he says.

Williams had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As they dealt with her health, Olson continued writing songs that were more folk-based than the increasingly Beach Boys-inspired, polished songs of The Jayhawks. While the Louris-led band continued on for three more albums, Olson and Williams formed a new band.

The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers found the Olsons joining collaborator Razz Russell. Cassettes appeared through mail order, and then CD issues signaled Olson’s return to the music business.
“I’ve had a bunch of other jobs — teaching, working with students with special needs — but, yes, I’m able to do this full-time, and I’m glad. I enjoy the technical aspects of playing with the instruments, tuning and finessing the strings.”

With more than seven releases, the collective formed a hub for the Palm Desert roots music scene. After he divorced Williams, Olson became unsure of what to do next. He found shelter from friends while traveling in Europe, like Jason Bourne with a guitar.

“My band now has friends of mine from all over. There are a lot of great people to work with over there.”
The album he came back with, The Salvation Blues, is his first true official album. Rather than give in to the unhappiness he had experienced, he wrote songs celebrating the struggle. Some people come here to die/We came here to live, he sings in “Clifton Bridge.” The formerly reclusive, 44-year-old Olson is back in sight, even filming a video that can be seen on his MySpace page. He has co-written with both Williams and Louris, and the former Jayhawks plan to spend 2008 writing and recording together.

Olson was here last month for WFPK’s Waterfront Wednesday. He returns for a show at the 930 Listening Room, at 930 Mary St. in Germantown, Saturday at 8 p.m., and earlier that day at ear X-tacy (1534 Bardstown Road, 452-1799) for a free in-store appearance and signing at 2 p.m.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Kentucky Prophet interview

Where do you live?
I live in Fordsville, Kentucky. A small town about a half hour south of Owensboro, which is the closest "big" city in Kentucky. I live in a trailer with a family member like all good white rappers.

What is the Hip Hop scene like there?
Fordsville is more of a bluegrass/country town. Every Friday night, they have music at the local community center. I'm the only rapper in town, so I have to travel to perform.

What do you think about the East Coast / West Coast wars? Do you think Biggie & Pac will ever stop fighting with each other?
I hate it when talented people die over something stupid as a turf war or something equally insignificant. Biggie & Pac are not fighting anymore. Rather, they are chillin' in Rap Heaven, where all beefs go to die with the rappers who carried them.

Whom inspired you to become a Hip Hop artist?
I would say Public Enemy, because their albums inspired me to create, but the real answer is rock music, because it got so awful that I wanted to listen to something else. At least, mainstream rock which was all I knew at the time. "They got no balls, they got no roots." - Frank Zappa, 1965.

Do you get a lot of groupies?
I have a few girls who really like me and the music, but no backstage sluts.

What do you like to do with women?
Beyond the typical clinical/glandular stuff any boy likes to do with a girl, I like simple stuff. Spending quality time with someone special, whether that's going out or staying in and listening to music.

You emphasize your physicality in live performances. Can you describe your body to our readers?
Well, for starters, I have what some Britishers might refer to as a "stylish pot", or a pot belly. Some people have six-packs, I got the full keg. I'm about 6'2" with medium-length brown hair and hazel eyes. I have legs like tree trunks and arms like cannons. My belly is as pronounced as that of the average 9-months-pregnant woman.

Do you think that you exploit yourself?
The subject of my weight is the elephant in the room, so I think it's best if I exploit it for laughs rather than some heckler.

Do you think you'd have the level of popularity that you've achieved if you weighed 300 pounds less?
I'd like to think so. There's a certain amount of entertainment in watching me make a spectacle out of myself, but deep down I think people enjoy the musical and comedic aspects of what I do.

Do you have a favorite Kool Keith line or verse?
The most obvious one is "keep it real, represent what? My nuts", but I also like "You drive a Dodge truck - I don't believe you."



c. 2007 Bejeezus Magazine

Dmonstrations

"Night Trrors, Schock!"

(GSL)

The truth about reviewing handfuls of CDs in a brief period of time is that after 1 or 2, said reviewer starts to realize how short life is. CDs begin to fall into 1 of 2 categories: 1) discs that immediately grab attention and never let up, and 2) Rhett Miller.

The incorrectly spelled Dmonstrations is the kind of band that makes you dance in your seat before you even realize that you are moving your cheese-filled American ass. And by dance, I'm referring to the Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu, Boredoms type.

C. 2007 Bejeezus

John Denver

The Essential
(RCA/Legacy)

There’s absolutely no good reason for this collection to be released now. No, and especially not as a two-CD set. There’s nothing “freak” in his “folk” — for Devendra Banhart or Joanna Newsom to cover one of his songs wouldn’t be fun or kitschy, and besides, it just won’t happen.
I’m sure of only a few things in life — like, Barack Obama will not be elected president in ’08, but my love of fish tacos will continue to increase — and none of today’s fashionable musicians will pay any sort of tribute to John Denver anytime soon.

In fact, they already did seven years ago, when a tribute album was released featuring Louisville’s own Bonnie “Prince” Billy, among other independent spirits. Hey, I like John Denver pretty good (and this isn’t the first time I’ve been paid to mention that in print in the 21st century), but just like his fellow sweater-wearers Jimmy Carter and Mr. Rogers, you already have your opinion.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Ted Leo / Pharmacists

Living with the Living
(Touch & Go)

It pains me to have to report that this album, the fifth by the politically inspired, melodically punky Ted Leo, is not his best. By continuing to focus on war being bad and corrupt leaders being corrupt and all that, Leo seems to be going through the motions, lyrically, this go-round.
Musically, his usual reference points are there — from Springsteen to the Jam — but an attempt at reggae, “The Unwanted Things,” only brings to mind The Clash’s cover of Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves.” Another unwise use of falsetto propels the big ballad “The Toro and the Toreador,” which will sound eerily familiar to anyone who’s ever heard Jeff Buckley sing — and then rips off Big Star in the same song.

“Bomb.Repeat.Bomb” here doesn’t just sound like something Rage Against the Machine would do, it sounds like them, too.
Worst of all, the disc is broken up into 90 45-second bits.
So, if you’re making a mix for a girl named “Colleen,” good luck adding this song, Romeo.

C. 2007 LEO Weekly

Oldham's County

Cover Story

He's an acclaimed actor. He's Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. He's the best songwriter Louisville has ever produced. But who is Will Oldham, really?

You would not have to look far to find someone who believes Will Oldham is the most profound songwriter of his generation. Björk asked Oldham to open for her at the Hollywood Bowl. Johnny Cash asked him to join him for a cover of Oldham's song "I See a Darkness" on Cash's death-rattle of a final album. P.J. Harvey, Nick Cave and Charlie Louvin are admirers. His influence is everywhere and unmistakable: on alt-country bands steeped in the South, on the urban freak-folk scene that's all the rage and on lo-fi indie-rockers who find themselves pushed to poetry. There are even those who think he should have been nominated for an Oscar for his role in last year's acclaimed film Old Joy. This Sunday, the Louisville singer-songwriter will play the album "I See A Darkness," the instant classic he recorded as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, at Wild and Woolly Video's 10th anniversary party at Headliners.

It's a rare local appearance for a wayward genius who hides among us in plain sight, whose bald head and dirty blonde beard make him look like either a cherubic teen or a country grandfather, depending on the lighting. At times in concert, he augments his rural appearance with too much eye shadow. Once, I passed by him bicycling past Mid-City Mall wearing a pink, short-sleeved button-down shirt with short-shorts and flip-flops. He is very supportive of other musicians. He has contributed songs to locally released compilations. He sings songs by obscure English folkies and AC/DC. He is a fan of R. Kelly, and he is a fan of Merle Haggard. One thing he is not a fan of is explaining himself or his songs. Most interviews he has granted are painful to read; when the British newspaper the Guardian sent an award-winning music journalist to talk to him, Oldham did the interview while running errands in the Highlands. "I'm kinda busy," he told the writer as he checked his post office box.

So I was almost relieved when Oldham declined my interview request. (In its review of Old Joy, the Village Voice called Oldham "brilliantly annoying." Perhaps there's never been a truer two-word review.) I don't want to be the guy asking irritating questions about why he does what he does. And his obfuscation would take some of the fun out of wondering about how he makes his beautiful music. "He does represent the starting point for a whole generation of songwriters; he's the most popular and influential folk song writer of the '90s indie wave," said New York anti-folk musician Jeffrey Lewis, who was even moved to write a song about his idol, "Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror." "Even the recent 'freak folk' scene of Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Coco Rosie, etc., the idea of a weird-voiced folk singer who seemingly has 'outsider art' status while in actuality being a hip insider, all of this seems to have grown out of Will Oldham's influence."

A (reluctant) star is born

Will Oldham was born in Louisville on Dec. 24, 1970. As a youth, he trained as an actor, first at Walden Theatre, then at Actors Theatre of Louisville. At Actors, he auditioned for writer-director John Sayles, who put him in his movie Matewan. The script called for a Southern-fried teenaged Appalachian preacher - more country than any true Louisville boy, and a great opportunity for an actor. While his Brown School classmates were smoking their first joints, Oldham was co-starring with James Earl Jones. "He was a cute little crazy kid and obviously very talented," said James Roemer, the former general manager at Actors, now the administrative director of the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. All that early success, however, didn't sell him on the craft. In an early indication of Oldham's discomfort with the machinery of celebrity, he grew frustrated with things like posing for headshots.

At 20, he dropped out of Brown University, bought a cheap guitar and landed in New York. On an album by a forgotten group called Box of Chocolates, his distinctive, surprisingly pretty voice can be heard in its early stages, though no one noticed at the time. So Oldham returned to Louisville, where the guys he had gone to school with were building one of the 1990s' most exciting indie-rock scenes. It was Oldham who shot the photo of Slint swimming that appears on the band's classic 1991 album Spiderland, an image that would be recreated years later for the "New Slang" video by seemingly everyone's favorite new band, the Shins. The born performer almost fell into the indie rock world, where he made an impression even before he started recording. "I have a real strong memory of seeing Matewan, and I thought Will was great," said director Phil Morrison, who lured Oldham back to the movies with a bit part in the 2005 indie sleeper Junebug. "Back then, movies were this other province. Even an indie movie like Matewan was from a bigger, more glamorous place. So to go to CBGB to see Rapeman, or whatever Steve Albini was doing at that moment, and see the kid from Matewan get on stage and, in my recollection, fart into a microphone, well, that was bananas."



Spontaneous greatness

Still in his early 20s, at that delicate point where those prone to breakdowns begin to fall apart, Oldham lost the plot. He retreated to his brother Paul's home in Virginia. There he began writing the songs that would make up his first album. One could've assumed at the time that Oldham might have attempted an adventurous rock record like his friends in Slint or his heroes like Albini, the studio guru behind some of the most admired albums of the last decade. But that would mean underestimating the general oddness of Louisville. Like Ethan Buckler, who left Slint for the absurdist faux-blues of King Kong, Oldham went away from rock. With his first record, There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You, he made a very rural declaration. Teamed with Slint bassist Todd Brashear (now the owner of Wild and Woolly), a yelping Oldham used banjoes to fill in spaces where electric guitars and synthesizers might go. He sang about family, about good and evil, about drink and the Devil. He also began challenging audiences. He claimed Washington Phillips' '20s blues song "I Had a Good Mother and Father" as his own, as he had with his first single, "Ohio River Boat Song," a localized re-write of the Scottish folk song "Loch Tay Boat Song" with new lyrics referring to his home (Floyds Knobs, Smoketown, Oldham County).

He also challenges basic notions of family, as his band name - the Palace Brothers - referred not to actual brothers, but rather to whomever was playing in his band at the moment, which changed almost constantly. "(He) chooses the people he's going to play with shortly before the session, so everyone is playing by the seat of their pants, and the music is at constant risk, subject to the weaknesses of whoever's in the room," said Albini, who recorded many of Oldham's best albums, including Palace's Viva Last Blues and Arise Therefore. "But he gets absolutely spontaneous moments of greatness you couldn't rehearse."

A constant chameleon

Like Bob Dylan, Oldham continues to re-interpret not only folk songs but also his own songs. In recent years, he released his first live album, Summer in the Southeast, which featured surprising versions of his songs, as well as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music, on which he re-recorded lo-fi '90s Palace Brothers songs backed by slick Nashville studio veterans. "Playing with him has always been an extraordinarily loose and fun experience," said Louisville guitarist Dave Bird, who has played with Oldham off and on. "Will puts a lot of trust in the folks he's playing with, and that's generally the way I like to roll as well."

Oldham continues to surprise. Critics who pigeonholed him as a bluegrass-infused type after his first album were forced to come up with a new explanation when he followed up with a solo acoustic record. Later records were filled with pianos, then (relatively) harder rock. His breakthrough album came in 1999. Released under yet another moniker - Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I See A Darkness caught the attention of famed producer Rick Rubin, who included the title song on a tape he sent to Johnny Cash. Cash invited Oldham to sing it with him on what would end up being one of Cash's last studio albums. "He has a great voice - very identifiable," said country legend Charlie Louvin, who invited Oldham to sing "Knoxville Girl" with him on his new album of duets. "If you ever heard him one time, you would pick him out of anything he'd done. That's a great asset for anybody to have - don't just sound like everybody else that they've heard."

Still keeping his distance

In 2002, Oldham told England's Guardian Unlimited that he does not want "a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me." And at one point in Old Joy, Oldham tells a friend, "I'm at a whole new place now, really." It looks like he's actually been in the same place for a long time. By shifting personas and styles so effectively, he's turned reinvention into an art form on darkly revealing albums that nevertheless reveal little about the man behind them. And the more you talk to his friends and those who have worked with him, the more the mystery remains. Even people who have gotten to know Oldham can't really explain him. But then again, we all have friends like that. Morrison, the movie director, struggles to reconcile the Oldham he calls "surprisingly regular" with the inscrutable performer who is constantly changing his stage name and sometimes sings covers of Mariah Carey songs. "It's classic Will - everything I say about him, I have to throw in some contradictory caveat," Morrison said. "That's entertaining and interesting. What's funny is how balled up we all can get over it. What do you mean? What's the truth about you? It makes people mad."

c. 2007 Velocity Weekly

Boz Scaggs

"Silk Degrees"
(Columbia)

Somewhere in the sweaty chest hair of the nadir of the ’70s, there was a most moist and sleazy sound where pop, disco and jazz met. My friend Savoir Faire used to call it "Jacuzzi Jazz." I believe the kids today refer to it as "Yacht Rock." This movement provided a soundtrack for men and women who got together in hot tubs to drink wine coolers, inhale cocaine and have orgies.



Boz Scaggs hit his artistic peak — at which point, it must be noted, he still sucked — around 1976’s Silk Degrees, a flaccid mixture of Philly disco and Southern roadhouse rock. A former member of the Steve Miller Band who’s presumably trying to sound like Otis Redding via Eddie Hinton, one can assume that this is a comedy record and not necessarily be wrong. It could’ve
been worse — his name could’ve been Scoz Baggs.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

!!!

Myth Takes
(Warp)

opening - cinematic - Massive Attack meets Morricone.

"All My Heroes Are Weirdos" -
very largely indebted to '80's Clash and Gang of Four, ESG and
Blondie; they try to fix the Clash (capturing the best elements of the
beating-on-trash-can rhythms, the thickly plucked peak funk and
post-punk guitars and bass; stylized and stylish if too
fashion-conscious vocals which betray deeply middle-class Western
roots) while not repeating the mistakes (i..e., sides of "Sandanista")

"Must Be the Moon" –
phone call and response, implied cowbell.
sense of urgency - tightened, if not focused.

"A New Name" and "Heart of Hearts" –
Miami sweaty disco diva.



"Sweet Life" - Meters in Nigeria chicken scratch riffs 'n' grooves,
lots of letters (musical notes?)
post-Beck falsetto.

"Yadnus" -
implied industrial sounds / subway car.
T. Rex crashes car into John Barry James Bond theme.

"Bend Over Beethoven" –
Is this a different song? For realz?

"Break in Case of Anything" –
Breakin' 3: Electric Dub Vegas.

"Infinifold" -
end credits. Grab yr jacket and toss your popcorn bag.

C. 2007 LEO Weekly

Entrance

Prayer of Death
(Tee Pee)

Young, middle-class whites have been taking the music of their darker-skinned favorites and selling it back to other young, middle-class whites for many years. From Led Zeppelin to the White Stripes, we keep falling for it. This week, they call themselves Entrance.
"Prayer of Death" tries too hard to utilize the heavy sounds of Led Zeppelin without repeating the cliches that have ruined many metal bands. From Zeppelin, Entrance (primarily singer-songwriter Guy Blakeslee) also derive third-hand inspiration from authentic, exotic music such as Indian ragas. Indeed, songs like "Requiem for Sandy Bull (R.I.P.)" seem to exist primarily to prove how awesome his obscure record collection is.

Blakeslee's reluctance to just sing - without cracking his voice to prove how "real" he is - is unfortunate. The most captivating song on this record, the title song, works exceedingly well when he's singing but less so when he's wavering. Someone should tell dude that we're not going to believe that you're an 82-year-old sharecropper, so maybe just relax and play it right.

Karling Abbeygate

Karling Abbeygate
(Dionysus Records)

When someone tells a joke at a party and it falls flat, it's a painful experience for the joker and for their audience. When someone makes a joke of an album but gets to avoid seeing the discomfort and annoyance on the face of the audience, it's even sadder.
English lass Karling Abbeygate fancies herself to be a honkey tonk singer tucked conveniently between the saucy sass of Wanda Jackson and the silky sadness of Patsy Cline. A former model who isn't much to look at, but poses in her album photos as undressed as Tara Reid in Ibiza, Abbeygate might fool the casual listener but wouldn't last very long at Robert's Western Wear in Nashville. Her singing reminds one of Tammy Faye Messner's speaking voice.



Most disappointing is that her L.A.-based band, led by veteran lounge bandleader Joey Altruda, is crisp and adept. While laying down the foundation for a torch singer in a Best Western in Boise isn't the worst gig a band could get, they deserve a singer who doesn't sound like Betty Boop at karaoke, too tired from her office job to offer a performance worth paying attention to for more than ten seconds.

The Pennies

10,000 Things
(ear X-tacy Records)

For a band that broke up 4 years ago, The Pennies are releasing one of the freshest, most vibrant records in recent memory.
The purposefully, dreamily, zanily off-kilter pop/rock band flaunted plenty of wicked riffs and killer hooks on their first album, 1999's Come, We Go. Fans of the Flaming Lips, who marveled at their growth, will find themselves in similar territory here.



They could still kick out a Pixies-style rave-up like "Where Crows Attack" (smartly aided by Liberation Prophecy's Jacob Duncan praying at the church of Albert Ayler) and sci-fi Krautrock, but score even more impressively with some percussive ballads structured and textured in the later style of a Grandaddy or Mercury Rev. Strings, horns and keyboards expand the songs out of the nightclub and onto the stage, revealing a composer equally familiar with Sondheim and Sonic Youth. Bandleader Jeremy Podgursky and his then-colleagues did what few
accomplish - his compositions and performances go beyond rock 'n' roll and leap out of the speakers, flying away with wonder and excitement and the question of what is and what could have been...

c. 2006 LEO Weekly

Jamie Barnes

The Recalibrated Heart
(Pink Bullet Recordings)

In this city of hundreds of thousands of people, there are only a handful of troubadours. Like most cities, many of our few are loud, brutish and lacking in skill. Jamie Barnes sticks out for the grace and beauty he is able to draw on to seduce an audience.
In his third album, Barnes sticks to his established practice of recording himself at home, performing most of the instruments himself. Though he shares this practice with Stevie Wonder, the similarity ends there. Musically, he has more in common with Sufjan Stevens, another indie folk singer-songwriter whose angelic voice owes its inspiration to a kind, loving religious grounding.



Barnes performs with confidence, seamlessly melding etheral harmonies and folk guitars with more offbeat percussion instruments. Barnes address religious stories and characters more directly than ever before, a move that should further help set him apart from his peers, hopefully without alienating any of his early fans. His songs of angels and devils, Heaven and Hell, have more in common with Johnny Cash than Jimmy Swaggart. And if you forget where else he came from, there's even a song about R.E.M. (which, itself, is more about love, family and the value of life).

c. 2006 LEO Weekly

reviews

The A-Sides
"Hello, Hello" (Prison Jazz)
60's psychedelia pop for fans of The Shins (or, originally, The Beach
Boys, The Kinks and The Who). The harmonies are rich, the riffs solid
- the songs are there. Recommended.

Barbez
"Insignificance" (Important)
Eastern European Gypsy folk rock. For those of us who are fans of the
Pogues and Faun Fables but who aren't annoying, gross hippies.

Goblin Cock
"Bagged and Boarded" (Absolutely Kosher)
Exactly what you'd expect from a dude from Pinback making a Black
Sabbath record.

Gogol Bordello
"Gyspy Punks: Undetrdog World Strike" (SideOneDummy)
They have a song called "Think Locally, Fuck Globally". They are to
gypsy punks what Sublime was to '60's Jamaican ska. One word:
Chumbawumba. I bet they wear "funny" costumes onstage. Hey dudes,
y'know, it IS possible to go down the pub, raise a pitcher and put
your arm around your best mate without having to make lousy music
about the experience.

Linda Draper
"One Two Three Four" (Planting Seeds)
A very tasteful, pretty record of lovely songs. Draper is more upbeat
than Hope Sandoval but more restrained than Neko Case, more poppy than
Julie Doiron but calmer than Mirah. Produced by, surprisingly, Kramer
(ex-Bongwater, Butthole Surfers). A nice surprise. Highly recommended.

Longwave
"There's a Fire" (RCA)
This music is so earnest, sensitive and joyless, it can, literally,
only be heard by teens writing in their Live Journals. Literally.

The Makers
"Everybody Rise!" (Kill Rock Stars)
With production by Jack Endino, an architect of grunge, I expected
something in the AC/DC-garage rock mode. I didn't expect Sunset Strip
hair metal 1986, especially on the once-unimpeachable Kill Rock Stars.
That's it, I'm retiring.

Moggs
"The White Belt Is Not Enough" (Absolutely Kosher)
The title - and the photo of this duo, dressed mostly in white - would
suggest a too-cool hipster dance party. For better or worse, the music
is actually closer to the post-punk of Joy Division or early Sonic
Youth, an icier Quasi. Recommended.

M.O.T.O.
"Raw Power" (Criminal IQ)
Yes, I know that this is supposed to be a joke - a dumber Ramones -
but it's just not that funny. Songs like "Gonna Get Drunk Tonight" and
"Spend the Night on Me" were done better by Poison or Whitesnake, who
at least were trying to get girls with their bad music.

Sybris
"Sybris" (Flameshovel)
Now this, this one here, this is a headscratcher. This group sounds
100% like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, only with less energy and a lesser
grasp of song structure. I just don't understand why this exists.

Voltage
"Building the Bass Castle, Vol. 1" (Flameshovel)
Decently pleasant instrumental duo - guitar and drums - from Chicago.
Good background music, poorly recorded. I'd bet that they've listened
to some Slint or the Minutemen, and that they missed the points each
time.

c. 2006 Bejeezus

Spin 101 June '06

Thursdays
DJ Sam Sneed
North End Cafe
502-896-8770
Free; www.northendcafe.com
Louisville scenesters put on their dancing shoes for this decadent party, with Sneed playing Britpop, dance punk, and much more. Get your hair did!
***



Mondays
Acoustic Love Series
Red Lounge
502-896-6116
$3; www.theredlounge.com
An intimate night of series (like Tara Jane O'Neil or Freakwater's Catherine Irwin) playing on a couch in this converted gas station.
***

c. 2006 Spin

Spin 101 May '06

May 26
Global Grease with Kim Sorise
North End Cafe
Free; www.northendcafe.com
Expect sexy '60's and '70's French seduction pop, Italian soundtrack sleaze, Brazilian baby-makin', and mas y mas.
****

May 27
Last Saturday
Keswick Democratic Club
$6; www.lastsaturday.net
Auxiliary Records hosts a monthly, all-ages series of hardcore shows with bands such as Young Widows, Paint It Black and Pissed Jeans.
***

c. 2006 Spin

Tortoise & Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Tortoise & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
"The Brave and the Bold"
(Overcoat)

Why people think that a duet between 2 idiosyncratic musical talents will be great, maybe twice as good as each artist alone, continues to stump me. I wish that I could forget about Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder's "Ebony & Ivory".
The main problem with this collaboration – and most - is that both artists have to mute their finest qualities in order to meet halfway. Tortoise, best when challenging each other to stretch as far as possible while still holding together, here is reduced to a pop studio backing band. Oldham is at his best at his most alone. He is beloved for his most quiet singing, framing lyrics that can be poetic,
perverse, purposefully misleading. His bands twist and turn when they do, when they can, not when they're supposed to.



Oldham can be an interesting interpreter, but some of the songs here (Don Williams' painfully goofy "Pancho", Devo's "That's Pep!") don't deserve serious revitalizing. The post-punk bands that have informed both artists prove that Oldham was never meant to be a loud rock singer, and that Tortoise was never meant to play straightahead. Both are best when they make the music serve them; here, the opposite is forced upon them.

c. 2006 LEO Weekly

Top Five in '05

1. "Twin Cinema," the New Pornographers — The best pop/rock album of the year. Fun, sexy and bold. Adults — Canadians, even — act as playful as 2-year-olds, with melodies worthy of the best Broadway shows, Nashville dives and high school mixers.


2. "Lookaftering," Vashti Bunyan — The fun part of these end-of-the year lists is in realizing trends and patterns. Of my five favorites this year, three are by women at different ages. Bunyan returned to music after 35 years away, with this timeless collection of folk songs.


3. "Ex Hex," Mary Timony — Timony picked up her guitar again, rocking out harder than any other 30-something, despite realizing that she'll probably never sell a million, or even 50,000 records. This is music made by someone, for herself, because she loves it and has to.


4. "Vertically Challenged," Lady Sovereign — Miss Lady is hard to discuss without the obligatory mentions of her being a white, British, 19-year-old girl. She's also Jay-Z's new favorite and the toughest, funniest rapper today, reminiscent at times of Eminem and Missy Elliott but with more futuristic beats.


5. "Buena Vista Social Club Presents," Manuel "El Guajiro" Mirabal — Another old Cuban master, trumpeter Guajiro has so much energy left that you'll have no choice but to shake that healthy butt.