video: performances from "our band could be your life" tribute

photo from pitchfork's facebook page

Our Band Could Be Your Life tribute at Bowery Ballroom (Stereogum review)
Our Concert Could Be Your Life (streaming on NPR)

When this show was first announced, my reaction was pretty negative (I think my exact words were "fuck everything about this").  It seemed like a personal affront to me that the man who had written a book about some my favorite bands, and some of the most important bands of the 80's, was putting on a tribute show featuring performances by bands that sounded NOTHING like the groups they were covering.  How could it be showing respect to groups like Blag Flag, Big Black, Butthole Surfers and others by staging performances by bands that are not in any way connected to the sounds of those original bands?  I understood that The Dirty Projectors had released an album that was at least conceptually connected to Black Flag, even if sonically it had virtually nothing to do with them.  But the selection of St Vincent to cover Big Black I could not understand.   Oh lord how it made me mad- I had visions in my head of her taking the stage, whipping out a violin, and winking and laughing through a set of ironic Big Black covers.  In fact it was such an outrage to me that I tried my hardest to forget the whole thing was happening at all.  But yesterday the show did happen, and today my blood pressure spiked when I saw reviews of it popping up on music websites.  I almost decided to ignore the reviews for the sake of my happiness and mental health, not wanting to spend the rest of the day fuming about the desecration of music I hold dear.  But I took the plunge and watched a few videos, and to my immense relief my expectations were totally wrong about this show.  St Vincent's performance of Kerosene not cutesy or fake or ironic, its a performance that actually respects the original.  And it's a shock to see the Dirty Projectors playing Black Flag songs not as Dirty Projector songs, but instead more like they originally sounded, with a now long-haired Dave Longstreth forgoing his vocal acrobatics for guttural barking.  These were the two performances I was most personally interested in, so I can't really say if the rest of the show was as good as these two, but you can check out the whole concert streaming at NPR, or check out loopyvid's youtube channel for other performances from the show.

video: cold cave - villains of the moon

Some interesting facts about Cold Cave that you may not know (or maybe you do genius, jeez):
- Singer/songwriter Wesley Eisold was the vocalist for hardcore bands XO Skeletons and Some Girls (and on an unrelated but somewhat interesting sidenote, he has only one hand)
- The band used to feature Caralee McElroy of Xiu Xiu
- The band currently features Dominic Fernow of Prurient/Ash Pool and Jennifer Clavin of Mika Miko
- All of these facts should add up to an awesome band and yet somehow this, from their latest album, sucks really hard.

Their new album, "Cherish the Light Years", is full of songs with brainless hooks and high-school emotions like this one.  At best, this comes off as an insincere "sell-out" ploy; at worst, it just makes them seem like terrible songwriters (you are free to reverse the "best" and "worst" in this scenario, but I'd rather think they are trying to "make it" rather than to believe they are just this awful of a band).  I'll let this video review serve in lieu of an album review, because this is pretty representative of what the album is like and I don't have any interest in listening to it in its entirety again.  I'm hopeful that they take their sound in a different direction, because there's way too much talent in this band to make music this fake and simplistic.

This, by the way, is what they sounded like on their last album, which to me sounds perfectly mainstream without sounding completely dumbed down:

video: liturgy - returner

Liturgy are one of those bands that make it almost impossible to listen to the music without wondering what it all "means": in this case, the "meaning" at hand being the appropriation of outsider music (black metal) by clean-cut pretty boys in v-necks.  However, questions about intentions, appropriateness and the legitimacy of the people behind the music should always come second to the music itself.  Trying to put my reaction to concepts about black metal and indie "identities" is pretty difficult to do in this case, but I think Liturgy are doing something legitimately unique and sincere.  It may come from a sincerely stupid philosophy, but again I feel like its an important personal challenge to reconcile good or interesting music made by people I find obnoxious or repulsive.  If I can honestly appreciate Burzum without buying into his white supremacist ideology, I can certainly enjoy black metal made by poser douchebags right?  And then, there's an undeniable humor to see black metallers reacting to these guys with the same self-righteous horror with which the cultural mainstream reacts to black metal.  In the end, it wouldn't matter at all if the music wasn't any good, and here I think it is.  I have yet to hear the new Liturgy album in its entirety, and what snippets I've heard I don't feel are as good as their previous work, but I'm hoping to go in to it with an open mind at the very least.

video: reality 86'd (Black Flag's last tour)

Click here to go watch the movie

Filmmaker David Markey is so cool that he released his documentary about Black Flag's last tour for free for all to watch on Vimeo, yet strangely he is not cool enough to let me embed it here. Oh well, can't win them all I guess. I've gotta go eat crazy-ass Chinese food with my lil' bro so I don't have time to watch this right now, but maybe I'll add my thoughts tomorrow. Or maybe you should add yours in the comment section.

In the meantime, here's a Black Flag video that will actual embed!

video: geneva jacuzzi - clothes on the bed

Geneva Jacuzzi hails from the same lo-fi glamorous weirdness scene that birthed Ariel Pink and Nite Jewel, and she falls approximately square in between those artists: the bedroom disco chanteuse styling of Nite Jewel crossed with the rinky-dink keyboards and bizarro persona of Ariel Pink is a pretty close description of Geneva Jacuzzi's sound.  Given Ariel Pink's skyrocketing popularity over the last year (and the tendency of sites like Pitchfork to find ways to unnecessarily drop his name at every opportunity... their recent description of Gary Wilson as a "proto-Ariel Pink" is just one of many examples), I'm pretty wary of any new artist that is seemingly hitching their cart to his success.  Geneva Jacuzzi has been cranking out her lo-fi jams for years however, and her recent full-length "Lamaze" on Vinyl International collects songs from 2004-2009, well before popular acclaim caught up to the music Ariel Pink was inspiring.  So despite the fact that this sounds a lot like Ariel Pink, and he mastered and guests on the album, at least she started doing this before it was cool to do so.  Another point in her favor is that, despite the fashion and self-indulgence (which honestly I take as a given for any artist coming out of LA), Geneva Jacuzzi seems like a huge dork.  The appeal of the lo-fi pop sound to me is that it seems more sincere and honest, due to its indifference (or perhaps inability) to replicate the gloss and sheen of the fake, vapid music it emulates.  With the numerable glamor shots, costumes, and multiple videos, Geneva Jacuzzi seems like she is attempting to position herself as a diva, but the oddness of the music and overall low-budget aesthetic points to a more legitimate artistic statement than a simple attempt at pop success.  Check out some of her other videos:

Bad Moods (Rough Edit) featuring Ariel Pink

Love Caboose

video: grouper on the experimental 1/2 hour show

Experimental 1/2 Hour - Episode XI: Grouper from Experimental 1/2 Hour

I'm working on a round-up of various tracks and videos that have hit the net over the last few days, but here's one that's so substantial that I think it needs its own post.  The Experimental 1/2 Hour is a Portland community access program that proves that community access television can be more than just City Hall meetings and drug casualty weirdos.  This 30 minute set from Grouper closely approximates what it's like to see her in a live setting, but here she is unaccompanied by the nature footage that was projected behind her last time she performed here as part of the On Land Festival.  She's not really the most dynamic stage performer, so without the film there's not much going here visually.  Fortunately for those curious about her non-musical work, Grouper has released "Divide", a new book/DVD combo on Roots Strata (the book portion of it is really really awesome, but I've yet to watch the DVD).  And then there's more music (two albums!) coming from Grouper in April, too: Dream Loss and Alien Observer.  While I'm hoping her new records will be a little more engaging than this, this performance is nevertheless a patient and beautiful (and kinda terrifying at the end) ambient piece, and I'm pretty jealous that Portland gets such great community access TV.... who wants to try and get something like this going in SF?

PS - for extra experimental weirdness, check out this performance that launched the Experimental 1/2 Hour show (and was my introduction to the program)

video: C V L T S - "angel chromosome" (from C V L T S/Umberto Split 7" (2011))

C V L T S - "ANGEL CHROMOSOME" from Zahid Jiwa on Vimeo.

L V S T, the self-released debut of Kansas' C V L T S, was an excellent assortment of simple yet engaging synthscapes.  I'd been looking forward to new music from these guys, and "Angel Chromosome" from their upcoming split with Umberto (who uh I know nothing about) makes for an excellent (though unfortunately brief) reminder of why this group stands out in an increasingly crowded field of bedroom keyboard kids.  Sounding retro without sounding stale, sounding epic without being overstuffed or pompous.... C V L T S definitely have a take on synthy drone that appeals to me.  Much more than, say, Night Satan.

Bonus: C V L T S Mixtape: featuring your favorite experimental electronic weirdos The Skaters, Mark McGuire, Stellar OM Source, Matrix Metals, etc... plus Jan Hammer, and Peter Gabriel(!).