Best of the 2000’s Part 4: 2003

“Welcome to Sidney,” a friend said to me the other day, and it couldn’t be more true, or more wonderful. Our week-old daughter, Sidney Claya Perry-Joyce, is the most beautiful creature we’ve ever seen…and she demands (and deserves) all of the time we’re spending at her grandparents’ house these next few days. No cell-phone reception, no TV, no internet except in Sidney’s grandfather’s blacksmith shop, where I sit now and give you my favorite album of 2003.

2003: Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell (Interscope)

The label that gave us Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson in the 90’s went on to expose the masses to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a volatile New York City art-rock trio who exploded into the mainstream with Fever to Tell in 2003. “Maps,” propulsive singer Karen O’s romantic plea to her indie rock-star lover to stay home, became an MTV hit; however, the real story here was that raucous alt-punk tracks like “Black Tongue” and “Rich” strikingly turned up-front sexuality upside down, finally giving the music world a female Iggy Pop.

Honorable mention: The White Stripes Elephant (V2)

Westword’s Top 10 Indie Rock Songs of the Decade

Top 10 Indie Rock Songs of the 2000’s
by Adam Perry for Westword (Denver Weekly)
12/17/09

To some, indie rock is necessarily a sound, something between Sonic Youth and Pavement that’s only played by people with in mop-tops and ringer t-shirts with cans of Pabst atop their amplifiers. But one could also define indie rock as important rock music recorded and performed by musicians not signed to major labels. To go further, one could pretty easily argue that these musicians wrote and played most of the best songs from 2000-2009. Here are ten that continue to amaze; we’d love to get feedback on your own favorites, too.

10. Jolie Holland “Palmyra” (2008)
She’s on an independent label and she (sometimes) plays rock music, but Jolie Holland is really half country and half folk, with a twist of Mission hipster. “Palmyra,” a tumblin’ folk-rock ballad that alludes to Hurricane Katrina and the narrator’s penchant for breaking her own heart and others, brought all of Holland’s luminous talents to a fever pitch, from her desperate emotion and charmingly sexy southern vocal stylings to her impressive knack for guileless storytelling.

9. The Warlocks “Shake the Dope Out” (2002)
Recalling classic underground lines of self-abusive desperation such as Swervedriver’s “my soul belongs to the dealer now” and the Ramones “I could’ve been rich/but I’m just digging a Chinese ditch,” the Warlocks’ “Shake the Dope Out” took Velvet Underground-descendant drug-rock to another level by indulging in hallucinatory lyricism. These guys might need professional help, but we’ll enjoy the musical side-effects while they last.

8. Grizzly Bear “Knife” (2006)
“With every blow/comes another lie/you think it’s alright/can’t you feel the knife?” Brooklyn-based soundscapers Grizzly Bear successfully matched ghostly Beach Boys-esque harmonies and tender, poignant guitars, piano and percussion with casually vicious lyrics in “Knife,” one of the highlights of Yellow House, their spellbinding breakthrough LP. It’s a magical incantation of hurt that, if provoked, could easily take anything by Nine Inch Nails and softy lull it to death.

7. Spoon “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” (2005)
After about a decade suffering in bargain-bin purgatory, Spoon emerged with Gimme Fiction, a hypnotic sonic accomplishment that became a hipster classic, and “The Beast and Dragon” kicked off the twisted fun with a slow burn. “When you don’t feel it at shows, they tear out your soul,” singer/guitarist Brit Daniels sings just as the burn becomes a wildfire, “but when you believe they call it rock n’ roll.” I’m pretty sure that line isn’t in the Bible, but it should be.

6. Deerhoof “Milkman” (2004)
Let’s just get this out of the way: yes, towering Deerhoof drummer/spokesman Greg Saunier has turrets syndrome, and it affects the genuinely virtuosic freak-jazz drumming we’ve heard on Deerhoof classics like “Milkman,” which was eventually turned into a children’s ballet in Maine. What’s truly remarkable is how Saunier’s percussive explosions juxtapose front-woman Satomi Matsuzaki’s tiny voice and childlike imagination. By turns spastic and softy fantastical, “Milkman” is Deerhoof’s “A Quick One While He’s Away”-type masterpiece.

5. The Besnard Lakes “And You Lied To Me” (2007)
Like several songs on these Vancouver studio-wizards’ killer second LP, “And You Lied” to me is peppered with inaudible voices reminiscent of the murmuring parents from Charlie Brown, but the Besnard Lakes’ genius lies not in charming absurdity but in stunning co-ed harmonies, big guitars and astute lyrics. In particular, “And You Lied To Me,” a gorgeously scathing ode to America’s longtime role as international police, utilizes shimmering lo-fi rock and startling group vocals to shed light on an issue we’re all too familiar with.

4. Stephen Malkmus “Jenny and the Ess-Dogg” (2001)
Reminding listeners of his renowned early-90’s slamming of the Smashing Pumpkins, former Pavement mastermind Stephen Malkmus brilliantly trashed the kind of wide-eyed, jamband-loving crunchies Coloradoans know so well in “Jenny and the Ess-Dog.” She’s a naïve teenage hippie with “awful toe rings”; he’s a 31-year old musician in a 60’s cover band; they’ve got a dog (named after Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio) who “has a window into their relationship.” She leaves for school “up in Boulder,” where she pledges Kappa, and the distance is the end of their relationship, not to mention the toe rings. It’s a cinematic story within a rock song, a vivid marriage of forms that the likes of the Beatles and Elvis Costello were also able consummate.

3. Broken Social Scene “Cause = Time” (2002)
This gigantic Toronto-based collective’s first proper album was actually the trancy instrumental workout Feel Good Lost, but their sprawling indie arena-rock breakout was You Forgot It In People, highlighted by “Cause = Time,” a churning surge of guitar and drum heaven. Front-kid Kevin Drew creatively juxtaposed hopeless romances (“you got it all and it’s pretty good/but I seem to be in disbelief”) with beatific abstraction (“kill the white within the bliss/this is the blood I love to shed”) on this head-bopping underground classic.

2. Arcade Fire “Neighborhood #1(Tunnels)” (2004)
Montreal youngsters Arcade Fire gave us one of the best debut rock albums of all time with 2004’s darkly beautiful Funeral, and the opening piano swirls and cascading guitars of its wondrous first track are still enough to make me stop whatever I’m doing and envision a snow-covered town where kids are digging tunnels from bedroom to bedroom for wariness of crying parents. Like many Arcade Fire tunes, the melodious sing-along conclusion to “Neighborhood #1” will stay on the tip of your brain for days, years, even decades.

1. Midlake “Roscoe” (2006)
Harmonically-gifted Denton, Texas throwbacks Midlake surprised and mesmerized listeners with The Trials of Van Occupanther, their concept-heavy sophomore effort that detailed the life and times of a fictional rural scientist who lived roughly 100 years ago. “Roscoe,” a subtly-driving rocker in which singer/guitarist Tim Smith muses “whenever I was a child I wondered what if my name had changed into something productive like Roscoe and born in 1891, waiting with my aunt Roseline,” has given me chills each of the 2,000 or so times I’ve listened to it.

Best of the 2000’s Part 3: 2002

So it’s been busy here the past few days – yesterday was the first time I got near a computer in four days, and even that was only for 15 minutes or so. Sidney (aka “Sadie”) Claya Perry-Joyce, the love of our lives, was born at home in Santa Fe on Sunday afternoon at 12:36pm and it’s been an incredibly busy joy ever since.

Still, there is music to be enjoyed, and Sidney particularly seems to like John Coltrane’s “Lush Life” and Alela Diane’s To Be Still so far, but she’ll probably grow up with Tom Waits’ timeless voice as a ubiquitous guide like her mother did. One thing’s for sure: Sidney will be hearing my favorite album from 2002 a lot in her childhood.

2002: The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros.)

Better than ecstasy. World peace might literally be attained if one of the Flaming Lips’ climactic concerts – such as our ecstatic evening with them at Red Rocks earlier this year—took place at a major political summit, but the band’s symphonic affirmations of love and life actually make the most sense on headphones. If you spent the 00’s on another planet, slept through them, or were simply too busy to discover new music, it’d be tough to find a track that’d better sum up the audio glory of the past ten years than “Do You Realize??” It’s a psychedelic koan that will be intriguing Earthlings (and maybe others) for a long time. Partly a fantastical concept album about a robot-fighting Japanese girl, Yoshimi finally made these Oklahoma oddballs a worldwide sensation.

Honorable mention: Broken Social Scene You Forgot It In People (Arts & Crafts), Godspeed You! Black Emperor Yanqui U.X.O.(Constellation)

San Francisco to South Africa: Mark Behr’s Amazing New Novel Arrives

Marrying the Political with the Personal, College of Santa Fe Professor Mark Behr Releases Third Book
by Adam Perry for Más New México
12/11/09

Santa Fe – College of Santa Fe professor Mark Behr, a Tanzanian-born novelist and essayist, read from his new book Kings of the Water last Tuesday night at the O’Shaughnessy Performance Space on campus.

Behr’s third novel, just released in England and soon to be published in the United States, deals with a man in his thirties named Michiel who embarks on a solo journey from San Francisco to South Africa after fifteen years away from his birthplace.

Behr said he wishes to “allow other senses to eclipse sight in writing” but also has a larger goal of “marrying the political with the personal.”

Raised in South Africa, Behr, who served in the Angolan War, claims that he didn’t hear the name Nelson Mandela until he was in his early 20s, although he’d studied history in South Africa. Thus, the sense of guilt, responsibility and reconciliation inherent throughout Kings of the Water is not at all unfamiliar to the writer, who splits his time between Santa Fe and South Africa.

Fellow CSF writing instructor and poet Matt Donovan, author of the 2007 collection Vellum, introduced the internationally-acclaimed Behr by calling Kings of the Water a “fascinating and wonderfully complex book” that affects “how our own subjective gaze informs the way we perceive.”

Humble in an electric-blue fleece, light blue t-shirt and dark cap, Behr effectively and emotionally shared a delicate passage from Kings of the Water in which Michiel tends to his sickly father, bathing him with a “simmering disdain.” What the protagonist envisioned as a “final showdown” he felt “lured to” becomes a tender and vulnerable episode; expecting to confront his historically angry and abusive father, Michiel instead helps his father out of a wheelchair and proceeds to scrub his father’s naked body while intermittently berating him for past behavior.

How Behr deftly and intricately described Michiel’s simultaneous sentimentality, fury and disgust – wanting to cover his ears rather than listen to his father’s near-death wheezing -began to reveal why he’s such a celebrated author, whose works have been translated into 10 languages.

“You have grown too old for me to get back at you,” Michiel wishes to (but cannot) tell his father while bathing him; in this scene, which Behr called “the child becoming a father,” the author displayed his progressive talent for bringing people, places and things alive in writing without directly telling readers what they might look like.

“Does redemption exist?” Behr mused near the end of Tuesday’s reading. “I don’t know that redemption is possible…especially in one’s lifetime.”

He said the title Kings of the Water alludes to “the foolishness of trying to control something as fluid as everything,” and many darkly beautiful lines from the novel prove the depth of his intentions as an artist.

Although Behr commented that one magazine has already panned Kings of the Water as “so bad it will put people off reading forever,” it’s clear that what Donovan called the book’s “redemptive beauty and pastoral grace” will help make it even more successful than The Smell of Apples and Embrace, Behr’s first two offerings.

Best Albums of the 2000’s Part 2: 2001

2001: Radiohead Amnesiac (Capitol)

Many people will surely slam me for not including Dr. Dre’s comeback success (Chronic) 2001 anywhere in this list, but then they’ll inevitably take a moment to look up from their bongs and realize 2001 was actually released in 1999. Radiohead’s psychedelic electro-rock classic Amnesiac, however, was released to widespread acclaim in the summer of 2001, debuting on the U.S. charts at #2. Recorded at the same time as their more abstract 2000 collection Kid A but released eight months later, Amnesiac began with tentative techno swirls and hostile lyrics –“get off my case…you’re looking in the wrong place” – probably aimed at fans and critics expecting the arena-rock follow up to OK Computer that was eventually delivered by Coldplay. Instead, Amnesiac listeners swam with black-eyed angels, shoved mice in their mouths, and enjoyed eleven weirdly beautiful songs that juxtaposed technological creativity with lyrical daring and comfortably numb garage-rock.

Honorable mention: Bob Dylan “Love and Theft” (Columbia)

10 Best Albums of the 2000’s Part 1: 2000

Sitting in our new little casita in Santa Fe looking out at the snow that fell steadily last night, I’m realizing how nice it’s been splitting my time this morning between reading His Dark Materials to Irene and our soon-to-be-born daughter; listening to the fabulous Tony Bruno & Gary Radnich on KNBR; and finishing year-end and decade-end features for Boulder Weekly and Mas New Mexico. There will be substantial introductions and editorial additons to the lists that end up in the newspapers, but I thought it’d be fun to share one great album from my “Best of the 2000’s” list every few days here at Beautiful Buzz as the next decade nears. Your own opinions (whether via mppedro@gmail.com or the comment option below) are more than welcome!

2000: PJ Harvey Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (Island)

“I just feel like it’s the end of the world,” English singer-songwriter and riot-goddess PJ Harvey sang on “Big Exit,” the blistering first track from her diversely breathtaking fifth album. Dynamic professions of bold love – from “I’m immortal when I’m with you” to “with you I wait to be born again” – are delivered via Harvey’s emotive vocals, which recall Patti Smith, Nick Cave, and even legendary blues queens like Mahalia Jackson. Harvey called Stories “my beautiful, sumputuous, lovely piece of work” in 2001, and part of the album’s breakout success was due to a streamlining of her more explosive previous work, but this captivating record’s elegant aggression made it soar.

Honorable mention: Air The Virgin Suicides (Astralwerks)

Sustainable Wunderkinds: Finn Riggins Hits Colorado

Sustainable Wunderkinds: Finn Riggins Hits Colorado
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
12/3/09

Idaho indie wunderkinds Finn Riggins are on quite a roll, touring sizeable venues this fall with the likes of Built to Spill as the trio showcase their diversely wonderful new long-play VS WILDERNESS. Multi-instrumentalists and University of Idaho music graduates Cameron Bouiss, Eric Gilbert and Lisa Simpson having been playing hundreds of shows a year since their inception in 2006, going the courageous trailblazer route successfully navigated recently by bands like Dr. Dog and Deerhoof. With their joyfully eccentric indie-pop workouts that juxtapose XTC, Blondie and the Poster Children, Finn Riggins might have a hard time attracting the kind of scenester crowd that flocks to worship the latest Sonic Youth or Slowdive-inspired flash-in-the-pan; their calculated harmonies and impressive poly-rhythms are irreverent and beautiful, as are the group’s quirky lyrics. However, as keyboardist/guitarist/singer Eric Gilbert told me in a recent interview, Finn Riggins’ word-of-mouth momentum and rampant touring (which brings them to the tiny Laughing Goat coffee-house in Boulder on Sunday) makes the blossoming young band a “sustainable project.”

Adam Perry: First off, how did this band get together and how have the initial stabs at touring gone?

Eric Gilbert: We all met at the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID around 2000 and collaborated in several projects before moving to Hailey, ID in August of 2006 and forming Finn Riggins as our new full-time focus. The name was loosely inspired by two small Idaho towns we often drove through, but the vision was to create a character name for which we could write the story to. Since then we’ve been touring the US pretty heavily and it’s been going great. The last couple of years we’ve played over 500 shows in 37 states and one Canadian province. It’s all been pretty incredible on multiple fronts and the project has grown a lot over this relatively short time due to the amount of playing we’ve been doing and the focus we’ve had. We tend to take one step at a time. Our general goal is to make this a sustainable project so that we can continue to write and record albums and continue to play our music all over North America and beyond.

AP: What impressed me straight about VS WILDERNESS was the inability I had to immediately pin down your influences.

EG: This is something we struggle with as well. We truly struggle to pinpoint any direct influences musical or otherwise. [Finn Riggins] came out of about 7 years of gestating in a very free form and open minded music scene in Moscow, where we experimented with all kinds of different takes on writing and performing original music. Combined with a lot of broad listening – I was a DJ at KUOI (the college radio station at U of I) – we were all in music school and Lisa and I were taking writing classes and art classes and whatever else, as well as seeing tons of touring bands coming through. When we moved to Hailey and began this project, we all agreed on a couple of things: we wanted to only perform music we wrote; we wanted to tour and play live a lot; and we wanted to be open to opportunities and ideas of any sort. And from there what we’ve created has been a product of us as filters for all that we had consumed and experienced. That’s always changing, especially with all the travel we do and all the different bands and artists we come in contact with. From the get-go we considered it a sort of art project more than a band…I would agree that it’s morphed pretty clearly in to being a band, but our attitude and openness toward it hasn’t really changed. Things just seem to keep happening, but a lot of that obviously has to do with the fact that we keep paddling this boat and keeping our eyes and ears open.

AP: Your lyrics are curious: giraffes and loads of other presumably zany but effective stuff. Who writes them and what would you say is the overall vision for what Finn Riggins’ lyrics have to say?

EG: All three of us are very involved in the writing process and it’s very balanced when it comes to the music, [but] Lisa and I tend to write most of the lyrics. Our approach to lyrics is as varied as our approach to the rest of what we do. There’s no overall vision. It’s a very case-by-case basis. However, Lisa and I both studied writing to differing degrees in college and take lyrics very seriously…even when they’re not serious at all.

AP: The harmonies on your records are remarkable. Have you all been singing since childhood, and how long have you all been singing together?

EG: Lisa usually takes the lead with most of the crafting of vocals and coaches Cam and I through our parts if necessary. Lisa’s been singing since childhood; [she’s] by far the most adept at singing, both lead and harmony, but all three of us were in choirs in college and have been singing “professionally” for several years now. We don’t tend to overwork our vocals too much; most of it tends to be what comes out when writing the song and what feels natural.

AP: What’s the funniest thing that’s happened on the road so far?

EG: Impossible to claim one as the funniest. So many random and incredible things happen on tour; it’s a constant challenge to convey it to others. Sorry I can’t come up with something simple like my pants falling to my ankles in a middle of a set or one of us getting locked inside a truck-stop bathroom or something like that. We’ll keep working on it.

Nirvana and Phish Reviews!

2 CD Reviews from the Albuquerque Alibi’s upcoming Sonic Reducer section:

Nirvana
Bleach (Deluxe Edition)
Sub Pop, November 2009
Review by Adam Perry

There has been a lot of Nirvana news lately, from the Live at Reading release to the depressing controversy over Guitar Hero 5’s ugly decision to allow gamers to use character modeled after the late Kurt Cobain to sing Bush and Bon Jovi songs. Amid all the fuss, Sub Pop’s 20th Anniversary re-release of Bleach, a “Deluxe Edition” that includes a complete live Nirvana show from 1990, is really the only noteworthy event. Nirvana’s first album, with Chad Channing on the drummer’s throne would later be Dave Grohl’s, featured plenty of SST rip-offs and manically-depressed screams from Cobain, who was still seeking his voice as a songwriter. This higher-fidelity version of Bleach is enjoyably rough and mean; hopefully songs like “About a Girl” and “Negative Creep” also point young listeners to bands like Mudhoney, The Pixies and Dinosaur Jr., who Nirvana was basically impersonating at this point.

Phish
Festival 8 (10/31/09) featuring “Exile On Main Street”
JEMP Records, November 2009
Review by Adam Perry

Even those who loathe Phish and their zany juxtapositions of classical, jazz and jam-rock have nonetheless regularly admired the Vermont band’s exceptional covers of everyone from Duke Ellington to Pavement. This Halloween in Indio, CA, Phish played an official “musical costume” for the first time since their 1998 cover of the Velvet Underground’s indie blueprint Loaded, this time choosing The Rolling Stones’ soulfully debaucherous 1972 classic Exile On Main Street, which was more treat than trick. Talented neo-soul singer Sharon Jones came along to help tackle Exile’s 18 bluesy tracks; with keyboardist Page McConnell deftly handling the most challenging lead vocal duties, Phish used legendary Stones lyrics like “who’s gonna help him to kick it?” from “Torn and Frayed” to reference Phish’s infamous struggles with substance abuse, while Trey Anastasio tempered the entire evening with occasionally-virtuosic guitar improvisation. The polarizing group’s Halloween 1996 cover of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light was better, but Phish obviously put in the necessary work to do Exile justice.

Additional note: my young cousin Daniel drove from New Orleans to California to see this show!

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros Hit Colorado with Fool’s Gold

Edward Sharpe is the Jesus of Indie Rock + Fool’s Gold Speaks!
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
11/25/09

Up from Below, the debut full-length album from the ecstatic Los Angeles musical cult known as Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, is in many ways a revelation. The group’s acid-drenched science-fiction is a welcome throwback for older hippies (reformed and not) who loved psychedelic concept albums like Jefferson Starship’s spacey 1970 classic Blows Against the Empire, the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and even David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. For younger listeners, Up from Below is Psych-Folk 101.

The Magnetic Zeros’ music is pure (and uplifting) gypsy folk, but much of the communal band’s charm is not that this eccentric troupe (who introduce themselves as fictional characters even in their official press release) effectively imitate the sounds and appearances of the bygone era that spawned both the Manson Family and the Laurel Canyon songwriter scene. The real story is actually more captivating and profound than the Magnetic Zeros’ straight-faced, musically-enhanced claim that their front-man Edward Sharpe is a messiah “sent down to Earth to heal and save mankind.”

The appeal of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is not just that their catchy Mamas and the Papas/Jefferson Airplane-esque tunes like “Home” and “Desert Song” effectively reinact the dark side of the 60’s like Yeasayer interpreting Tommy. What’s really surprising is the ensemble’s ability to enrapture listeners into enjoying a make-believe world where a messiah named Edward Sharpe has materialized to “wake you all” and reveal “all that you need to see,” which is presumably in the desert somewhere.

But wait, who is Edward Sharpe? Basically, former Ima Robot front-man Alex Ebert went through a bad breakup, entered Alcoholics Anonymous, experienced what you might call a psychological crisis, and emerged with a story and a vision for a band. Initially touring the U.S. in 2007 with a hallowed-out school bus ala Ken Kesey and his Merrry Pranksters, the dozen-member Magnetic Zeros have become a left-field sensation with Ebert at the helm as Edward Sharpe. Their music is more powerful and interesting than you’d imagine from such a madcap outfit – sort of like Arcade Fire meets Jesus Christ Superstar – and Ebert is curiously mum about the whole fantasy/role-play angle in interviews, sticking to explanations of his creative rebirth.

“I was at a place where I was becoming disconnected and needed life badly,” he told the Austinist this fall. “I remembered back to when I was a child, my heroes then, what I wanted to be, and the music my father would play when taking me on these long road trips cross the west. It all culminated in a giant upheaval and shift to the grander and golden aspirations of my childhood.”

Enter Edward Sharpe and the grandiose psychedelic folk of the Magnetic Zeros, who have thrived at staying in character as far as we can tell, putting on trailblazing Polyphonic Spree-type concerts that have made their current tour a huge success.

Impressively, Ebert & Co. were humble enough to hire an opening act that may put on an even better show than they do. The Magnetic Zeros have brought along fellow L.A. residents Fool’s Gold, a rather large collective who juxtapose infectious African Soul melodies and rhythms with 80’s dance vibes and inspirational vocal workouts that happen to be sung almost exclusively in Hebrew. Front-man Luke Top told the Village Voice recently that Fool’s Gold originally wanted to embody what he calls “interational pop music”; surprisingly, he told me that the idea had nothing to do with Paul Simon.

“Paul Simon has had very little direct influence on me, as far as I am consciously aware of,” Top noted. “I have seen The Graduate a ton of times, though! We’re at a place where influences just find a way to reveal themselves on their own terms. There is a special kind of magic that happens between the band and audience, and it is utterly addicting. The trance-inducing rhythms definitely help propel us all to that shared ecstatic destination.”

Fool’s Gold’s eponymous debut is a dance-party on disc, and full-time members include indie veterans from the Fall, We Are Scientists and Foreign Born. As per the euphoric live shows that Fool’s Gold is becoming notorious for, Top claims the group’s creative outlook on performing is pretty organic, although they’ve been enlightened by everything from MTV to the NBA.

“We hope to be selfless and truthful to ourselves while we perform,” he told us. “We try to shed our inhibitions and fully submit to the music in the reality of the moment. I think sometimes the audience is able to tap into that energy and push themselves a little bit too.”

Top couldn’t think of a modern musical artist whose performances informed what Fool’s Gold does live, but said he’s “certainly watched a ton of Adam and the Ants and Smiths videos. And the great Kanda Bongo Man. And Colorado’s own Carmelo Anthony dancing through the air in crunch time.”

Fool’s Gold songs like “Ha Dvash” and “Yam Lo Moshesch” fit nicely between lines previously drawn by Orchestra Baobab and Simon’s Graceland (whether intentionally or not), with a hint of Kirtan for spiritual flavor. The fact that it’s almost all sung in Hebrew by Top somehow adds a pulse of heartfelt significance, and he’s confident (and correct) that little is lost in translation.

“This is, at the end of the day, music to feel and to dance to,” he explained. “Generally, people will connect to our music viscerally first and then might dig into the cultural questions later. I feel very fortunate for that. It is a really beautiful thing when people who might not speak the language are singing along. To me it’s the ultimate form of trust and acceptance.”

Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros play the Boulder Theater on Tuesday, December 1st. Doors open at 7pm; openers are Fool’s Gold and Local Natives.

Pink Visions

Pink Visions: The Big Pink Hits Denver
by Adam Perry for Westword

On “Crystal Visions,” the romantically heavy opener on their debut LP A Brief History of Love, London’s The Big Pink get crafty by adding huge distorted guitars worthy of Crazy Horse to the tried-and-true shoe-gazer blueprint of mixing one part Floyd, one part Bowie and one part Verve. However, from the band’s lyrics one can guess that songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell aren’t shying from another usual shoe-gazer tradition: “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to,” as the saying goes.

“On a sequin covered horse/they’re waiting for us to arrive,” they sing on “Crystal Visions,” “200 naked pure gold girls/and then I said I’ll watch them ride.” Elsewhere, the self-described electro-rock boys sings about golden pendulums and girls that “fall like dominos”; it’s just a shame there isn’t a movie version of these ecstasy-filled lyrics. For now, we’ll have to settle for the group’s mega-rock live performances, which feature a full (and LOUD) backing band and a seizure-inducing light show. The Big Pink plays the Larimer Lounge in Denver on Monday.