Postcard 2/22/13

“Postcard”

I was reading a popular biking magazine today
& they suggested not riding for 24-48 hours
after a snowfall of 3 inches or more.
I thought, exactly – why wait until after?
This is me in Colorado, composed
bundled & blessed in a blizzard,
pedaling to keep my thoughts warm
as I remember you & wonder which way is home,
through crushed ice of Broadway or 1,700 miles toward the ocean
to hold you close as Rockridge, far as the sunset
where the wait for your beautiful ideals, your mellow glow
stretches smooth & slow, watching me feel you
with your eyes closed.

You love waking up; I love the elements,
my legs climbing like cold fire
just how I write love,
too honest to be careful.

SHOW REVIEW: Black Angels NYE, Denver

SHOW REVIEW: The Black Angels
New Year’s Eve / Bluebird / Denver
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly

In the music world, New Year’s Eve in America has become known as a jamband stronghold, and this year was no different: The String Cheese Incident was spreading joyful banality for hoola-hoopers in Broomfield; Furthur, the watered-down Dead cover band featuring a Madame Tussauds-style Jerry Garcia, filled San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic with tie-dyed nostalgia; and Phish packed Madison Square Garden for four nights, culminating in a zany NYE extravaganza during which the Garden stage and floor were covered with fake grass and the band chipped golf balls into the audience and played vaguely golf-themed songs such as “Wilson,” “Lawn Boy” and “Driver.”

But this year (or last year, now) I wanted something deeper out of a musical New Year’s party than nostalgia, humor or cheesy ecstasy.

So the Black Angels’ remarkable set at the Bluebird Theater in Denver on Monday night was the perfect alternative to a typical it’s-all-good New Year’s Eve concert. In fact, the powerful Austin-based psychedelic rock quintet even had the gall to open its two-hour-plus set, following the sleek Denver hard-rock outfit Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, with “She Said Don’t Play with Guns,” an unmistakable nod to the depressingly routine spate of mass-shootings our nation has suffered in recent years. Performed just minutes from where the abominable movie-theater massacre occurred in Aurora, the warped gypsy punk of “She Said Don’t Play with Guns” hit home in a painful but ultimately very necessary way.

But it wasn’t all bleak and/or disturbing: A few songs in, the Black Angels brought a young local man on stage to dance and shake a tambourine. So it seemed. Eventually the song — one I hadn’t heard before, with a “love me forever” chorus — broke down into a vamp, and keyboardist Kyle Hunt tapped Dancing Guy on the shoulder. The young man proceeded to invite his pregnant girlfriend onstage and propose to her: The subsequent public engagement drew smiles and hollers of approval from band and audience alike.

Black Angels frontman Alex Mass — in life irreverent and soft-spoken but in his stage presence sinister, stalking and pounding a floor tom with maracas — recaptures the spirit of what made the dark side of the aforementioned ’60s so extraordinary: The blazing, wicked cool of “Sister Ray”; Pink Floyd’s malevolent wraith-like dirges calling for axe safety; the vastly underrated 13th Floor Elevators; and trips that sought more than pleasure.

The Black Angels, who Monday night in Denver also recalled the Doors’ “Not to Touch the Earth” in the sinful melodies of “Bad Vibrations,” got their name from a Velvet Underground song and, like V.U., feature a no-nonsense female drummer. The tasteful, serious Stephanie Bailey, an indie sex symbol with her long blonde hair and muscled arms, pounds away in a workwoman-like manner that suggests playing the drums are literally a compulsory function of her body.

 

All night, the ’60s were invoked, not so much through nostalgia but, instead, forward-thinking takes on past innovation. New multi-instrumentalist Rishi Dhir — who resembles a more genuine, cheery Jason Schwartzman — brought Ravi Shankar to mind with repeated sitar meanderings during otherwise purely hard-rock tunes. Guitarist Christian Bland had a vintage guitar for every occasion. And the Angels’ Spartan light show — now devoid of the Native American imagery that for years so aptly juxtaposed the tribal stomp of songs like “You On the Run” — is a more menacing, innuendo-filled swirl than the usual neo-psychedelic background fare.

After “Black Grease,” the 2006 tale of emotional destruction and vice from Passover, drew fist-pumps from the crowd with its final chorus of “you kill, kill, kill / anything you want,” Maas looked down at the time on his cell phone and proceeded to meekly count down from 10 before the band launched into the churning war-cry of “Young Men Dead.” It’s not often in America we’re reminded at concerts of the reality that we’re a nation still entrenched in the longest war in our history, but it was necessary and welcomed.

In the end, the highlight of my night — besides the Mexican-comic wallpaper in Mescal’s bathroom across the street — was that the Black Angels encored with “Mission District,” a slow, vicious crawl through the San Francisco neighborhood I left for Colorado in 2008. With Maas alluding to the brutal, apathetic gentrification of the half-Mexican, half-hipster area while Bailey’s drums gradually brought about a distorted eruption, the Bluebird audience erupted in response. After “Mission District” was deftly devolved into a slow-motion freak-out referencing “Astronomy Domine,” being alive in 2013 — and the way-below-zero temperature out on East Colfax — became a reality worth meeting, through both harmony and horror, rather than hoola-hooping out of mind.

5th Annual Year-End Music Feature (BOULDER WEEKLY)

RECORD YEAR: GREAT MUSIC IN 2012
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
12/27/2012

The state of original music in this country is wonderful. It could be argued that, although corporate-owned mainstream radio has eschewed what’s clearly good, honest music, for what will sell (and what’s released by labels owned by the aforementioned corporations), we are currently able to enjoy more great original music than ever before. It’s just a little harder to find it.

Which brings me to an apology. I’m sorry for kicking off my fifth annual “Best Albums of the Year” column for Boulder Weekly with a complaint, but “12-12-12,” aka Concert for Sandy, really got my blood boiling.

Sure, a benefit concert of any kind is good news. But I’d love to know why the organizers of “12-12-12” chose to stage a concert in New York City, centered around raising awareness and money for the effects of a hurricane that hit New York and New Jersey, with not one band from New York or one formed in the last 20 years. Heck, most of the acts were sexagenarian Englishmen.

Point is: Respect the old, but at least give the new a chance. And don’t look at video of 68-year-old Roger Daltrey singing shirtless at “12-12-12,” making us all feel like we’d just accidentally walked in on our grandfathers showering.

I hear a lot of people, young and old, lamenting rather than listening. Saying “There’s no great music anymore. It’s all been done.” Bullshit. There is something exciting for every kind of ear. So for the fifth year in a row, I’ve done a lot of research for the lazy kind of ear that complains but doesn’t seek. Here, in no particular order, are 10 remarkable new albums from 2012 worth digging into.

DARK DARK DARK in Denver (Boulder Weekly 10/25/2012)

PROGRESS VIA ANTIQUITY
Dark Dark Dark in Denver
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
10/25/2012

During the 2011 Communikey Festival, a few hundred local hipsters packed the obscure and highly under-used Odd Fellows Hall on Pearl Street to see why Dark Dark Dark — a poignant Minneapolis-based indie-pop and chamber-folk group that plays old-world instruments — was playing an electronic music festival.

It turns out the band had been deeply involved with former bassist Todd Chandler’s incredible film Flood Tide, which found the musicians (as part of the artist Swoon’s Swimming Cities of the Serenissima project) building giant rafts out of found materials and living on them for a time as they sailed down the Hudson from Troy to Long Island City. At Odd Fellows, Dark Dark Dark played a live soundtrack to Flood Tide, which songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Marshall LaCount calls “part document of Swimming Cities, part fictional narrative, with a twist of environmental activism.”

According to LaCount, “All of us were involved in the Swoon project on many levels. Different incarnations of that project and community are one of the catalysts for Nona [Invie] and I starting this band, and significantly expanded our experience, our ambitions and our community.”

Dark Dark Dark, which debuted in 2008 with The Snow Magic, has always created exceptionally cinematic music, much of which would not be out of place in Tim Burton’s movies, although thus far the band’s songs have instead surprisingly appeared in the background on Grey’s Anatomy and American Idol. Dark Dark Dark’s original Flood Tide score saw the band growing, or simply discovering, its musical capabilities.

“As far as sound,” LaCount says, “I think we did start expanding our dynamic range and some of the improvisation we were ‘allowing’ ourselves to do in [our] usual live setting, in working on the film. We did it in a very Neil Young Dead Man scoring kind of fashion, at least from our understanding [spontaneously composing music while watching a film with very little dialogue]. Noisier and more textural things carried into our songs a little more quickly from working on accompanying the film.”

Dark Dark Dark’s new album, Who Needs Who, isn’t exactly Neil Young shredding away on Old Black. But its intermittent smidgens of distorted guitar bursts are surely a departure from the deeply intimate, spooky and almost baroque sensibility of 2010’s Wild Go, which singer-pianist Invie nods to on Who Needs Who’s title track.

Invie — whose romantic relationship with LaCount ended just before Who Needs Who was recorded — is most comfortable and powerful conveying her bold poetry with just a piano and her wispy voice, or when also accompanied by slow, buoyant bass and gently brush-stroked drums. NPR correctly described her voice as “flexible, penetrating, shedding both light and shadow on the meaning of her lyrics.” And both are necessary when contemplating lines like “I have the memory of trust / I try to keep it close / I swallow it whole / from the mouth of you.”

LaCount says that he and Invie, who have been close for many years, share a musical upbringing.

“Nona and I basically learned our original instruments — acoustic banjo and accordion — reading Klezmer, wedding and traditional songs from Eastern European countries, and American folk,” LaCount says. “We’d play that stuff on the street or in loud bars. We’ve definitely spent a lot of time redefining and personalizing our sound, but people still hear these influences, for sure. There are also classical influences, punk bands, spoken word projects, really all kinds of influences happening.”

It’s almost impossible to point to another modern musical artist that Dark Dark Dark can aptly be compared to, although Joanna Newsom and others have recently also, as LaCount describes, brilliantly made “classical and world instruments fair game in indie and folk music.” He cites the soundtracks to films like Waking Life and Amelie as partial inspirations for that movement toward progression via antiquity.

LaCount, who told me he has “no idea” how his stormy relationship with Invie has informed Dark Dark Dark’s music, has said that the two made a pact at the beginning of their romance to make the music survive no matter what happened between them. Despite some fairly brutal Invie-penned lyrics on Who Needs Who that touch on the breakup and have been described by her as hurtful but honest, LaCount says the strong friendship within Dark Dark Dark is “one of the reasons we can last.”

“Sometimes we may go eight hours without talking, and then spend two hours laughing our asses off about nothing,” he says. “Somehow we generally know how to create the personal space we need when there is no space at all.”

Romney / Veterans / Gay Rights

 

 

My fellow veterans’ advocates are abuzz over this, and you’ll be hearing about it soon. 

 

Fitting that what could be *the* landmark gay rights case in our history deals with a female veteran whose rights Romney vows to erase if elected. Legally married Navy veteran Carmen Cardona applied for VA disability benefits for her wife & was denied. Then the Obama administration said the wife is entitled. Then the Republican congress cruelly intervened to support denial. Oral argument begins next month. Stay tuned, and vote!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardona_v._Shinseki

Poor Moon’s Beautiful Whimsy (Boulder Weekly interview 10/4/2012)

The Dark Side of Poor Moon’s Beautiful Whimsy
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly, 10/4/2012

The Baltimore dream-pop duo Beach House, which headlines the Boulder Theater on Sunday with some auxiliary musicians, has been steadily touring since its inception in 2004. The group’s silky indie rock, as much Nico-era Velvet Underground as Euro-pop in the vein of the most accessible Cocteau Twins and Blonde Redhead, is steadily gaining mainstream attention. Bloom, released in May, debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard charts, briefly sharing space in the top 10 with household names like Adele, Carrie Underwood and Norah Jones.

Beach House’s opener on Sunday, however, has taken the polar opposite career path. Poor Moon, which also returns to Colorado Nov. 1 for a date at the Walnut Room, features two members of Fleet Foxes, the well-known Seattle indie darlings who skyrocketed to wide acclaim in 2008 with a brilliant eponymous debut. Poor Moon’s own self-titled first album, released in August, includes the instantly recognizable harmonies of Christian Wargo and Casey Wescott, whose voices have enhanced the woodsy lullabies of young Fleet Foxes mastermind Robin Pecknold.

More than anything, Poor Moon’s quirky pop — which is coyly dark in subject matter while presenting itself as beautiful whimsy — is influenced by the saccharine ’60s rock of bands like Canned Heat, whose song “Poor Moon” gave Wargo and Co. an idea for their side project’s name.

“I like Canned Heat, and the song ‘Poor Moon’ hit me on many levels when I heard it the first time,” Wargo told me recently from the road. “I felt I could get lost in it. It struck me as sad and rather odd but also very sincere.”

“Sad, rather odd, and very sincere” is also a spot-on description of Poor Moon. There is a lot about Poor Moon’s music that sounds old, specifically harkening back to the soaring yet gorgeously simple pop-rock of ’60s heroes like the Byrds, the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills & Nash. One might even call Wargo’s songs archaic in their inviting genuineness, due not just to the pleasantness of his songwriting and the quartet’s breezy harmonies but also the obviously stripped-down and retro recording techniques used on Poor Moon.

“Those [’60s] recording sessions and the way songs were approached has always resonated with me and I’ve formed my own ideas about what sonic aspects make that music distinct and powerful,” Wargo says. “However, I also listen to modern music and even Top 40 radio, so I like to take it all in and enjoy a little bit of almost everything.”

Music driven by whistling and xylophone generally isn’t in the Top 40. Then again, nor is anything that sounds like Poor Moon — unless we’re talking about the Top 40 circa Victorian England — but it’s easy to hear the unabashed pop inspiration coloring Poor Moon tracks like “Phantom Light” and “Holiday,” placing the group’s sound somewhere not far from the bashful folk of Blue Rubie or Ian and Sylvia but also still near the Fleet Foxes’ lush, neo-pastoral sincerity, though Wargo’s songs are far more weird.

“Got a friend of the devil living in my soul,” he sings in “Heaven’s Door,” “and the taste of flames in the back of my throat / as I bow my head to surrender control to the master plan.”

His lyrics can be oddly menacing, but Wargo has a talent for juxtaposing sweet, sinful sorrow with friendly, dreamy music that beckons smiles. And kids love it.

When we spoke last month, I had to tell Wargo that my 2-year-old daughter is in love with his music and will be attending the Boulder Theater show Sunday. Ask her what music she likes and she will immediately respond, “Poor Moon.”

“That’s cool,” he says. “We may have a job opening for her. Our team of advertisers and media experts hasn’t made a campaign directed specifically at children below the age of 5, but we’re working on it. You should be seeing lots of Poor Moon commercials popping up on Nickelodeon.”

As for the difference between touring with the hugely successful Fleet Foxes and hitting the road with Poor Moon, conveying his own vision, Wargo says he feels “lucky.”

“It’s bomb,” he says. “I like being in a van. I like the smaller rooms and getting to interact with people on a more intimate level. Don’t get me wrong — larger shows are awesome, too, but there’s something really great about turning up the volume in a small space and feeling the energy bounce off the walls.”

Pittsburgh Pirates – 2012 Horror & Super Castoff Roster

courtesy Benstonium.com

Pittsburgh Pirates – 2012 Horror & Super Roster Made of Castoffs
by Adam Perry, 10/1/2012

Although I studied creative writing in college, my journalism is almost strictly music and literature criticism and A&E features. However, early in my time as a college student in Pittsburgh I often wrote passionate and under-informed articles about the Pirates, Penguins and Steelers. And now, with the state of Pittsburgh sports in perhaps more disarray then anytime in my life, I feel a need to blog about, specifically, what is now unquestionably the worst franchise in the history of sports: The Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Steelers, struggling with age, injury and a bunch of so-so drafts, might be in a rebuilding phase. But with James Harrison, Troy Polamalu and Rashard Mendenhall all perhaps returning this Sunday, anything is possible – from a losing season to a ninth Super Bowl appearance.

The Penguins have two Hall of Fame centers in Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, but the off-season loss of young center Jordan Staal is a big hit. Still, anything is possible with Malkin and Crosby still around.

But the Pirates have little or no hope for contending for anything in the near future, as usual, besides high draft picks.

Pittsburgh used to be a proud baseball town. Honus Wagner, Robert Clemente, Ralph Kiner, Willie Stargell, Barry Bonds. Bill Mazeroski hitting the only walk-off homer in a World Series Game 7 in history, capping the Pirates’ win over the Yankees in 1960. But the Pirates just blew yet another ninth-inning lead – in typically horrifying fashion – to clinch their North American professional sports record 20th consecutive losing season.

That’s right, the Pirates have not won more games they lost, or broke even, since Barry Bonds left the team for San Francisco after the 1992 season. Owner Bob Nutting does nothing but play politics, make empty promises, and rake in millions of dollars in profit each year while skimping on payroll. General manager Neal Huntington drafts mostly players who don’t became major-leaguers; signs cheap, ineffective veterans well past their prime (some who never had a prime); and gives away his best talent for close to nothing, and sometimes literally nothing. Coach Clint Hurdle, while clearly a good guy and considerably brighter than his inept predecessor John Russell, has steered the Pirates to the two greatest second-half collapses in baseball history in his two years as manager.

In 2011, the Pirates made it to 7 games over .500 just after mid-season, tying their high-water mark since 1992. And then self-destructed on their way to a 90-loss season, ranking as the most precipitous fall from first place in the 140-year history of major-league baseball.

It did not seem possible to anyone who follows sports, but Hurdle and his Pirates outdid themselves this year. On August 6, the team was 16 games over .500, more than doubling their 20-year high-water mark, due to strong starting pitching, a near-flawless bullpen, and Hall of Fame-type hitting from young center-fielder Andrew McCutchen, who was batting near .375 through July.

Then, everything fell apart. Young starting pitcher James McDonald became the worst pitcher in the major leagues, after performing like a Cy Young candidate in the first half. McCutchen’s average dropped by nearly 50 points and he started hitting only singles. The bullpen blew game after game. And general manager Huntington, with his team just a hair behind the Reds for first place at the trade deadline, responded to a dire need for offense by adding Miami first baseman Gaby Sanchez, who had quickly and startlingly gone from All-Star to minor leaguer, and Toronto outfielder Travis Snider, a former high draft pick who has never succeeded in the majors.

Neither hitter helped the Pirates win games. And they didn’t. They are an appalling 14-35 (a .285 winning percentage) in their last 49 games and clinched their record 20^th consecutive non-winning season by getting no-hit at home by the rival Reds – the first time the Pirates had been no-hit since Bob Gibson dominated them at Three Rivers Stadium in 1971. And then yesterday, with a one-run lead in the ninth, declining closer Joel Hanrahan gave up a game-tying home run to former Pirate Xavier Paul before allowing another former Pirate, Ryan Ludwick, to score the winning run. Pirates outfielder Jose Tabata, known for bone-headed mistakes and a lack of effort, walked to lead off the bottom of the ninth with the Pirates down 4-3, but was tagged out between second and third after trying to take two bases on an errant pickoff throw. Rookie Starling Marte struck out to end the game.

That one inning of a horrible loss truly captured everything wrong with the Pirates’ last 20 years.  Two players that GM Huntington gave away for nothing, and who are ably helping a playoff-bound team with big September hits, beat the Pirates. Clint Hurdle and his staff were unable to corral a young player into playing smart baseball – Tabata should’ve been happy with being put in scoring position with no outs, rather than trying for third. And Hanrahan joined in on the at least partly mentally driven collapse, helping the bullpen blow another important game after twice being named an All-Star. He will no doubt be traded for peanuts in the offseason, as his dominance has declined but his 2012 numbers are still terrific and he will be awarded several million dollars more than his current salary in arbitration. Millions of dollars the Pirates will not pay him.

Perhaps what stings even worse than 20 losing seasons with no end in sight is that Pirates president (apparently for life) Frank Coonelly, who famously called an elderly bar owner in Pittsburgh last year to berate her for her establishment’s good-natured Pirates promotion (discount beer when they lose), announced that the club will retain its GM, coach and director of scouting despite two historic collapses, embarrassing displays of non-fundamentals on the field, and inabilities to both draft, develop and acquire talent AND recognize and retain talent.

So we get to the real meat of this post, and that is my effort to build an MLB lineup made up strictly of players the Pirates cast away at their leisure, who are currently playing for other teams. Most of them are on contenders. Here we go:

CF Brandon Moss (acquired in the failed Jason Bay trade of 2008, when a Pirate with a consistent OPS over .900 was traded for prospects, Moss never stuck with the Pirates and was released. In just 257 AB with Oakland in 2012, Moss has 21 HR and a .945 OPS. He would start on an All-Star team with those numbers, and he is arguably carrying Oakland into the playoffs right now.)

C Ryan Doumit (drafted by the Pirates and never able to surpass 15 HR or play a full season, he was signed as a free agent after 2011 and is hitting a respectable .275 with 18 HR for Minnesota)

LF Ryan Ludwick (acquired at the deadline last year, Ludwick hit a paltry .232 with 2 HR and was a big part of the epic collapse that saw the Pirates going from 7 games over .500 to 90 losses. He has a stellar .890 OPS with 27 HR for the division-champion Reds this year after not being offered a contract by Pittsburgh.)

1B Adam LaRoche (acquired from the Braves in 2007, LaRoche had a respectable OPS over .800 as a Pirate, but was terribly streaky. He was traded by Pittsburgh in 2009 for two players who’ve never stuck in the majors. LaRoche has an impressive 32 HR and a .848 OPS for the Nationals, who have the best record in MLB.)

RF Jose Bautista (drafted by the Pirates, Bautista never had an OPS above .488 for Pittsburgh in parts of five seasons. Traded to Toronto for essentially nobody, Bautista is now a perennial All-Star and famously hit 54 HR in 2010. His 2011 OPS of 1.056 is astounding.)

3B Aramis Ramirez (drafted by the Pirates, Ramirez batting .300 with 34 HR and 112 RBI for the Pirates as a 23-year-old in 2002. Less than two years later, he was traded in a clear salary dump for pathetic players who have been out of baseball for several years. Ramirez has averaged, per season for his career, 30 HR and 108 RBI.)

SS Ronny Cedeno (never a favorite of Pittsburgh fans or managers, Cedeno was released after the 2011 season but is a decent major-league player with an OPS of .745 for the Cubs this year. His replacement, Clint Barmes, has an atrocious .587 OPS in 2012 and is owed $5.5 million guaranteed for 2013.)

2B Cesar Izturis (not great, not awful. Izturis has averaged .255 with a .617 OPS over his career and can play multiple positions. Played just three months with the Pirates in 2007 and then was released.)

P Ryan Vogelsong (acquired by the Pirates in a 2001 salary dump when ownership decided starter Jason Schmidt cost too much. In parts of five seasons with the Pirates, Vogelsong was never effective and was released after the 2006 season. Rejuvenated with the Giants, coincidentally, Vogelsong was an All-Star in 2011 with a 2.71 ERA. This year he is 14.9 with a 3.46 ERA on a division-winning Giants team.)

There you have it. The Pirates clinched their sports-record 20^th straight losing season – carrying out the worst collapse in the history of baseball, during which they announced that the front office and head coach will be retained – and it takes only a few minutes to assemble a very, very good team full of All-Stars from the players they have cast aside.

Bob Nutting, Pirates Owner, if you’re reading this: I am withdrawing my support and attention, along with that of my two-year-old daughter, who followed this embarrassing season with me. You have no idea how to run a baseball team, or even hire anyone who does. The fact that you choose to field a team year after year with one of the lowest budgets in pro sports is not an excuse, as Oakland and other teams are winning with low payrolls. The fact that you are based in a small city is no excuse, as St. Louis is roughly the size of Pittsburgh and the Cardinals just won another championship. I’ll watch the Pirates again when you sell the team, but I know that won’t happen soon because you reportedly made a $20 million profit this year, despite the stain you’ve left on my hometown. Please sell the team.

DEERHOOF (interview/preview) Boulder Weekly 9/20/12

CUTE MADNESS
Deerhoof Goes for Best of Both Worlds
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly, 9/20/12

Deerhoof concerts have always been uniquely fun, but lately more of a festive connection between band and audience has been on the quartet’s mind, according to singer/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki, who lived in her native Japan until the mid-’90s.

“For Breakup Song [Deerhoof ’s 10th album, released Sept. 4], we tried to create a feeling of party dance music,” she says. “When we played shows in the past, I noticed that sometimes our music is not easy to dance to. Then, [when] I moved to New York this year, I went to dance parties and enjoyed it very much.

“Questlove [of the Roots] plays DJ every Thursday at Brooklyn Bowl. Once all the Deerhoof members went there for the after-party of the show, which we played with Questlove. We had so much fun. Questlove’s DJ style reminded me of our music. He uses short clips of popular dance hits to make audiences keep dancing and just keep going. Kind of busy and mind-bogging in a way. I got a hint from that when we made this album.”

Deerhoof formed in San Francisco in 1994 and acquired its energetic and brilliant Japanese-born frontwoman Matsuzaki in 1996. The sweetly bombastic quartet juxtaposes explosions of dark indie madness with sincere Japanese cuteness and deft musicianship.

Drummer Greg Saunier, who has struggled with Tourette syndrome, spastically throws himself at a comically small drumkit like Keith Moon channeling Gene Krupa. Guitarists John Dietrich, a founding member, and Ed Rodriguez (who joined Deerhoof in 2008), joyfully trade staccato licks not unlike Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp on the classic King Crimson tune “Neal and Jack and Me” (sans soloing). And Matsuzaki, standing at around 5 feet tall, holds it all together with a tasteful, thumping bass that appears larger than she is. She defines the band with the creative, loveable and sometimes bizarre lyrics she sings in a babyish (yet deeply beautiful) voice.

Matsuzaki has bounced around from San Francisco to Tokyo to London and New York the past few years, and the rest of the band has lived apart as well. Intra-band drama and ossification often make it difficult for any band to attain or sustain musical success, so it’s incredible that Deerhoof, which achieved some mainstream exposure in the past decade with the critically acclaimed album The Runners Four and by opening a few shows for Radiohead, has been able to continue to evolve, “working together like a family.” The band continues to play stripped-down, intense concerts while taking its studio work as “out there” as possible.

The latter means sometimes recording synth-heavy experiments that would be impossible to recreate live with just two guitars, Matsuzaki’s bass and the aforementioned comically small acoustic drum kit.

“We don’t treat live shows and albums same,” Matsuzaki explains. “We make an album as if we create a sci-fi movie. There is no technical limit, like making Transformers! It’s a fairy tale and you can make it up as far as your imagination goes, but we don’t try to recreate those sounds for shows. We are trying to rearrange all the songs from scratch. We even change the structure. The idea and bones remain.

“Why would audiences wanna listen to exact same music when they have already listened to [the recording]? That doesn’t sound fun to me. I expect thrilling liveliness and improvisations from live shows. We strip down the songs to leave spaces for us to be able to throw our current sparkle ideas on stage. Every show is different for us.”

Romantic tales like the sprightly “Flower” — with its “Let it go / leave it all behind” chorus — will surely show concertgoers at the Hi-Dive in Denver on Tuesday a different, more personal side of Deerhoof.

“Relationships matter is the simplest theme that everyone relates to,” Matsuzaki says. “I think about communication all the time. [Breakup Song] is not just about love relationships but also friendships. We all had breakups in the past and moved on. The album encourages you to move on, be happy and dance! It’s time to party. Fun!”

REVIEW: Phish at Dick’s (for Relix)

photo by Dave Vann, Phish photographer

REVIEW: Phish at Dick’s 8/31/2012
for Relix Magazine
by Adam Perry

It’s been a few years since I last identified Phish as one of my favorite bands. As of late, acts such as Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Dr. Dog and My Morning Jacket have produced more profound and interesting material, while consistently putting on exciting live shows. But here and there Phish pulls of unforgettable musical feats, such as the second set on a Sunday in San Francisco a few weeks ago, centered around a dynamic performance of the Talking Heads’ “Cross-eyed and Painless.” Plus, there are certain show-stopping, smile-inducing talents Phish possesses that no one will be able to match, such as the gall to perform a dark improvisational set atop a control tower on an Air Force base in Maine the middle of the night, regaling the nosebleed section at an arena while seated in a flying hotdog, and bringing out the likes of Kenny Rogers, B.B. King, Jimmy Buffet, and Jay-Z to sit in.

On Friday night at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, a quirky soccer stadium just outside Denver, the Vermont quartet (which celebrates its 30th anniversary next year) once again pulled off an amusing feat. After spelling out the words “FUCK YOUR FACE” with the first letters of the first twelve songs of the night, Phish broke into “Fuck Your Face,” one the group’s most obscure tunes.

Then, during the group vocal improvisation that concludes “You Enjoy Myself,” the band riffed on impromptu Dick’s-themed lines such as “Mike loves Dick’s,” “Trey loves Dick’s,” and so on. “You Enjoy Myself” was preceded by keyboardist Page McConnell stating, tongue firmly in cheek, “We love Dick’s.” Personally, I find it remarkably amusing and endearing that four men approaching 50 years old, who have been playing music together since college, and who will fill a 25,000-capacity venue with college kids three nights in a row without the benefit of a radio hit or much promotion whatsoever, not only had sexual innuendo on their minds for three hours but went to the trouble of selecting songs from their catalog based on pulling off a sex-themed joke.

Not only that – after the “Fuck Your Face” prank was pulled, presumably in an ode to Dick’s, Phish’s encore included the aptly named “Grind” and “Meatstick,” a near-twin of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain,” partly sung in Japanese. And this after the band last year, at the same venue on the same weekend, played only songs whose titles start with the letter “S,” as a tribute to a friend who’d passed away.

But hijinks aside, the show Friday night in Commerce City was musically one of the tightest, most energetic and cohesive Phish concerts I’ve ever heard. Bassist Mike Gordon, in particular, was confident and creative from the stellar work he did on a raucous version of the bluegrass tune “Uncle Pen” to his feature moments as frontman on the Rolling Stones’ campy disco gem “Emotional Rescue” (Phish had not played that song in a dozen years) and the dormitory prog-rock of “Fuck Your Face.”

Perhaps most interesting Friday, however, was how the acronym-focused evening pushed the quartet out of the ossified setlist box they’re often constrained in. Generally, each set ends with one of the “big” classics like “You Enjoy Myself,” “Divided Sky” or “David Bowie”– which include fiery guitar solos, classically influenced arrangements and improvisation meant to bring the music and the audience’s liveliness to a fever pitch. But at Dick’s on Friday, the effort to spell out “FUCK YOUR FACE” with the first letter of each song meant straying from traditional set-building, culminating in extended jams out of unlikely songs, such as the Latin-tinged “Undermind,” a beautiful 15-minute version of which finished the first set.

Almost as a rule, when Phish is having fun – whether by inserting the riff from Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick” into every song, as they did at a show in 2000, or repeating “We all love Dick’s,” as they did Friday – the quality of the music is enhanced by the electric atmosphere, with smiling faces all around. On super-charged versions of “Runaway Jim” and “Carini,” Anastasio played crisp, explosive guitar leads, no doubt inspired by the fun the band repeatedly told the crowd it was having. When entrenched in musical hijinks, Phish seems to feel more like a focused, energetic unit, and the smiley buzz around the venue seems to feed that energy.

Speaking of units, in Commerce City I was able to reunite with my 22-year-old cousin Daniel. I hadn’t seen him in three years, and it was a treat to enjoy such a unique show with him and my brother, Jeff, who was in town for the weekend. Here’s hoping the next generation of our family gets to have such unbridled fun, and hear such good music.

REVIEW: My Morning Jacket & Band of Horses (Red Rocks, 8/3/12)

photo by Adam Perry

REVIEW: My Morning Jacket & Band of Horses
by Adam Perry
for Boulder Weekly, 8/6/2012

For a long time, My Morning Jacket was a prolific American rock band I was peripherally aware of but never checked out in earnest, although I owned and liked 2005′s Z. Then last year I found myself immersed in family life and the alcohol-fueled drama of drumming in a touring, recording rock trio when “Outta My System,” the highlight of MMJ’s 2011 albumCircuital, made its way into my consciousness and eerily gave me the feeling frontman Jim James was reading my mind. I was hooked.

So it was a joy to stand just feet from James on Friday night when MMJ brought its dark, versatile saloon-rock to the stage on a beautiful Red Rocks evening. The bearded, long-haired James was inconspicuously dressed in brown pants and a black dress shirt, but a bright blue poncho/cape nodded at the wonderful outrageousness of rock ‘n’ roll  — which often vaults quirky, unattractive men with given names like James Olliges to stardom — in an age when a non-jamband without a radio hit to its name can admirably pack America’s best outdoor venue two nights in a row.

Hilariously, propped up next to James’ amplifiers was a large stuffed, poncho-wearing bear clearly meant as a tribute to James. And the bear did fairly resemble the singer-songwriter-guitarist, save for being stationary.

Starting off with a couple of rollicking tunes from its early days — I’m not yet enough of a MMJ-phile to have recognized them — the group showed that their catalog is deep enough and good enough to wait six songs into a set to play anything off its current release. That’s when “Outta My System” was unleashed, and the majority of the crowd knew every powerful word, including:

If you don’t live now you ain’t even trying

And then you on your way to a mid-life crisis

Livin’ it out, any way you feel

Like the stellar opening act Band of Horses (I sadly missed early opener Trombone Shorty), MMJ has the look of a metal band —especially James and the larger, hairier drummer Patrick Hallahan — from long hair and dark clothing to James’ Flying V guitar. And the metal energy and volume are there, too. But both groups somehow pull listeners into a metal-like fever pitch (most ironically during MMJ’s Friday sing-along performance of “Holdin’ on to Black Metal,” which is Rockies OF Tyler Colvin’s walk-on song at Coors Field) while the music sits firmly in its Americana roots.

Where Band of Horses’ steadily building, crowd-pleasing set (which peaked with the powerful “Funeral”) juxtaposed a heavy dose of psychedelic indie hard-rock (“Is There a Ghost?”) with an updated form of genuine Hank Williams balladry (“No One’s Gonna Love You”), James and MMJ impressed by putting their visionary stamp on a wide-range of American music. From MMJ’s “Masters of War”-esque march of “Victory Dance” (which also recalls XTC’s “Complicated Game”) to the lovely, Woody Guthrie-influenced ballad “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)” to the band’s incredible cover of Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone,” James and Co. dazzled by remaining themselves, and very much wielding their heavyweight rock chops, while jumping all over the pop music map.

In truth, MMJ’s covers at Red Rocks on Friday night (also including Elton John, INXS and the Clash) were as apt, effective and original as any I’ve heard since, coincidentally, Cee-Loo Green’s Band of Horses cover.

Not that MMJ can do no wrong. Sure it’s nitpicking, but the awe-inspiring pace of its concerts sort of leaves inadequate room to thoroughly enjoy what one is seeing, which is possibly the great rock band of our time (not indie or alternative or psychedelic but just plain rock). Only once during the first 22 songs of the night can I remember James verbally acknowledge the crowd, and only to give a standard “How’s everyone feeling?” and comment on everything feeling right in the universe when you’re seeing a decent show at Red Rocks, which is true.

Quantity is not the correct gauge when it comes to banter, but a few more instances of breaking the fourth wall would’ve made Friday a little more enjoyable for me. Maybe I’m old now but, unless I’m seeing a Ween show, I’d rather see the setlist cut by a few songs and some quality Master of Ceremonies work added than wonder if I’ll ever catch my breath.

Not I’m complaining. In the end, what I’ll remember most from Friday is the absolutely stunning vocal prowess of both James and Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell, a slight, young-looking frontman who is 34, the same age as James. Both men have thick, high-pitched voices that carry enough to command and hold attention at massive venues like Red Rocks, and somehow not only cut through but own the huge sound of their very loud, otherwise guitar-driven bands.

Both are men from the South who took country music and, with a little dark psychedelia and a lot of electric guitar, made it something both entirely different and entirely related.

Now to catch my breath and finally get the rest of My Morning Jacket’s albums.