Six of the year’s best music books for your last-minute gifting by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly 12/18/2023
It was a great year for new books on music. I was able to get through a giant stack of them in the last few months in order to choose half a dozen that would make great picks as gifts for yourself, your loved ones, or — if you’re that kind of geeky couple — to share with your partner.
The Bookworm (3175 28th St., Boulder) is my favorite place to find tomes of all kinds, and their music section is fantastic. Boulder Book Store(1107 Pearl St.) is obviously another great option. But when it comes to the best recent literature on music, my pick is the stealthy Boulder zine Sweet Tooth. An anonymous writer and publisher is intermittently putting out this “love letter to music” at locations around Boulder. Filled with poetic, romantic and thoughtful words on how songs make you feel, consider yourself lucky if you find a copy around town.
“I’ve spent most of my adult life in record stores. This is the most organized, cleanest record store I’ve ever worked in,” says Bart’s Record Shop vinyl buyer and former Cavity guitarist Jon Martinez, who’s been employed at Bart’s for over twenty years and is a veteran of now-defunct legendary Boulder record shops like Trade-A-Tape and the old Wax Trax.
“It’s been refreshing to work under these circumstances,” Martinez said from behind a Pink Floyd mask while pricing stacks of used vinyl on a recent Thursday evening. “Everyone’s working very hard to make the store a great place. That’s not necessarily the case in all the other stores I’ve worked in. This is the one that hits all those sweet spots — and also, records are booming right now, and I’m astonished.”
Man In the Box: Jake Schell Gives Local Drummers a Home by Adam Perry for Westword 2/23/2021
Longmont-based coffee roaster Jake Schell, a native of rural Missouri, relocated to Boulder County six years ago after a long stretch in Kansas City. Moving between houses and apartments over the years has made his longtime hobby of playing the drums, which he took up at age six, difficult to keep up.
“When I moved out here, housing was crazy expensive, and I could only afford to live in an apartment, so I couldn’t play, and I spent probably five years without a drum set,” he says. “I was always looking for my fix to be able to play drums. The only options that I saw were studio spaces that rent for $300 a month.”
He didn’t have that kind of money to play drums for fun, so he bought an electronic drum kit. But he missed the real thing.
“I always wished that I could, like, go somewhere and jam for an hour,” says Schell, 38. “But I continued to look for that and never found it, so I started thinking that if I had that problem, there were probably a hundred other drummers in the area that probably had that same problem. I started thinking about how I could solve the problem — not just for myself, but for other people.”
NOTHING MATTERS: MY PANDEMIC YEAR IN MUSIC by Adam Perry for Westword 1/5/2021
Since my daughter’s birth eleven years ago, music has always been one foot in, one foot out for me. Leading up to the pandemic, I regularly played local shows, booked and promoted concerts for numerous Colorado bands, interviewed notable touring musicians from David Crosby to Anderson .Paak, and covered the Denver and Boulder scenes for Westword, going to as many exciting shows with my girlfriend as possible. But I wasn’t willing to leave my daughter to hit the road hard.
Holding down a nine-to-five paralegal gig in veterans’ disability law and being the best dad I can prevented me from diving into life as a full-time drummer, a longtime dream I’ve given up twice. The first time was when I quit the Yawpers in May 2012, just a year after we’d debuted for maybe ten people as an acoustic trio at the No Name Bar in Boulder before quickly signing a record deal and beginning to tour frequently. The second was when I left Gasoline Lollipops in May 2018, after a sold-out farewell show at the Bluebird Theater, transitioning from serving as the GasPops’ full-time drummer, booking agent and publicist to working behind the scenes and enjoying chances to fill in at great venues like the Gothic Theatre when talented young Kevin Matthews, the group’s new drummer, wasn’t available.
It was a happy balance. I had the time and resources to be with my wonderful daughter every week and also maintain a romantic partnership I treasure while participating in Colorado music, an outlet I consider as important as oxygen. The pandemic took that balance away…and fast. Not only was the therapeutic aspect of playing live shows gone, along with the priceless (and nearly ceaseless) social connections that come with being part of a music scene, but I also lost a major portion of my income.
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.
Top Ten Albums of 2010
by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
12/30/10
To quote John Lennon, “Another year over and a new one just begun,” which means we meet again for Boulder Weekly’s annual “Best Albums of the Year.” A lot of truly great new music blessed our ears in 2010, but let me start by admitting 2010 didn’t exactly represent an epochal time for rock ’n’ roll. Several of North America’s most extraordinary musical artists—including Joanna Newsom, Dr. Dog, Broken Social Scene and Midlake—followed landmark releases by serving up uneven, stilted or simply unremarkable disappointments. Several of the notable new releases I ended up listening to most often were retrospectives, such as Neu!’s big and fabulous boxed set and Phil Manzanera’s guitar clinic The Music. And one of the most entertaining new albums was a guilty-pleasure mash-up masterpiece, the seamless All Day from Pittsburgh’s Girl Talk.
Perhaps most telling, near the top of my list of 2010 favorites was our very own Devotchka’s beautiful new gypsy-romance album 100 Lovers, which isn’t even out yet. Mark my words, it’s their best release to date.
Despite those caveats, out of the 1,000-or-so albums sent my way in the past year there were more than enough diversely interesting and exciting releases to fill ten spots. Have fun reading and listening—and please do write us with your own favorites, too.
10. Cee-Lo Green – Lady Killer
Right up until my deadline, I was deciding between Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore’s touching bluegrass/folk project, Dear Companion, and folk-popper Doug Paisely’s Constant Companion (featuring Feist) for the tenth and final spot on this list. Then suddenly I heard the irreverent, giant-voiced Gnarls Barkley singer Cee-Lo Green’s cover of Band of Horses’ “No One’s Gonna Love You More Than I Do” and found myself addicted to the head-bobbing, lust-crazed, belly-laughing world of Cee-Lo’s heroically carnal new album, Lady Killer. If the Reverend Al Green ever chooses to ameliorate his relationship with Satan by collaborating with Ween, it’ll probably sound something like “Fuck You,” which was Cee-Lo’s generous Christmas gift to us all.
9. Los Lobos – Tin Can Trust
One of the most remarkable strengths of Los Lobos over the past thirty-plus years has been its progressive penchant for successfully experimenting with different genres, instruments and production techniques in the studio. Tin Can Trust—a pleasing jaunt through slow, dark psychedelic blues-rock; upbeat cumbia and norteño numbers, and even a rambling instrumental fuzz-guitar rave-up—features wildly different drum sounds on nearly every track, and a profound intensity that’s fluid through even the most drastic changes in tempo and instrumentation. David Hidalgo’s lyrics kick dirt on the past during “Burn It Down,” while a simple, driving acoustic guitar and stand-up bass exercise builds into a Sonic Youth-style distorted-guitar explosion. It’s hard not to be moved by that kind of musical brashness, especially from a bunch of guys in their 50s.
8. Deer Tick – Black Dirt Sessions
Scruffy young Deer Tick frontman John McCauley told me back in October that he has no goals other than wanting to “make albums we can all be happy with and see the world.” The “we” McCauley spoke of was himself and his band, but in another decade—say, the ’70s—an impressive collection of deep, honest and countrified rock ’n’ roll such as Black Dirt Sessions (Deer Tick’s third LP) would’ve been played on major radio stations and appealed to the larger “we” in a big way. For now, Deer Tick our secret, but that’s changing quickly.
7. Foals – Total Life Forever
“Blue Blood,” which kicks off Foals’ second album, Total Life Forever, like an ode to My Morning Jacket, initially sounds like a startling departure from the undeniably danceable post-punk of the English group’s previous work. Truth is, Foals has just grown up. It only takes a while for the Nintendo-meets-Paul Simon guitar duels and pounding Gang of Four drums to kick in, and suddenly singer-guitarist Yannis Philippakis—who most memorably sang about tennis on 2008’s Antidotes—is utilizing Dave Sitek’s (TV On the Radio) more spacious and lush production to get lyrically inventive and emotional. Combined with Foals’ addictive Remain in Light beats, thick bass lines and aforementioned Graceland guitars, Philippakis’ dense poetry about mankind eventually succumbing to the will of machines makes Total Life Forever a must-listen.
6. Cotton Jones – Tall Hours in the Glowstream
After falling in love with the lo-fi Maryland group’s debut LP, Paranoid Cocoon, and then witnessing Cotton Jones perform their positively devotional Southern soul music for 200 lucky souls in the bowels of Red Rocks last fall, I was initially frustrated with Tall Hours in the Glowstream. Its most passionate moments—such as the hymnal refrain of “Come on, baby / let the river roll on” during “Somehow Keep it Going”—aren’t as immediately inviting as Cotton Jones’ more invigorating earlier work. But a closer listen reveals a band now able to wield its soulful powers with a slow and effectual Southern ease that comes on like a gradual flood of sweet sounds one wouldn’t mind dying to. What’s a glowstream? Who cares?
5. Bruce Springsteen – The Promise
As a kid, all I knew of Bruce Springsteen was that my yuppie aunt and uncle loved the Boss and Jimmy Buffett equally, so naturally I equated “Born to Run” with utter bullshit like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” But now, with big-time indie bands such as Arcade Fire and Dr. Dog unabashedly wearing their substantial Springsteen influence like a badge of honor, it’s well past time to admit that Jersey’s arena-rocker laureate has written and record many, many amazing songs. The stripped-down Dylan-meets-Kerouac LP Darkness On the Edge of Town (1978) is one of Springsteen’s best, and The Promise boasts two discs of previously unreleased material from the Darkness sessions, including an improved “Racing in the Street” and Springsteen’s own take on “Because the Night.”
4. Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo
Led by still-under-age singer-guitarist-songwriter Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg, the youthful indie guitar-rock group Avi Buffalo is off to a fast start. Sweetly juxtaposing late-’90s Sonic Youth trippiness and guitar flourishes equally Marquee Moon and Live/Dead, euphoric tracks like “Remember Last Time” quickly go from “pretty good for a 20-year-old” to “holy shit, this kid is amazing” in minutes.
3. Here We Go Magic – Pigeons
I came across Here We Go Magic’s Myspace page back in May, instantly decided the Brooklyn art-rockers’ pleasant, fast-paced, Feelies-esque “Collector” would be the song of 2010, and then certainly didn’t hear anything more thoroughly enjoyable in the following months. In short, this stylistically diverse LP, at its best, sounds like Graham Nash fronting Neu! During tracks like “Vegetable or Native,” Pigeons gets Mothers of Invention-style incoherent—and generally not in a good way—but overall this album effectively presents an eccentric buzz band that’s more than worth the hype.
2. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
At this point, the release of a new Arcade Fire album is practically a cultural event, and on The Suburbs the sprawling Montreal collective does not disappoint. Texas-bred 30-year-old singer-guitarist Win Butler continues to illustrate America’s sociological and developmental sins with startling clarity, pouring out his own demons in the process; this time, however, Arcade Fire mostly take a more tempered approach, with the help of Final Fantasy’s mesmerizing string arrangements and the unrepentant Springsteen influence I previously hinted at. Beyond existential rock, there are also flashes of New Order, SST hardcore and even ABBA here—all perfect weapons for “shouting through the suburbs.” Infallible they’re not, but Butler and Co. arguably represent the most powerful rock band of our time.
1. Mountain Man – Made the Harbor
Out of nowhere—and I mean no disrespect to their home state of Vermont—the three young ladies of Mountain Man stole the hearts of many a music geek in 2010. Made the Harbor is mostly just their heavenly voices and one humble acoustic guitar, and a cappella tracks such as “Mouthwings”—with its stunning lyric “I will grow a baby / oh, he will move so swiftly / to hold me completely”—“Honeybee,” “Babylon” and “How’m I Doin’” invite listeners into a dusty, long-forgotten world of pastoral vocal bliss. Equally haunting and harmonious, Mountain Man nurtures old-style musical integrity like Fleet Foxes collaborating with the Carter Family. They play the Boulder Theater in February.
Total Nintendo Forever
England’s Foals Warp to Denver
by Adam Perry for Westword
9/27/10
Though children of the late ‘80s began making their mark on popular music several years ago, one incessant and curious inspiration obvious in much of their music generally goes undiscussed: Nintendo theme songs. A few oddly brilliant Nintendo cover bands—notably the Advantage—began packing clubs everywhere a few years ago, but more interesting than the unabashed musical Zelda and Metroid devotees are bands like England math-pop sensation Foals. The Oxford fivesome’s 2008 Sup Pop debut Antidotes, produced by TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek, juxtaposed Gang of Four, Paul Simon and, yes, the Nintendo music that saturated most of our souls a couple decades ago and never really left.
With electro-clash beats, passionate soccer-chant-style vocals and sprightly, interwoven guitar melodies influenced equally by Graceland and Megaman 2, frontman Yannis Philippakis and Co. are deep-lyric dance-party phenoms. May’s Total Life Forever, delineating the Theory of Singularity and recorded in Sweden, explores more My Morning Jacket-esque vocal and musical territory than the fun-filled Antidotes, but Foals’ live shows are still more Super Mario than Yim Yames.
Phish Returns to Telluride
Review by Adam Perry for Boulder Weekly
(photos by Adam Perry)
8/11/10
Monday and Tuesday, thousands of white people from all over the country gathered in the verdant splendor of Telluride to shout David Bowie’s name over and over beneath the mountains. In other words, after a much-needed five-year hiatus, the versatile, talented and amusing Vermont quartet Phish is back—and things have changed.
Gone are the drugs (at least for the band), embarrassingly sloppy transitions, hit-or-miss half-hour improvisations and unruly distorted-guitar sound the band featured their last time on the road together, from 2002-2004. Plus, Phish has somehow managed to escape the quagmire that doomed its two-set jamband predecessors The Grateful Dead, namely sticking to massive, distancing concerts in arenas, stadiums and ugly amphitheatres for audiences ranging from 20,000 people to 70,000.
Phish’s two shows in Telluride earlier this week (my first since Miami 2003) sold out in just a few minutes when tickets were released months ago, and represented the group’s first southern Colorado performances since 1991. Both the band and the city of Telluride took every precaution necessary to host one of the world’s biggest touring bands at a small mountainside fairground that holds around 9,000 people and coincidentally sits at approximately 9,000 feet above sea level.
pre-show
The group’s management approved my press pass just days before Phish’s much-anticipated return to Telluride—its first shows outside of Vermont were in Telluride circa 1988— and when I made the (gorgeous) drive from Santa Fe to Telluride the morning of the first three-hour concert, I was impressed by the barricade preventing anyone without a ticket or proof of residency from entering town. I was also impressed—and excited—that a free gondola ride was necessary to reach the venue, which is a concert experience I’ll never forget.
The first night, Phish picked “Down With Disease” as their opener; the crowd-pleasing rocker, which earned Phish some rare airplay when it was released as a single in 1994, got the crowd bouncing, more than a few with happy kids on their shoulders. Sadly, the rest of the opening set was somewhat of a stinker, despite the absolutely immaculate outdoor setting, which prompted singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio to comment, “Yup, it’s still beautiful.” Two new songs, “Ocelot” and “Summer of ’89,” ran the gamut of unremarkable to downright terrible, and the intricate Latin prog-rock workout “Stash” (from 1991’s A Picture of Nectar) never really took flight. However, Phish redeemed itself throughout the first evening’s closing set, which featured clear and concise virtuosity from Anastasio and oddball bassist Mike Gordon during the heavy funk-rock of “Sand” and Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie On Reggae Woman.”
After a brisk, ecstatic version of “Piper,” a poetic avalanche of improvisation-seeped ascension that the group has been using as a springboard since 1997, the quartet got beautifully weird. This is the Phish I’ve always loved, and always tried to turn others on to: Instead of simply letting Anastasio wank on predictable blues scales and intermittently reach occasionally euphoric high notes while the rest of the band supports him, Phish sometimes uses the open spaces after songs like “Piper” to truly melt into a kind of deconstructed ambiance. The music Phish spontaneously creates in these possibility-laden spaces often juxtaposes fusion-era Miles Davis, Brian Eno and the kind of wonderfully twisted instrumental rock made famous by bands such as Neu! and Sonic Youth.
To see Phish play an entire hour-long set of this dark, spacey improvisational music was a dream I had fulfilled at a show in Maine back in 2003, but these days Phish is more of a well-rehearsed rock band, for better or worse, than an experimentation-inclined outfit. Real group improvisation—outside of a song structure and outside of simply propping up Anastasio’s guitar solos—was relegated to perhaps ten minutes of the first show in Telluride. The second set on Monday concluded with a spot-on version of the Beatles’ classic “A Day in the Life,” and that’s certainly nothing to complain about. It was incredible.
At least as incredible was a hike I took to Telluride’s wonderful Cornet Creek Falls before Tuesday’s concert while many people in town were hung-over or asleep. I was sober for both shows and found it…interesting…to witness not only the drug-fueled transformation that occurred each day for thousands of fans—some diehards following Phish from town to town on tour, but most not—but also the sight of these same unwashed, shabbily clothed trainwrecks at expensive bistros before each show. It takes a special person to ingest copious amounts of marijuana, psychedelics, cocaine and who knows what else until dawn and then spend $20 on a breakfast burrito and orange juice.
For the members of Phish, anyway, music has finally become the drug of choice. Anastasio did a court-ordered rehab stint a few years ago after getting busted in upstate New York, and many of the songs from the band’s latest release, last year’s Joy, reflect his humbling journey. “Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan,” for instance, a brutal new half-time dirt-rocker that falls somewhere between Gov’t Mule and Phish’s own “The Sloth,” was a highlight of the first set on Tuesday, with its cutting chorus of “got a blank space where my mind should be.”
It was a treat to be just feet away from Phish for the second show in Telluride, as the group operates without a setlist and up-close audience members can hear Anastasio call out the tunes he chooses and then watch the news run through the hierarchy down to drummer Jon Fishman, who is always the last to know what song he’s about to play. After a spirited version of the 1930’s work song “Timber (Jerry)” Anastasio called for Phish’s own 25-year-old irreverent-and-inspiring fugue “The Divided Sky,” only to be nixed by Gordon, who suggested “Let Me Lie,” off of Joy. That song’s recurring couplet “gonna take my bike out / gonna ride it just how I like” helps make “Let Me Lie” the single worst Phish tune I’ve ever heard. Honestly, it’s mediocre at best musically, but lyrically it’s literally embarrassing to watch someone sing it. Thank God “Let Me Lie” was indeed followed by a gorgeous version of “The Divided Sky,” complete with Anastasio intently gazing at the mountain sunset during his remarkable solo.
Though this will surprise those who have strong opinions about the band but haven’t actually heard its music, Phish’s two biggest direct musical influences have been Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads. Phish alternately pulls off the high-wire tricks featured in complex compositions such as “The Divided Sky” and “You Enjoy Myself” (which was also played, and played very well, Tuesday) and grooves on warped funk and rock with silly lyrics and profound music. Which made the band’s covers of the James Gang’s “Walk Away” and Ween’s “Roses Are Free” perfect follow-ups to the tricky “Divided Sky.”
The unexpected musical highlight of the two shows in Telluride, however, was “Carini.” A hilarious nu-metal poke at Fishman’s drum technician Pete Carini, the song—which debuted in 1997 —provides a back-and-forth heavy-rock/ambient noise platform for group improvisation. On Tuesday night “Carini” descended into an explosive instrumental freakout reminiscent of Adrian Belew’s early work with King Crimson, but was tempered by shimmering noise that recalled the aforementioned Eno and surprisingly found its way to the Phish hard-rock staple “Free.”
Watching four men in their 40s who have been playing music together since their college days over 25 years ago is a treat in itself, but it was doubly entertaining to witness Phish nailing challenging transitions in songs like “Run Like An Antelope” and “David Bowie.” In the two years of touring before their five-year hiatus from 2004-2009, it was not uncommon for Phish to literally stop during such complex tunes because of flubs by several band members; now, the transitions are tighter, the smiles are bigger (and straighter) and the jamming is not only shorter but less intense, group-minded and creative—or at least it was for all but a few minutes of the Telluride shows.
Many Phish fans will agree that five minutes of fun, focused, coherent and energetic improvisation often trumps 30 minutes of scrambled drudgery. Still, listening to a Phish concert from Hampton, VA circa 1997 on the way back to Santa Fe I had to admit that my personal preference is the old four or five song, hour and a half set of improvised Phish madness, rather than the dozen-song sets that Phish often plays today.
I also had to admit that there are plenty of modern bands I’ve seen recently who are writing better songs and putting on better shows than Phish—who concluded Tuesday’s concert with The Rolling Stones’ “Shine a Light”—but there certainly aren’t many venues in the world more spectacular than Telluride Town Park.
Arcade Fire “The Suburbs”
(Merge Records, August 3, 2010)
Review by Adam Perry for Westword
Montreal’s Arcade Fire, whose Grammy-nominated 2004 debut LP Funeral was the indie hit of the last decade, throws somewhat of a curveball on its new, 16-cut album The Suburbs. 30-year-old Win Butler earnestly—and patiently—comments on modern America and his band’s rapid, meteoric stardom on the new LP, whereas the Texas-bred singer-guitarist, in his early 20s when Arcade Fire exploded, rose to fame by commanding the sprawling band’s dynamic, Clash-esque concerts and ecstatic/anthemic songs as if the world was on fire.
At times on 2007’s Neon Bible, it was obvious Arcade Fire put too much of the group’s understandably high-pressure sophomore-album energy into crafting more change-the-world, sing-along anthems in the vein of Funeral (only hipper and darker); The Suburbs conversely bursts with dissimilar-but-connected ideas and features almost double the number of tracks on Funeral. Here,Arcade Fire takes its time, almost the way its role models The Clash did on Sandanista!, to tell a story—and convey the band’s simultaneously condemning and patriotic worldview—by traversing whatever musical styles or instrumentation necessary. The hour-long new LP’s title track, which opens The Suburbs, is particularly antithetical to Neon Bible’s intermittent self-consciousness. “The Suburbs” highlights Butler’s confession “Sometimes I can’t believe it / I’m moving past the feeling,” and it’s a mid-tempo swinger not unlike Band of Horses’ “The General Specific.” Along with the light-handed, heavy-hearted “Modern Man,” “The Suburbs” succeeds in thwarting anyone who thought Arcade Fire would begin its long-awaited third album with forcibly churning wailers like “Black Mirror” and “Keep the Car Running.”
Arcade Fire reportedly had more than 30 diverse tracks written for The Suburbs before whittling it down to 16—and engaging in a complicated recording process that first sent the tracks to vinyl and then played the vinyl back into a computer, making the whole effort sound deep and warm as vinyl on any format. Thus, blanket statements about the music of TheSuburbs are hard to come by; however, the one constant is the ’80s. While the members of Arcade Fire burned their childhoods with Funeral and then exposed their youthful skeletons on Neon Bible,The Suburbs unabashedly returns Butler and Co. to the decade in which they grew up. From the bent guitar effects to the SST-style drive of songs like “Month of May” to the ever-present Cure-esque synths that pop up in nearly every song, The Suburbs is a testament the underrated musical range and poignancy of the ’80s. Not to mention Arcade Fire’s rampant music-geekdom.
If “Windowstill” was Neon Bible’s continuation of “Neighborhood #4 (Kettles),” then “Suburban War” is the next chapter in that emotional suburban story, and an impressive suite of its own—one that more directly reveals Arcade Fire’s classic-rock influences. “Suburban War” begins with an XTC (or Roger McGuinn)-style guitar intro and then—with lyrics like “let’s go for a drive / see the town tonight / there’s nothing to do / but I don’t mind when I’m with you”—unsubtly hints at what Bruce Springsteen did best as a young man, i.e. find transcendence in North America’s paved-over prairie. Indeed, “In the suburbs I / I learned to drive / people told me we would never survive” sounds like a line right out of “Born to Run,” and throughout “Suburban War” and other tracks Arcade Fire references musical themes cemented decades ago by U2 (“Half Light II”) and New Order (“Sprawl II”), among other ’80s heavies.
[above image courtesy Vanity Fair]
To lambast Butler, along with his multi-talented wife Régine Chassagne—who profoundly shines on The Suburbs after she was just a beautiful echo on Neon Bible—for wearing their influences on their “pop star army fatigues” sleeves is just wrong, although several major newspapers have already begun to fight that losing battle. Everyone steals from everyone in order to say what they’ve got to say, and that dates back to Dylan and all the immortal folk thieves before him, which even includes Leonardo DaVinci, who famously asserted, “A great artist takes what he needs.”
Sure, The Suburbs’ slow-burning ballads, driving near-punk rockers and ambitious suites are seeped in the long-effective sounds of Arcade Fire’s heroes—not to mention the best of the band’s own catalog and, as always, Owen Pallett’s heaven-drenched string arrangements. But brilliant modern musical theft is more like building a visionary new house, one that hopefully has the power to “shout through the suburbs,” out of recycled materials. Knowing Arcade Fire, to quote a line from “Rococo,” they’ll “build it up just to burn it back down.”
Lyle Lovett at Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre
Santa Fe, 7-29-10
Review by Adam Perry
“I will always remember this night,” Texas-born singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett said from the Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre stage in Santa Fe late Thursday evening. “God bless you folks, and God bless Paolo Soleri.”
The Santa Fe Indian School, which owns and operates the 45-year-old Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre, announced earlier this summer that Lovett’s concert will be the last ever at the venue, though they have not ruled out preservation. Lovett, who has performed at the amphitheatre more times than any other artist, said that when he met with the venue’s renowned Italian architect Paolo Soleri—now 91—at a recent concert in Phoenix the socially and ecologically minded artist shrugged at the demolition rumors.
“Change is on all of our minds,” Lovett told the capacity audience. “If we live long enough, we’ll experience it.” Lovett said it was his intention to perform last night “with [Soleri’s] spirit and vision in mind, and the vision for the world he’s shown us.”
Lovett then launched into “That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas),” commenting that “New Mexico is a dangerous place to do this song, but Paolo Soleri would’ve done well where I come from.”
Lovett’s immaculately tailored “Large Band,” which features over a dozen diverse and talented musicians, traversed poignant country ballads, gritty rock, bluegrass and galloping, tongue-in-cheek Dixie romance. The latter gave the band’s skilled instrumentalists ample chance to take flight as soloists and as a proficient and tasteful ensemble. The versatile and sometimes awe-inspiring group does well reminding audiences that real country equals stunning musicianship and raw poetry, and Lovett kept the Santa Fe crowd in stitches with his between-song banter, showing the uninitiated that country music is often also hilariously silly and self-deprecating.
Vince Bell, a collaborator and hero of Lovett’s since their embryonic showbiz days in Houston, now lives in Santa Fe and made a two-song appearance in the middle of Lovett’s set. Bell played one country-folk number alone and one with Lovett backing him on vocals and guitar. Lovett’s pained but tender and unwavering voice shined on tear-jerkers such as “North Dakota” and soared on impressive covers like Townes Van Zandt’s “Loretta,” with help from a rhythm section just off the James Taylor and Carole King tour. But the Paolo Soleri stole much of the spotlight.
Lovett opened the evening by telling the energized audience, “It’s an honor to be here, especially on this night,” and his near three-hour set did not disappoint, although the irony inherent in much of the venue’s recent controversy was all too apparent from the get-go. A sense of history and tension was especially evident in the moments after Lovett sang the line “on a trail of tears I ride” during “Natural Forces,” a song he pre-empted with a diatribe about appreciating U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. “[They’re] fighting so that I’m able to watch football on Sundays,” Lovett said.
The Indian School’s campus has only been totally Native-controlled since 2000. Two summers ago, officials chose to tear down—sans public notice—virtually all of the original school, which had a history dating back to 1890 that included rampant oppression and indoctrination of Natives, who were frequently brought to the school from pueblos by whites via kidnapping. The Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre, which is notable not only for its intimate beauty but because it was one of Soleri’s few commissioned works, appears to be headed for destruction as well. Opinions abound in northern New Mexico about the need to “save” the incredible venue—not to mention what some see as the Indian School’s faulty administration—but opinions are not important in this situation. Music lovers such as the elderly blind woman who sat next to us last night—singing and clapping along with every song Lovett played—will follow their passion wherever necessary; as for the Paolo’s situation, the rights and free will of Natives are all that should be recognized and respected.
Besides Lovett’s dashing four-member African American backup vocal ensemble and the venue’s all-Indian staff, I saw exactly one black person and less than a half-dozen other people of color in or around the Paolo Soleri last night, though the capacity is listed as 2,900. It would be a tragedy for such a remarkably designed and great-sounding outdoor amphitheatre—with its “wishbone” architecture and close-up seating, which literally lets fans converse with performers—to abruptly vanish, leaving only fond memories of concerts by everyone from Leonard Cohen to Phish, but it’s not our choice. Music lovers, promoters and local officials in Santa Fe have no excuse for having never built another similar-sized outdoor venue in the area while presenting only a handful of concerts at the Paolo Soleri each year—only three in 2010—and Natives have zero obligation to privately fund the maintenance of an aging site they really only use for high school graduations.
Santa Fe Indian School officials claim that the renovation necessary to keep the Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre open would cost over $4 million dollars, which does seem outlandish. However, just this week the U.S. government approved continued funding for the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every month, with no end in sight. If local officlans will not intervene to provide the necessary resources to fix and maintain the Paolo Soleri, its demise is understandable; what’s more, if the Native-controlled SFIS decides to close the Paolo Soleri no matter the circumstances—forcing the virtually all-white fans, promoters and performers who frequent the venue to enjoy entertainment elsewhere—theirs is the choice we must accept.
Adam Perry 