Big Troubles and Real Estate playing at Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 4, 2011.
Big Troubles:
Real Estate:
Archive for the ‘Concert Reviews’ Category
Big Troubles + Real Estate // Live in SLC
Saturday, November 5th, 2011Casiotone for the Painfully Alone // Salt Lake City // September 12, 2010
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
So yeah, it’s been five months since the last show I went to, which kind of sucks, I know. Even before I moved to Utah, I had a feeling that the drought would end when Owen Ashworth, aka Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, embarked on his farewell tour and was planning a stop in the basement of a record store here in Salt Lake City. I knew that seeing Ashworth in such an intimate venue and on such a sentimental occasion would be the best way to hear the sweetly constructed tunes of his before he hangs up the Casiotone moniker forever (he’ll still be recording music, only under the name Advance Bass from now on).
Playing mostly tracks of Vs. Children, his latest and arguably most well-received LP from his past thirteen years of recording, the show was less about reminiscing and more about celebrating the present and the future. Even after seeing Ashworth in person, it was difficult to gauge the emotional impact of this farewell tour on him, and at times I even got the impression that he’s ready to strike the final nail into the Casiotone coffin and just be done with it. Maybe that’s why he sort of “played it safe” with the show, hammering out slow-to-medium tempo songs one-by-one for forty-five minutes before calling it quits, sans encore, once his solo performance of “Tonight Was a Disaster” ended.
Or maybe it has something to do with his backing band, the Australian group Otouto, not being comfortable playing some more of his zanier, uptempor songs (here’s looking at you “Oh, Illinois!” and “Jeanie, If You’re Ever in Portland”) on such short notice, but the whole event fell a little flat for me. It makes me wonder why he even embarked on this tour, considering for his last stint across the US, the setlist was composed entirely of fan’s e-mail requests — a spot on way to end a project and a perfect way to say “thank you” to all the listeners over the years.
Not to say that the performance wasn’t good, because it was, but I guess I had impossible-to-meet expectations. Having the female vocalists from Otouto harmonizing on each track was certainly an added plus (“the first time I’ve had a band when playing in Utah”) — making songs like “Northfield, NM” sound ten times better than if Ashworth were to do it solo. Also, “Natural Light” and “Tom Jones…” should have been recorded on the spot and used for some live CD or something. All-in-all, it wasn’t the life affirming experience I was hoping for, but it was a great way to spend a Sunday evening.
Below, you can find a couple of my favorite Casiotone for the Painfully Alone tracks and a video of “Christmas in Oakland” recorded at the show. Also, The Flat Response has a nice bootleg of CFTPA’s show in Denver from the night before.
Mountain Man // Portland // February 12, 2010
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
No amount of videos you’ve seen or tracks you’ve heard can really prepare you for a Mountain Man show. In this day and age where you can achieve near digital perfection in the studio, I’m still convinced that no recording will ever do them justice and that in order to truly experience what these three girls from Vermont are all about, you have to see them sing in person. Even the phrase “breathtakingly beautiful” seems to fall incredibly short when trying to describe their sound. Last night, I had a chance to witness them play a twelve song set at the acoustically perfect Reed College Chapel, and it was probably the most spiritual experience I’ve had in quite a while.
After braving through a sample-crazy electro soloist, a singer / songwriter acoustic performance, and a full band arrangement — an interesting collection of Reed College musicians — the time finally arrived for Molly, Amelia, and Alex to take the stage. Holding only a single acoustic guitar (makes it easy to pack their green sedan and drive cross country on a whim), their mostly a cappella set was about as simple of a performance instrument-wise I’ve ever seen. In fact, the group noted how this was the first time ever they’ve performed with a microphone on stage; quite a feat for it being 2010, not 1910.
And their timelessness is one of the best qualities of their music. If it wasn’t for the Appalachian-infused vocals of the group that automatically makes you think of past greats like Cousin Emmy (popular from the 20s-50s), you wouldn’t be able to pinpoint even the century this music belongs to. I mean, small groups of singers huddled together forming beautiful harmonies is one of the oldest arrangements in the books and can probably be traced back to the dawn of humankind.
Although the gravity of their music is intense, during breaks they would counter their emotionally draining performance with lighthearted banter. The most fun conversation they had was when Molly divulged an arrangement she had with her then boyfriend that, if given the opportunity, they would be OK with each other kissing Connor Oberst. Not surprisingly, this spun into a lengthy talk about their first concerts they attended with Amelia proudly declaring it was 98 degrees, even mimicking their choreographed dance moves to the t. Maybe I just have this thing about elevating musicians to higher tiers of humanity, but it’s always refreshing to see down-to-earth personalities from performers.
As anyone who has seen them live can attest to, you really need near silence to fully appreciate their music. Although I berate the arms-crossed crowd of Portland concert goers almost every live show I go to, at the very least I can say it made for good practice for this performance. With the crowd frozen on the front pews and seated attentively on the ground in front of the stage, it was so still that I felt guilty when my stomach started growling — making it impossible to even consider taking photos of the show with my loud ass shutter sound.
Opening with the track “Honeybee” with their hands clasped to each other, it was amazing to see the three only needing to hit the first note a couple of times as warm-up before going into a jaw-dropping rendition of the track, something reminiscent of the sound check I saw Neko Case do almost a year. Since the only recording I have of theirs is composed of six songs, naturally there were some surprises (at least for me) as well as some covers thrown into the mix. Regardless of how unfamiliar some of the newer songs might have been, you wouldn’t have known the difference as every track was spot-on. It didn’t matter if it was the recently-premiered “Babylon” or the Jana Hunter cover song they closed with (which Amelia told me was “the first song we learned as a band”), everything was about as picture perfect as you could get. Here is a rough setlist from the evening:
- Honeybee
- Babylon
- Bathtub
- How I’m Doing Hey Hey (Mills Brothers Cover)
- Dog Song
- Mouthwings
- Seewee Seewee
- Animal Tracks
- White Heron
- ??? (“New Track” featuring a lot of heavy breathing)
- Green Grass (Tom Waits Cover)
- The Earth Has No Skin (Jana Hunter Cover)
I haven’t seen the “How I’m Doing Hey Hey” track anywhere online, so I went ahead and uploaded a “video” of their performance of it tonight (more like audio because the lighting was bad and my camera sucks majorly):
It was cool because the Portland crowd pitched in some improvised snapping that went along with the music and the girls looked like they were having a great time performing it on stage.
Well that’s it for last night’s performance. All I can say is that if you get a chance to see them live, do yourself a favor and go. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.
At the show, I got a copy of their limited edition self-titled CD-R (with one-of-a-kind handmade sleeve) that I’ll be giving away. I’m pretty sure this is a tour-only release, as it contains eight tracks as opposed to the six songs on their past release (“Loon Song” and “Buffalo” are the two additions). Anyways, if you won’t get an opportunity to catch them live or if you can’t wait for their almost-ready Underwater Peoples’s 10” to drop, go ahead and retweet this (or if you don’t have twitter, drop a comment) and I’ll pick a winner at random in the coming days (US residents only)!
EDIT:: Contest is CLOSED!
Vivian Girls|Best Coast|Meth Teeth // Portland // February 11, 2010
Friday, February 12th, 2010
For weeks I’ve been waiting for this show: Meth Teeth are one of my favorite Portland bands, Best Coast is one of my new favorite groups, and Vivian Girls are definitely in my top five all-time faves. Words can not express how excited I was for this show. Anyways, I wasn’t about to let the typical arms crossed Portland concert goer get me down, so I went into the show ready to go crazy — regardless if I was the only one.
The downside of getting all liquored up heading out to a concert is that you don’t really make for a good journalist. I can’t really tell you much about Meth Teeth as I only own one album of theirs, but they put on a pretty damn good show. As for Best Coast, Bethany Cosentino steamrolled through most of the material on her plethora of 7”s, even playing two new tracks and a cover song in the process (sorry, didn’t have my video camera). Teaming up with longtime guitarist Bobb Bruno and Vivian Girls drummer Katy Goodman, Best Coast’s live incarnation is a sight to behold — not to mention “When I’m With You” and “In My Room” have never sounded better. As for Vivian Girls, they played most of the material from Everything Goes Wrong as well as a few sprinklings of past hits. Also, they played that bad ass Chantel’s cover and Bethany joined them onstage for two tracks.
Although I don’t remember much, I did snag the Vivian Girls setlist and took some photos of the show which you can check out below (or see the full set here):
Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose // Portland // February 9, 2009
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
As anyone who has heard the angelic voice of Laura Gibson live can attest to, she is one damn fine singer. For her latest project, she’s teamed up with a fellow Oregonian and popular multi-instrumentalist Ethan Rose. Like two kids in the candy shop, both Gibson and Rose have their fingers all over oddball instruments for the making of their recently released LP entitled Bridge Carols, so getting a chance to see how this duo was going to manage piecing together all the parts live was the main reason I headed out to their free in-store show at Music Millennium (it also didn’t hurt that the place is within walking distance of my house).
When I arrived at the shop, there was already about twenty-five people aligned on the back wall while they were doing last-minute sound checks. With ages ranging from high school to well into retirement years, the diversity of the crowd is a testament on how far reaching both Gibson and Rose’s music is. Perched up on the second floor where all the vinyl is located and sandwiched between the latest Hotrats and Matt & Kim releases, the pair was a bit disjointed from the audience. Since the musical soundscape they create is almost something tangible, it felt a bit awkward seeing them perform so far away. It didn’t help either that the first two tracks were marred by some technical difficulties (either an old cable or bad connect was to blame for the periodic knife-like cuts of sound), however, midway through they started to fall into a groove, especially with the track “Leaving, Believing”.
Being their first US show together after a brief stint abroad in Japan last autumn, there’s no doubt that some kinks need to be ironed out. Also, the venue itself, with it’s cash register clicks and anti-theft alarm sirens, wasn’t very conducive to a picture perfect performance (I for one felt guilty even taking pictures because I didn’t want my shutter sounds to disturb the relative quietness). However, during the times when everything fell into the place — the music, the sound system, the background noise level — it wasn’t anything short of mesmerizing.
If Gibson’s solo work is something akin to a spiritual awakening, then the collaboration with Rose must be the soundtrack God plays after you’ve successfully crossed over. Parked behind the microKorg most of the night playing simple sustained synth chords, Gibson was able to concentrate on nailing her vocals — no easy feat considering how most had delay and echo effects to deal with. Like a mad scientist, Rose’s chief responsibly was tinkering with different sounds and instruments trying to recreate the layers of each track. Not to say that Gibson was left completely out of the equation (she did pick up the melodica and tambourine several times), but it was mostly her partner frantically swapping instrument-after-instrument to get just the right backing sounds for her gorgeous vocals.
If anything, this six song, thirty minute set was a nice appetizer to their upcoming performance on Friday at the Holocene (who also played the part of record label for this LP). To get you more excited for the show, you’re able to stream the whole album from their website as well as downloading the stellar track “Younger” from them at the cost of an e-mail:
St. Vincent // Portland // February 6, 2010
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Thanks to a quick response to a Jackpot Record’s tweet calling for people’s favorite Swedish group (me: El Perro del Mar), I was able to score two free tickets to the sold-out night show at Doug Fir Lounge featuring one of Brooklyn’s best multi-instrumentalist, St. Vincent.
Way before Ms. Annie Clark hit the stage, Sweden’s popular percussion duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums set the night off right with their crazy performance. Much like those who try to classify Animal Collective or Deerhoof, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using exotic adjectives and erudite music terms in order to whip up the best description (apparently Sweden didn’t want any part of this, preferring instead to award them Jazz Act of the Year in 2007 — something they DEFINITELY aren’t — and be done with it). I mean, how are you suppose to lump a band whose instrumentation consists of a nine-piece drum set, mallet instruments, steel drum, and oddball percussion into a category? You just can’t — and their unique sound is what draws most to their music.
Anchored by the raw talent of drummer extraordinaire Andreas Werliin, you can’t help but be hypnotized watching his arms chaotically flinging around as he reproduces some of the fat beats W&P is known for. In fact, I was almost positive both of his limbs were going to snap in two banging out “There Is No Light” — a fast pace no holds barred track with A LOT of tom-tom drums. Not to be outdone, singer (and Werliin’s wife) Mariam Wallentin goes all sort of Liz Bougatsos crazy on stage, erratically moving her body enough to make me coin the dance term Scandinavian Shake. With Wallentin, however, it’s not all flash as she proved herself to be more than musically capable with this performance. Belting out soulful lyrics left-and-right while playing some calypso steel drums, she was able to draw my attention from Werliin on several occasions, which was no easy task!
It’s more than befuddling to me that there are no SXSW dates scheduled for W&P, as they are slated to wrap up their US tour opening for St. Vincent at the end of February and then head back home to Sweden. Unique enough to be set-apart from the thousands of bands that descend upon Austin annually as well as their ability to generate a lot of energy in short set times, to me, they are the perfect SXSW band. Who knows, they might get a change of heart in the near-future as they pick up hoards of fans with this tour.
Needless to say, the crowd swelled to capacity and the anticipation grew to feverish levels during the intermission between sets. Although performing an early matinee, apparently it wasn’t enough to satiate Portland’s St. Vincent appetite.
Taking the stage in a tight-fitting black dress with elaborate circular shoulder ruffles, the petite Annie Clark looks like the antithesis of a rock star, and with an album cover more Forty Year-Old Virgin than Andrew WK, I have to say I was more than eager to see how she would carry herself on-stage. Opening with “Stranger”, the beginning track to 2009′s Actor, all doubts were squashed about her rocking ability when she got to the noise-filled guitar line midway through.
Alternating effortlessly between Andrew Bird-like woodwind melodies and My Bloody Valentine shoegaze, it seems like Clark suffers from the musical equivalent of bipolar disorder. With the ability to change gears instantaneously (at one point, hammering the shit out her guitar with her hands before gently plucking away a measure later), the performance was definitely not lacking surprises. There were several times the music sounded like perfect bedtime songs for children and then *BAM* blood-red lights flooded the stage and Clark looked like she was getting an exorcism performed on her. I wouldn’t be the bit surprised if the little kids who accompanied their parents to the earlier all-ages day show had nightmares when they went to bed.
Championed by the Vivian Girls, Finally Punk, Pearl Harbor, Explode Into Colors, and Best Coast, all-girl low-fi garage bands seem to be making a resurgence. Females are slowly gaining market share in a male-dominated occupation, however they are still being treated as second-class acts by critics, relegated to an inferior, almost novelty, genre of “girl rock” (you know, all the “they’re a great band — for girls” high-school bullshit statements). With her music, St. Vincent seems to be taking these pervading sexist stereotypes and shattering them to pieces. To my dismay, one of my first comments after the show was how unexpected and kick-ass her performance was. Afterwards, it got me wondering why that was. After all, why can’t a small, skinny girl that isn’t tatted up produce mind-blowingly good rock music? I mean, plenty of guys do that, so why can’t a girl, right? Although women have done a lot to break through the musical glass ceiling the past thirty years, realizations like these tend to show how much more they have to go.
You can check out the setlist from the concert as well as some more photos below. If you want to see the full set of pictures, head on over to my flickr page. Also, I threw in one of my favorite mp3s of hers for good measure and a live recording of “Dig a Pony” someone else took at the show.
Setlist:
- The Strangers
- Save Me from What I Want
- Laughing with a Mouth of Blood
- Actor Out of Work
- Jesus Saves, I Spend
- Just the Same but Brand New
- The Bed
- Solo Acoustic Track (?)
- Black Rainbow
- Marrow
- Your Lips Are Red
- Dig a Pony (Encore)
- The Party (Encore)
Grouper // Portland // January 24, 2010
Monday, January 25th, 2010
The good folks down at Holocene put together an awesome Haiti Benefit show yesterday that rivaled other efforts across town. With all of the money from the $10 tickets and bar profits going to Mercy Corps, the event, entitled “L’Union Fair La Force”, certainly generated thousands of dollars for a good cause. And hey, it didn’t hurt that the attendees got their money’s worthy from a bill including local-studs Grouper and Pyramiddd (formerly known as the less eloquent Starfucker).
I only caught the Grouper set because, well, I knew that all the other acts would pale in comparison to her performance (plus I had some Wire to watch). Like always, Liz Harris puts on a show not meant for musical entertaining but spiritual awakening. With cassettes of pre-made eerie sounds specifically designed for each song, Harris records, loops, and layers guitar and vocals lines and places them on top of the tapes’ creepy noises — kind of like a more haunting Imogen Heap.
To be honest, I don’t know how Harris draws enough courage to go up on stage for live performances. Her music isn’t particularly conducive to casual listening, requiring complete silence from the audience in order to fully experience it. In a town where casual listening is the norm and crowd chatter drowns out even popular acts, if I was Harris I would pull a Sally Shapiro and just let the records speak for themselves and stay away from the stage whenever possible. Thankfully for us true fans, she braved the inevitable disruptions and stage fright associated with solo performing and gave us a gift with her music while helping the people of Haiti at the same time.
Here is “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping”, one of my favorite tracks from her hit album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill that she unfortunately didn’t perform last night, and a new track entitled “Hold the Way” off of her new split EP with Roy Montgomery which she did play:
Real Estate // Portland // November 19, 2009
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
There was a sweet show yesterday featuring recently crowned Best New Music inductee Real Estate alongside future Underwater Peoples labelmates Pill Wonder with Northwest homegrowns Rainbow Bridge sandwiched between. Holocene, the very slick venue where the bands were playing, also had a DJ spinning some 80s-tastic tracks in between sets with acid washed stock video footage playing on a huge projector screen — mixing nicely with the “chillwave” vibe of the acts.
I was excited to check out openers Pill Wonder just because I noticed they had a 12” in the queue and was hoping that they played some of their new material (a man can only gauge so much from four tracks on their myspace). I wasn’t disappointed as the seven piece (!) band exceeded their 30 minute time slot churning out their patented psychedelic tinged garage rock for a crowd of about forty. They ended strong with a solid funkadelic/r&b number with bassist Hans doing his best James Brown impression. All-in-all, it was a lively set.
Next in line was the male/female guitar/drums duo Rainbow Bridge. With a set of trolls on stage and the drummer donning a fake beard, I was halfway expecting a quirky kitsch act. Much to my surprise, they played some kick ass garage rock tunes which made me think about how Jack & Meg White probably started out playing to similar crowds in Detroit in the late 90s. Undeniably the crowd pleasure for the group (and arguably the whole night) was their hit track “Big Wave Rider“. With simply sung lyrics “big wave rider / try and ride a little higher / you’re a glider / smile wider” over sparse instrumentation, it didn’t take long for the audience to join in and sing out the chorus.
By the time Real Estate took the stage at 11pm, the crowd had swelled to around eighty or so folks, mostly clad in skinny jeans and eighties regalia of some sorts. In response to the size, the band said this was one of the best crowds on the tour — something that I am sure Porlanders hear quite frequently. Any questions about whether this band was overhyped or undeserving of a constant stream of buzz since their SXSW showing were put to rest when they opened up with the infectious guitar line on “Beach Comber”. Now most reviews I’ve seen of Real Estate tend to follow a madlib like recipe: “Their [adj. / wobbly] guitars invokes a sense of [childhood story of the beach] — with the repetitious [instrument] enforcing that feeling”, however, when you see them live you get a sense on how much more this group is than some band riding the “chillwave” fad of ’09.
Through the glimmering tautophony lies these bluesy syncopated guitar solos that Matthew Mondanile (aka Ducktails) and Martin Courtney shine on — not to mention the commanding power bassist Alex Bleeker has on his instrument (something that will surely translate over to his “solo” work with The Freaks). As time elapsed, you couldn’t help but be swept away by their performance and get lost in their sound. This partly affected my determining of the setlist, as I tended to loose interest in knowing the exact song they were playing and got caught up more with the feeling they were invoking through their tunes:
1 // Beach Comber
2 // Pool Swimmers
3 // (?)
4 // Fake Blues
5 // Suburban Beverage
6 // Black Lake
7 // (?)
8 // (?)
9 // Atlantic City
10 // Fake Blues
I think it goes without saying that if you get a chance to see this band play in an intimate venue, do it because these guys are just going to get more of a following as time goes by. Here is a video of them playing “Fake Blues” at SXSW this past year along with some songs of theirs:
Girls // Portland // November 18, 2009
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Before taking the stage later in the evening at Doug Fir Lounge (one of the hippest venues I’ve been to), San Francisco based ungoogle-able lo-fi group Girls graced the citizens of Portland with a free show at Jackpot Records. Although the quarters were small and the stage was even smaller, Christopher Owens and company put on a very pleasant sounding show for the cramped crowd.
The group performed six songs from their critically acclaimed debut, including favorites “Laura” and “Lust for Life”. Owens, dressed in an 80s looking magenta and teal track jacket (one can assume to match his painted fingernails) was hindered throughout the set due to space constraints, allowing for more shoegaze than I can imagine is in a typical Girls set. Energetic numbers, like “Morning Light”, fell a little flat performance-wise, however, they nailed it sonically as each song was almost an exact replica of the album. Here is one more shot from the show of bassist Chet “JR” White who has some of the most bad ass chest hair I have ever seen.
Did You Miss Me? Pt. III
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009Closing out this series of catch-up posts, I’ll start with the end of an era with Lubbock favorites The Diamond Center leaving West Texas for the more fertile grounds of Richmond, Virginia. To say an appropriate farewell, a majority of Lubbock acts took part in “Texodus”, an all day free music fest, at the beginning of August. The show was funny at times, emotional at others, but always lively with act-after-act displaying the awesomeness that is the Lubbock music scene. Here’s a pic of La Panza that night:
Following the example of The Diamond Center, I left Lubbock later that month to make way to Portland, where since then I’ve settled down nicely. I’ve seen a handful of shows, but have only been able to document some of them (camera restrictions at venue, poor lighting, etc…). Here’s a brief list:
In mid-September, I also attended Music Fest Northwest (MFNW), Portland’s counter to Austin’s SXSW. Pretty much every hip-and-trendy venue in Portland takes part in this four day fest, with bands ranging from obscure locals to popular international acts filling up bills. The festival’s first set was at Berbati’s Pan courtesy of Okkervil River’s Will Sheff. Here’s a video from the performance:
Highlights from the festival included:
- New York’s young indie-rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars
- Portland’s spooky soloist Grouper
- Portland’s electro-pop outfit Nurses
A lull in my concert going happened for most October, but I was able to check out the Danish act Choir of Young Believers. I caught them open for three acts while in Denmark, and then it was just a duo between singer/songwriter Jannis Noya Makrigiannis and cellist Caecilie Trier. Playing with a handful of more musicians, COYB shocked me at how much they have improved over the span of a year. Where once they seemed emotionally detached from their music live, during their Portland performance they were spewing energy and excitement left and right. Sure the sad ballads and whole-note based compositions were there, but they had a different air about them that made the performance much more intriguing.
Well this ends my recap of the past six or so months I’ve been absent from the blog. I have a string of shows I intend to see (Girls and Neon Indian are on tap just for today!), so I’ll be sure to post some more in depth reviews. I’ll also update a bit more regularly with daily blurbs of interesting acts, videos, and songs found throughout the interwebs. Plus, my vinyl collection has been growing and I have some ripped gems that I want to share with the world, so stay tuned!
Here are some tracks from the artists mentioned above:
The Diamond Center // Dos Fridas
