Sucks to Be Me

I'm off to Mexico for 5 days. I'll be in the hotel above. I'll try to bring back stories, but I somehow doubt that laying around in the sun reading books and drinking cocktails will make for scintillating reading.

ps. happy birthday boo.

________UPDATE___________

ohhhh yeeaaahhh. awesome.

Wanderings

It's been a much-needed quiet week over here in Morland-land. I was going to do a write up of the Spoon show that I saw last Saturday night but I was feeling a bit under the weather and didn't get around to it and, since it's Wednesday, I've decided it's too late now. So. The Spoon show was awesome. Great.

So, by way of a post/update today I thought I'd just share with you some points of interest that I have found on the web recently.

• Salon's Broadsheet pointed me in the direction of this interesting blog, GIRLdrive. It chronicles the journey of two women on a road-trip across America to discover what today's women think of feminism. It makes for interesting reading, I have to say.
  

• Speaking of feminism today, Broadsheet also pointed me to this article in the NYT about a "chat" held last night with some of the wives of the current presidential candidates. Apparently it was "predictable" that they played down their roles in their respective husbands campaign. Too many strong women in the political foreground would be off-putting perhaps? Sigh.

• Check this list out from Blender of the 50 Worst Songs of All Time. I'd have to disagree with number 23 though (Sunglasses at Night!). I totally dug that song when I was a kid.

• I was puzzled as to why JK Rowling outted Dumbledore this week, and John Cloud of Time makes some interesting comments about it.

• I saw Michael Clayton the other night and thought it was awesome.

• And last, but not least, Forbes gives us a list of the wost jobs for the upcoming century. Travel agents? Buh-by!

CMJ report: Speck Mountain/LeLoup/Papercuts/Bowerbirds @ the Knitting Factory

If there was one common theme running through the acts at last night’s CMJ showcase at the Knitting Factory, it was the display of extremely talented, multi-instrumental musicians more interested in group collaboration and dynamics than fronting the typical 4-person band. There were French-horn-playing-keyboardists, accordion-drummers, banjos picked up willy-nilly, drumsticks on guitars and a violin thrown in for good measure. Overall, it was a solid show that made a statement that the bands coming up the pipeline are innovative, ambitious and interested in making music with anything they can get their hands on. Below are some thoughts on the four acts I caught last night.

Speck Mountain: This Chicago-based quartet was the first band up last night and I showed up just in time to catch the last three songs. I wanted to catch their entire set but I misjudged the actual start-time of the show and over-estimated the length of each set. (Unlike the Bowery showcase I saw earlier in the week, the KF showcase kept things moving at a fast clip with 30-minute sets for each band.) But I can say, as a first impression, that they have a sound I immediately associated with 1990’s shoegaze pop….think Mazzy Star. Speck Mountain was pretty good though…I might check them out again.

Le Loup: Okay. This is going to come across as a bold claim to some (and I don’t really mean it as such) but for those of you looking for the next Arcade Fire a convincing argument could be made that Le Loup is that band. This isn’t to say that they sound just like them, or are trying to emulate them, or whatever else sort of backhanded compliment could be meant by such a comparison. I only mean that Le Loup is similarly large in scale and scope and have a similar desire to push themselves by experimenting with an impressive variety of instruments, tempos and vocal styles. They don’t quite have the discipline of AF and their music (at least their live music) suffers for it: they get caught up in their own “progressiveness” sometimes and are at their best when the reign it in a little. The chaos seemed to be orchestrated by their exuberant lead-vocalist Sam Simkoff, who also displayed considerable talent on a variety of instruments. He was quite a force to witness onstage. However, I think, quietly, that the keyboardist/freak-French horn player was the best at straddling the line between structure and chaos that Le Loup was playing with: the rest of the band could use her example a little more to bring a sense of focus to their wanderings. My other gripe is the use of three guitars…it was unclear to me why they needed so many, especially since you couldn’t always distinguish them stylistically, and it only served to slog the music down in parts. All that aside, it was a fun set and a fun band and I look forward to seeing them progress. Perhaps, since they hail from D.C., they’ll be back to the City soon enough.

Papercuts: I was not impressed with this group. They are based out of California and they immediately reminded me of a band from California with a familiar surf-pop 60’s sound. The use of held-out, continuous chords on an electric organ was extremely heavy-handed for the first couple of songs. The balance was restored a bit when the lead-vocalist on the organ switched with the guitarist but the constant chords really got to me.

Bowerbirds: Of all the bands on the line-up last night, this was the one I had anticipated the most. Snippets I’d read here and there led me one day to their MySpace page and I decided I should check them out while they were in town. And, while the other bands didn’t disappoint, I was hoping that the BBs would hit it out of the park for me and they did just that. There are three of them, one on lead vocal and acoustic guitar, one on accordion and sometimes the bass drum, and the last on violin and also sometimes on the bass drum. The lead-vocal styling was familiar to me, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…Bright Eyes? Coco Rosie? Devendra Banhart? (While I eventually settled on the latter, it felt more like a mixture of them all at times.) But most stirring was when the other two chimed in as well. The three of them knew how to play off and with one another and their young professionalism and tightness was a welcome end to a generally chaotic musical adventure last night at the Knitting Factory.

*I should mention that His Name is Alive and St. Vincent actually closed out the showcase last night at the KF, but since I have to at least pretend to be cogent during my 9-to-5 today I bailed at 11.30pm.

Most Likely Lacking the Right Harmony of Parts

While I have never read Rand or Benjamin and my philosophical leanings tend more toward Hume, the folks over at Probably Awkward have declared me, yes, awkward enough to temporarily join in the fun. So catch me over there telling you how much in love I am with Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips.

While you are over there be sure to poke around to find out what's really tasty, rhapsodic-worthy, and otherwise awkwardly-of-note. Just don't get into the Turkey with HT.

Umu? Yes, please!

I was down in the DC area this past weekend visiting with my sister and a good friend of mine from college, JM. It was JM's birthday and she decided to host a Polynesian umu party, which consisted of cooking a variety of meats and tubers in an earthen pit in the ground. I have some pictures of the entire process of layering the hot bricks and the food below. As you will easily see, we roasted a pig. Other meats (which you can't see because they are wrapped in aluminum foil) included chicken, blue fish, mackerel and some other kind of fish I can't remember. Mmmmmmmmm.

Unfortunately, my camera died before I could capture the end result, so I apologize. But, for the record, everything came out tasting moist and delicious. I'd totally do it again if given the opportunity.

The Sound of Your Laugh Through the Wall: The National @ Terminal 5

I was excited about going to this show last night for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that The National’s newest album has quickly become one of my go-to records to listen to while commuting to and from work. I was totally bummed to miss their free show at the Seaport earlier this summer so I pounced when they announced this show. And it’s a good thing: the show quickly sold out and the 2 shows they subsequently announced in Willyburg for tonight and tomorrow night sold out equally as fast. It was like the Arcade Fire concert-frenzy from the earlier half of the year all over again.

The show started on a strange note with St. Vincent as the opening act. She’s been getting a lot of good press recently and I was eager to hear her play: I’m always up for trying new female artists. For the first couple of songs I was vaguely puzzled with her fascination with her drum machine but I kept an open mind since it was clear that a musically-informed sense of experimentation was driving her. One thing you cannot say about St. Vincent is that she doesn’t know how to play or that she is making noise for the sake of making noise. I think her stuff is smart—it kept reminding me of a one-woman Sigur Ros, although I’m sure that characterization might crinkle some brows. But as she slowly made the transformation from experimental to more traditional pop with each song, I couldn’t really shake the gimmicks. By the time she announced her last song of the set I was very much over it. I’m seeing her again next week at CJM and will try and give her another shot but I think I’m not jumping on this particular bandwagon.

I have, however, unabashedly jumped on the National bandwagon. And I’ll admit that I was late coming to this particular party. I didn’t even listen to their acclaimed album, Alligator, until after I’d heard their newest, Boxer, which is really a shame. Not to mention the two albums preceding these! While I’m surely not the first to lump them together with Interpol, I do like them for nearly the same reasons and they do have a similar sound to me. Thus, I was a bit nervous about seeing them live since my recent experiences with Interpol in concert have been a bit on the disappointing side. I was worried that their layers would similarly get lost in the mix and/or they would sound like a cookie-cutter version of their studio album (which is not bad so much as boring). But it turns out that I really shouldn’t have worried: they seemed to revel in their live performance last night and, rather than plastically perform their allotted roles, each musician in the band let the music breathe without letting the band as a whole slip into unrecognizable jam-band-ness. Here’s an example: upon taking the stage and starting in on the first song, the lead singer and other members of the band had small smiles creeping over their faces as they were presented with the sold-out crowd pressed together on the floor and peering down at them from two levels of balconies. As a result, the typically slow and slightly morose song they opened with became the tiniest bit faster and much more upbeat with the influence of their obvious excitement. It was the same song, without being the same song. Performances like that is why I go to live shows in the first place—to see a new take on an old favorite and to feel your own effect on them as they, in turn, effect you. Awesome.

My other reason for anticipation about the show last night was the opportunity to check out Terminal 5, the new venue acquired by the Bowery Presents people who are also responsible for two of my favorite spaces in the city to see shows (the Merc and the Bowery Ballroom). And I was disappointed to discover that I hated the space, although the out-of-the-way location makes the disappointment matter a bit less to me. Like the Ballroom, it has great sightlines from the floor and balconies where you can perch and look down on the action from above (T5 has two levels of balconies to the BB’s one), which are both great points in its favor. However, the sound is easily distorted under and deep into the balconies (a pain when you are at the bars located on any of the floors and, generally, located anywhere in the space but directly in front of the stage or directly on the edge of the balconies) and the warehouse-like design and frigid temperature of the space made it hard for me to get comfortable. Although. If the National were playing there again, I'd so be there.

* The picture above has been supplied by mucow on flikr. You can see more shots of last nights show from this user here.