http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:32:16 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/11/29/153216.php LovestruckFirst Impressions of Earth Release date: January 3, 2006 RCA RecordsIf The Strokes suffered from an excess of hype when they first burst onto the music scene in the dawn of this decade, inciting near-Radiohead levels of rock critic hyperbole, they seem to be having quite the opposite problem by the time of their third record, First Impressions Of Earth . It is now little more than a month before its projected release date, January 3rd, and the media response has been nothing but tepid. No NME covers, no round-the-clock MTV, or even MTVHits, play for their video "Juicebox," not even a good mention from Pitchfork (who, despite what you might think, have always been strong Strokes supporters). The tide, it seems, has turned against them. Only good music (and savvy marketing) can sustain a band once it's been cast out of the "hip" community and is forced to fend for itself in the pop wilderness. So, it was with great anticipation that I crowded into New York City bar Black White recently, along with the other shining lights of dot com journalism, for an advance listen of First Impressions Of Earth. Would it be the record to overturn the tide of negative whispers? I was prepared to like this record as much as any of their others, to relive those heady days of 2001, and, most importantly, to tell all my friends that what they had heard was wrong and, yes, the new Strokes record is good. I don't think I'll be able to tell them that. It's not that the CD is horrible. Or (overly) embarrassing. Despite their dogmatically simple songwriting formula, The Strokes haven't exactly run out of ideas, either, and simply begun to repeat themselves. It sounds a lot more like Julian Casablancas et al have realized the potentially shallow pool of musicality they've claimed for their own, and are searching for somewhere deeper to move. They just haven't gotten there yet.This isn't to say that they have cast too far afield from their original sound; there's no gypsy-fusion, freak folk, or African choirs on this record. Purists will be glad to hear that The Strokes keep to the bass-heavy mumble-rock that bought them all of their nice jeans. At the same time, they are trying their hand at slightly more complex songwriting. The first half of First Impressions, especially the prospective single, "Juicebox," try to cobble two or three song snippets together to form some kind of Wings-esque song suite, a New Millennium "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey." Sadly, none of them fit together very well, none build to anything, and they lack the unabashed wackiness that makes something like "Uncle Albert" an enjoyable oddity.The second half of First Impressions of Earth finds The Strokes in much more trouble. Track after track meanders in search of compelling elements, perpetually on the verge of becoming interesting, but never quite making it. It is trance to the first half's house; DNTEL to its Postal Service. Granted, the room was noisy, the space was crowded, and I kept having to pull the DJ away from creatively-stockinged hipster girls to ask which track was playing. So I won't write off The Strokes yet. I'll at least wait until I can be disappointed in a more controlled environment. Music40244@blogcritics.org Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:32:16 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/10/25/121652.php LovestruckTurbonegro, Webster Hall, October 12, 2005The tone for the evening was set when the midget came out. Which was at the very beginning. Ominous minor keys droned and strobe lights pulsed like the veins of a junkie before the stage lights dilated and revealed a midget, fronting the group while dressed in a miniature version of lead singer Hank Von Helvete‚s outfit. I'm not passing judgment on this, either positively or negatively. It was simply the kind of show where a midget coming out dressed in a relatively tiny fur cape and amount of face paint was pretty much required. Anything less would have left a hole the size of a wee Norwegian in the collective heart of New York City.Yes, it was a raucous, deathpunk/pop metal/black pop night at New York City's Webster Hall this past Wednesday when Norway's Turbonegro played to a packed house. Now in their second iteration after a brief break-up in the early part of this decade, Turbonegro were in town to promote their latest CD, "Party Animals." Conventional wisdom (i.e., PitchforkMedia), holds that they are somewhat lacking in their second coming. There seems to be something to this, a priori; their reunion was, after all, precipitated by the post-breakup stateside success of their Norwegian albums, 1997's Ass Cobra and 1999's Apocalypse Dudes. Faced with encouraging US sales figures, something that can elude even the sugariest of Europe‚s bubblegum pop, Turbonegro thrust aside their self-perpetuated claims of drug and behavioral excesses to pump out one, then another, record of what they like to call "deathpunk," a sort of hair metal and hard rock amalgam that dares you to call it ironic even as balloons rain from the ceiling and the lead singer asks you sneeringly if your favorite show is "Friend" or "Seinfeld," then tells you his is "Anal Sex in the City." How in the world could a band who unbreaks-up just to sell more records possibly be in it for real?As far as I can tell, they are. While there was a slight dip in energy from the band and crowd in the middle section of the concert, this is hardly a fatal flaw. Find me a show that aspires to keep the audience mindlessly thrashing around for over an hour that DOESN‚T drag somewhere in the middle, and I'll. . . well, I'd be very impressed, I suppose. Let's be honest, here, as well: I was totally suckered in by the band‚s theatrics. The combination of makeup, indescribably stereotypical mincing around by keyboardist Pal Pot Pamparius, pulsing strobes, falling balloons and fake 4 Zillion Dollar Bills featuring the likeness of guitar player Rune Rebellion, even the font on the monolithic banner bearing their name which hung behind the band during the show, all spoke of a spectacle and singularity that is all-too-often missing from the endless parade of interchangeable indie acts which slouch about New York City's stages on a daily basis.The only thing that seriously gave me pause (other than whether or not I should go into the mosh pit whilst wearing a blazer) was that the band consistently pronounced their name "Turbo-KNEE-grow" instead of the pronunciation I had been taught in the halls of my college radio station, "Turbo-NAY-grow." Did I have to feel differently about the group, faced with the possible racism of their very name? Was it simply due to their Norwegian accents? This is a difficult question, especially considering the homosexual schitck which makes up a large part of their group lore, from album names ("Ass Cobra," "Scandinavian Leather," etc.) to song titles and on-stage banter. Is the band intolerant, pandering to the intolerant, or making some kind of point by bringing to the fore the inherent racism and homoeroticism of the white male touching sessions that are heavy metal shows?To be perfectly honest, I couldn't exactly tell, and I didn't exactly care. I was too busy jumping up and down, knocking into strangers, and singing along to the random bits of songs I could. This, to me, is the formula for a perfectly entertaining show (even if I didn't stick around for the second encore). Rawk on, Norwegian soliders. Rawk on. Music38488@blogcritics.org Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:16:52 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/16/162114.php LovestruckCan you dance with your arms folded across your chest? How much dancing is enough to show that you're down for having fun, but not too much that you seem, you know, like a raging doofus? Will I get any free drinks?In pursuit of the answers to these questions, I, in the spirit of pure scientific curiosity, set off to the DFA Records showcase at the finest music venue in all of Brooklyn, New York, and quite possibly the world: Williamsburg's Northsix (full disclosure: I used to work there). DFA RECORDS SHOWCASE, NORTHSIX DFA records (Death From Above) had their biggest hits in 2002 and 2003, releasing a string of ironically danceable noise-disco tracks that spoke straight to the hipster's heart. DFA has declined somewhat in the ensuing years, though. Freak Folk and Noise have been on the rise, along with a general attitudinal retreat in the college scene from, what's the phrase? "Enjoying yourself," I think is what I would go with. Add to this general critical ambivalence towards this year's Juan Maclean release (it was widely dismissed as falling off the edge DFA had walked in previous releases between fuzzy, guitary dance and straight up house music), and you have an uncertain crowd and importance for this year's showcase.Imagine my delight, then, at the mass of tight-jeaned and white-shod masses that packed Northsix at last night's sold out show. Did I mention that I like them? I do. Perhaps the night's oddest facet, aside from the fact that everyone seemed to be wearing skinny suspenders (are these back? Were they ever "in" to begin with?) was that the Juan Maclean was the only band playing who is actually signed to DFA records. Usually, a label showcase, predictably enough, showcases the talent on that label. I arrived about halfway through Hot Chip's set. It thumped along pleasantly enough, and brought to mind nothing as much as playing a vector video game. Where you spin the ball, you know, and it's all crazy? They moved around the stage well, with the guitarist at one point muscling in between the two keyboardists to do a sort of Van Halen-esque instrument-playing-simultaneous-swaying kind of thing. Next up was the night's stand-out band, Australian imports Cut Copy . Wearing their Daft Punk influences so proudly that they actually sampled "Around the World" at one point, they vibrated through an extraordinarily long set. Not that anyone was complaining. They led the crowd through roughly 45 minutes of complete, non-self-conscious enjoyment, quite a feat here in New York City.Occasionally, Cut Copy would let their drum machine play itself while they picked up guitars. While their guitar runs were undeniably catchy, the sort of "Weezer with an 808" sound of this portion of the show was much less successful. Please, guys, stick with the synths.Rounding out the night was a truly bizarre and literally room-clearing performance from Delia & Gavin. Playing what a friend of mine called "sort of a freaky 'Tubular Bells,'" Delia and Gavin both stood stock-still for their entire show, a half hour endurance test during which Delia never looked down at her keyboard and Gavin never looked up. The band is just the two of them, on dueling keyboards, producing an echo-y and expansive sound that was, yes, building towards something, albeit very very slowly. They suggest with their sparseness the impending arrival of something very ominous; imagine the soundtrack to a 1970s space horror movie and you'll have a rough idea what they sounded like.Despite an initial hopefulness among the 40 or so stragglers who bunched in front of the stage as they began, it seemed no one was in the mood for this after 3 hours of hedonistic dancing and frequent bathroom trips. People were soon slipping out the front door as soon as they could muster the courage. It became, for me, like watching an exceptionally tedious art film. Can I admit that I'm bored? What does this boredom say about me? As I grappled with these and other intellectual identity issues which Delia & Gavin's set prompted, they mercifully left the stage.More tomorrow, kids! I'm trying to see !!!, if I can get in, or perhaps current underground darlings Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! Tune in tomorrow to find out what happens. . . Music36316@blogcritics.org Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:21:14 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/15/195436.php LovestruckWelcome, welcome, everyone, to installment number one of what is sure to be a rollicking, rip-roaring (and several other alliterative adjectives) series of articles chronicling my (mis) adventures navigating my way through CMJ 2005. Please suffer through a brief introduction to CMJ and myself before getting to oh-so-meaty show reviews. CMJ is an annual music festival put on by the College Music Journal, a magazine whose primary claim to fame is being the publisher and complier of the national college music charts (basically, which songs get played the most on the country's college radio stations). These, in turn, have a big part in determining which bands break out of the underground into. . . the ground, I guess, is what's above the underground. For 4 nights once a year, CMJ puts on the CMJ Music Festival, wherein virtually every club in New York City gives itself over to putting on CMJ shows. Something in the neighborhood of 10,000 bands play. I don't have the exact figures here at my fingertips. In addition, there are panel discussions, film premiers, and other assorted special events. These are mostly boring and I will be skipping virtually all of them. Speaking of me, I am a music industry professional and this is my third time attending CMJ. I am a Brooklyn resident, and I have a white belt. So I know what I'm talking about, and don't think I don't. Now, on to the shows!WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th Queenadreena, Arlene's GroceryTonight, CMJ's inaugural evening, I was actually busy until slightly after midnight at an unbearably swanky party (where, among other things, I spotted Bully and Terminator 3's Nick Stahl chatting with N*SYNC's JC Chasez, Apparently, they share an agent). The first show I was able to attend, therefore, was Queenadreena's, midnight performance Arlene's Grocery. Queenadreena is a UK-based goth-punk outfit, fronted by former Daisy Chainsaw lead singer Katie Jane Garsaw. This show marked their only US appearance in the recent past or future, a fact confirmed both by their website and their drummer Billy Feedom as he lit his ultra-Euro hand-rolled cigarette on mine after the show.I'm a firm believer in being woefully uniformed when I see a band. Last night, for instance, all I actually knew about Queenadreena was that my former roommate and college chum, who has entered into a sort of reactionary Goth phase since moving to LA, swore to me that they were the best band ever. This was enough for, and allowed me to "purely experience their music." Also, I didn't have to do any research. As for the actual show, Queenadreena seem to be a band more focused on evoking feelings through their mishmash of sound, as opposed to, say, their lyrics. This is a huge positive, as far as I'm concerned. Assaulting the audience with long waves of sound, the band seemed to be dying for us to grope each other, throw chairs, and obsessively scratch each other, as they were. I applaud their willingness to actually perform, something sorely missing from most popular music. I don't applaud, however, the general immobility of the stupefied audience, a very strange hodgepodge of hardcore, mid-to-late 30s Goth-types and completely clueless CMJers in checkered shirts and baseball caps. In short, this show was highly enjoyable. Big Boi, Sleepy Brown, Killer Mike, et al. Knitting FactoryAs the wait for this show proved to be longer than the show itself, I would like to present excerpts from a diary I kept while waiting.2:14 AM Despite a listed 1:30 AM start time, we've all been herded into the Knitting Factory's Tap Bar while we wait for them to open the main space. The UN-AIR CONDITIONED Tap Bar. There's not even a fan in here. When will the show start? The polite staff promises that they'll let us know.2:18 Despite being listed in the "Wednesday's Shows" section of the CMJ website, the staff here informs us all that this is, in fact, NOT a CMJ show. We are encouraged to buy tickers. Luckily, I am sort of on the list and am able to talk my way in. 2:20 The website that listed this show (again, this show is TOTALLY UNAFILLIATED with that organization) lists about 6 or 7 performers, all playing at 1:30 AM. I assumed that they would all crowd the stage in vintage hip-hop, style. I am suddenly seized with the fear that they may organize themselves into "openers" and "headliners." I make a silent promise to leave if this is the case. 2:48 AM We're finally in!3:30 So, this show is actually to promote a new group/CD fronted by Big Boi, called The Purple Ribbon All-Stars. Their logo looks unnervingly like the Pabst Blue Ribbon logo. I am therefore worried that they will mostly perform new "hits" from their impending record. Luckily, there's only one or two of these before they delve into Outkast's back catalogue. They do "A.D.I.D.A.S.," "The Whole World," and 2004's ubiquitous booty jam "I Like the Way You Move." How do they handle the absence of half of Outkast, Andre 3000? They alternate between letting his parts play as if they were samples, rapping over them, and encouraging the audience to sing over them. This works surprisingly well. The crew on stage is highly energetic and you would have no idea it was after 3 AM unless you looked at the crowd: sweaty hipsters lazily "putting their hands up" when ordered to. As a side note, after roughly six years of hip-hop shows, I still feel awkward when "putting my hands up" or "waving my hands in the air." When will this get easier?Must fly to more shows, more from me later on tonight! Music36251@blogcritics.org Thu, 15 Sep 2005 19:54:36 EDT