Dancing About Architecture 8.18.09
Posted by Ian Wright on 08.18.2009
Thoughts on Bruce Peninsula’s wonderful debut album, the death of Les Paul, Patrick Wolf acting like a douchebag, new Guided By Voices DVD, a Smell DVD, new free music for download from Radiohead, Bon Iver side project Volcano Choir, The National’s Dessner Bros., Lightning Bolt, Wavves and more.
The bit at the start
In a way it's a terribly, terribly lazy way to go about writing about a band's music by simply typing a litany of bands and musicians whose music the band in question reminds you of but when you're talking about one whose sound is so primarily influenced by styles with such long established histories and traditions as folk and country it's hard not to. So at the very least I'm going to keep it contemporary, Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear.
Mostly the comparisons stem from Bruce Peninsula's use of very full, very reverb heavy, vocal harmonies however there is a key difference in that where the multi-voice arrangements of the other 2 mentioned bands are very precise and golden throated Bruce Peninsula's are far more raucous, they sound like something you might expect to find a thousand or so miles south of the band's Toronto home (the band itself is named after a peninsula about 3 hours north west of Toronto) from a Gospel choir in some white painted wooden Alabama church and the lead vocals, or at least the male ones have something of a gravelly quality to them.
However despite the traditional roots of A Mountain Is A Mouth those elements are merely a jumping off point for the band's leanings for more diverse sounding music and that's what really lifts this album out of the pack. There's an almost proggish gusto with which Bruce Peninsula bring ideas and unexpected sounds into the mire. At times the mixture of rat-tat-tat and pounding rhythms brings to mind "Ribs Out" from last years Fuck Buttons album and there's liberal use of metallophone throughout which as that sort of instrument tends to do gives the otherwise often chaotic feel of the album a more relaxed mood at times.
Canada is just owning the alt-americana genre right now.
You news, you lose
And a 1.
There's a whole bunch of free new music for you to listen to this week. First up is Radiohead. Late last week, following the leaking of a new song "These Are My Twisted Words" and comments from Thom Yorke that the band had little interest in releasing an album anytime soon the internet was awash with rumours that a new EP would be released on Monday. As you're probably aware by now by the fact that twitter and facebook didn't shit themselves yesterday there was no EP released. What did happen was that "These Are My Twisted Words" was officially confirmed as a Radiohead song and it was released for free by the band, you can download it here.
Writing on the band's Dead Air Space blog guitarist Jonny Greenwood wrote, "We've been recording for a while, and this was one of the first we finished. We're pretty proud of it. There's other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we've been practicing, and which we'll probably play at this summer's concerts. Hope you like it."
I do like it, and the fact that it reminds me of a mish mash between "Mogwai Fear Satan" and "My Father My King" bothers me not a jot.
Les Paul dies.
On Thursday the music world lost one of it's most important figures. Musician and inventor Les Paul passed away in White Plains, NY due to complications from pneumonia at the age of 94.
Truth be told it was doubly shocking news to me because I'd always assumed that he was already dead.
A very well respected musician in his own right (right up till recent times Paul still performed weekly in New York) it was as an innovator that he'll most be remembered for.
He was one of the pioneers in the invention of the solid body electric guitar which helped to deal with the feedback and sustain issues caused by merely placing a pickup on a standard guitar and the line of Gibson guitars that bears his name is, along with Fenders Stratocaster, one of the most iconic looking electric guitars ever made (in fact the first electric guitar I ever owned was an Epiphone Les Paul Standard and though I've subsequently moved on to playing Fenders, a Tele Deluxe and a Jaguar I still have a great deal of affection for that guitar).
But his most significant contribution to modern music, in fact it's arguably the most fundamentally important development in modern music of the last century was his invention of multi-track recording. Paul's 1950's recordings with spouse Mary Ford laid the foundations for modern studio recordings.
And a 2.
Noise terror duo Lightning Bolt have a new album coming out on October 13th on Load, it's called Earthly Delights.
You can listen to a song from it, "Colossus", here.
Tracklisting:
01 Sound Guardians
02 Nation of Boar
03 Colossus
04 The Sublime Freak
05 Flooded Chamber
06 Funny Farm
07 Rain on Lake I'm Swimming In
08 S.O.S.
09 Transmissionary
GBV GBV GBV DVD.
A week after the announcement of the forthcoming third 4 CD set of Guided By Voices out takes and rarities comes the announcement of the October 20th release of The Devil Went Home and Puked on DVD.
The DVD will feature live footage of both GBV and Robert Pollard solo and includes material from between 1994 and 2009. Also included in the DVD will be early studio footage of Guided By Voices and nine music videos from GBV and Pollard's other projects.
And a 1,2
Justin Vernon of Bon Iver has a side project album coming out on Jagjaguar on September 22nd with members of Collections Of Colonies Of Bees under the name Volcano Choir. The album will be called Unmap.
In the past week Jagjaguar put up a song from it on their site, Island Is., which you can listen to here
Patrick Wolf is a fucking asshole.
On Thursday night Patrick Wolf played the C/O Pop Festival in Cologne, Germany and when told that his set was being cut short he got a little miffed, threw a bit of a hissy fit and well … see for yourself.
Now those of you with decent memories may recall that this isn't the first time that Wolf has pulled some seriously diva type shit on stage before, there was an incident on a North American tour some time ago when he had a huge go at his drummer mid gig.
On Sunday night an unrepentant Wolf posted a series of Tweets to Twitter where he blamed the organisers of the festival for the incident.
Wolf's tweets read:
"Thanks to the cologne audience this week! You were amazing! your city is beautiful! this co pop festival does you no justice! Boycott it. xp"
"Ich bin ein Tier. Ich habe nicht vergessen, meinen Platz in der Natur im Gegensatz zu anderen Menschen. Ich bedauere mein Verhalten nicht." [Google translation: "I am an animal. I have not forgotten my place in nature as opposed to other people. I do not regret my conduct."]
"The audience comes first. I am just a vessel for you. The promoters badly organised a festival. I made a very public complaint. No regrets"
"No one was hurt onstage. drama and music go hand in hand. media world stop freaking out. Watch jubilee by derek jarman or listen to ATR. xpw"
"Also big love and WOW to the legendary iconic STEVE STRANGE who i was also fighting for who had his set cut short due to miss management. xp"
Meanwhile anyone who has ever got up on stage to play tunes is shaking their heads and saying "Dude, rule 1 is that you don't fuck with the guy doing your sound".
3,4
The Long Count is a multimedia project involving visual artist Matthew Ritchie with music provided by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National which will be performed in the Brooklyn Academy Of Music on October 28, 30 and 31. For the project the Dessners have roped in a number of impressive vocal talents to help out such as Kim and Kelly Deal of the Breeders, My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden and the duo's National bandmate Matt Berninger. However the first thing to appear from it is an instrumental piece by Aaron called "We Were Born" that you can listen to here
What's that Smell?
Live At The Smell is the forthcoming DVD featuring the likes of No Age, HEALTH, High Places, Mae Shi and Ponytail playing in Los Angeles' near infamous all ages venue The Smell.
Hitting stores on September 1st the DVD will features more than 2 hours of live performances with proceeds from the sales going towards keeping the joint open.
5,6,7,8,9 are we playing jazz or what?
Finally for the week here's a couple of new songs from Wavves, Cool Jumper and Hula Hoop …
08-14 Goteborg, Sweden - Way Out West Festival
08-15 Oslo, Norway - Oyafestivalen
08-21 Trondheim, Norway - Pstereo '09
08-22 Bodo, Norway - Bodo Parken Festival
08-29 Cheltenham, England - Cheltenham Racecourse
08-30 London, England - Get Loaded in the Park
09-05 Venice, Italy - City Festival
09-06 Stradbally, Ireland - Electric Picnic
09-19 Seoul, South Korea - Global Gathering Festival
09-25 Bergen, Norway - Ekko Festival
11-18 Los Angeles, CA - Club Nokia
11-19 San Francisco, CA - Regency
11-23 New York, NY - Webster Hall
11-24 New York, NY - Webster Hall
Dan Deacon
10-01 Chapel Hill, NC - Cat's Cradle *
10-02 Atlanta, GA - Eyedrum *
10-03 Athens, GA - 40 Watt *
10-04 Birmingham, AL - Bottletree *
10-05 Nashville, TN - Exit/In *
10-06 Memphis, TN - Hi Tone Café *
10-07 New Orleans, LA - Big Top *
10-09 Austin, TX - Emo's *
10-10 Marfa, TX - The Shade Structure*
10-14 Irvine, CA - University of California-Irvine *
10-15 Los Angeles, CA - Echo *
10-16 Los Angeles, CA - Eagle Rock Center for the Arts *
10-17 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Festival
10-19 Sacramento, CA - Fungarden *
10-21 Eugene, OR - University of Oregon Cultural Forum *
10-22 Portland, OR - Worksound *
10-23 Portland, OR - Holocene *
10-24 Seattle, WA - Vera Project *
10-27 Denver, CO - Rhinoceropolis *
10-29 Northfield, MN - Carleton College *
10-30 Chicago, IL - Logan Square Auditorium *
11-01 Gambier, OH - Kenyon College *
11-03 Toronto, Ontario - Sneaky Dees *
11-04 Toronto, Ontario - Great Hall *
11-05 Montreal, Quebec - Il Motore *
11-06 Montreal, Quebec - Eastern Bloc *
11-07 Middlebury, VT - Middlebury College *
11-08 Boston, MA - Mass Art *
11-10 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse *
11-13 Worcester, MA - Clark University *
11-15 Ithaca, NY - Ithaca College *
* with Nuclear Power Pants
Writing under the influence
Without which this column would not have been possible:
Lotus Plaza – The Floodlight Collective
The bit at the end
I should probably reassess my comments last week about Julian Plenti being, "possibly the best thing that Paul Banks has done in years." The lead single is great but the rest of the album is only so so. Final track on it is a total Mogwai rip off too.
Good couple of gigs coming up in Dublin this week, Oneida on Saturday who I've never seen before and then on Sunday night Deerhunter are back in town. I've already seen them twice this year but I don't think I could ever tire of seeing them play.
