The Oregon Trail, Day 3: May 29, 2011

New to this? Start with the prologue, Day 1, and Day 2!

10:20 am, Redmond OR: Slow start today.  After Sonia and I fail to find a Catholic church in central Oregon with an 11 am Mass, we're forced to abandon Plan Go To Church.  We enact Plan Investigate the Check Engine Light instead.

10:32 am, US 97 between Redmond OR and Bend OR: Josh's iPod, as is customary for it, plays some Tupac.  Mr. Shakur raps the lyric "crack cocaine rocked us," which is probably the cleverest rap lyric I've heard in quite a while.

11:01 am, Bend OR: There is nothing wrong with Josh's car.

11:38 am: Driving aimlessly through downtown Bend, we come to an outdoor market selling items by local artists.  A man who calls himself the "Nutmaster" is selling various delicious nuts; I order some cinnamon pecans with the accent on the first syllable.

12:05 pm: Beer tasting at Deschutes Brewery.  It's slightly pretentious in a winery sort of way, where the beers are described with flavor notes.  They're pretty tasty, and the Twilight Ale is a fine drink, but I still can't stand IPAs.

12:30 pm: Time for the brewery tour.  There's chemical engineering here!

1-2 pm: Bend is no Portland, but it holds its own in terms of local Oregon flavor.

The Cyclepub

Bend Haiku Weekend--one week too early!

Vintage and local.

1:34 pm: "Thaiphoon" might be the best restaurant name ever.

1:43 pm: Ranch Records.  Oh yes.  These guys have Dr. Dre's The Chronic on vinyl.  They also have a poster for tonight's Decemberists show in the window.  I ask the grungy guy behind the counter if they have any more.  "No, the promoters come and put that stuff up, so that's all we have.  If you come back later, when we're closing, we can probably let them go." (He looks at his phone.)  "I mean... if you just want to take it off the wall now, I don't care.  I can just look the other way."  I do, and he does.

2:46 pm: Linner at Deschutes Brewery's brewpub affords us a chance to taste yet more beer.

4:48 pm: While in line for the Decemberists concert, there's some concern about the blanket we just bought.  We got it from Wal-Mart, which is the single least hipster place we might have bought it.  If we were locals, we obviously would have taken a trip to the Goodwill.  Josh turns the bag around so nobody can see the Wal-Mart logo.

5:35 pm: The pre-show music is decidedly twangier here than it was at the Death Cab show.  It's true that The King is Dead has a lot of folk inspiration, but people expecting a straight-up bluegrass concert will end up sorely disappointed.

5:37 pm: The age distribution here is a lot wider than at Friday's concert.  More forty-year-olds, and strangely, more four-year-olds.

5:38 pm: Parenting of the Year Award: baby in one hand, cup of beer in the other.

5:55 pm: Of all the foods the hipsters to our right could have sneaked in, they have chosen raw carrots.

6:09 pm: The first opener, Dan Mangan, totally obeys the Canadian Indie Band Rule by bringing six people to the stage.

7:04 pm: Gabriela Quintero of Rodrigo y Gabriela is pretty crazy, in the way that she's jumping up and down while playing acoustic guitar for a bunch of indie kids.  In the context of metal, she's beyond tame; here, she's rocking hard.

8:07 pm: The hipster couple to my left is discussing their favorite things to buy at Trader Joe's.

8:23 pm: The Decemberists open with "The Infanta"!  It's one of my favorite Decemberists songs, and the very first one of theirs that I heard.  They hadn't played it at either of the other two concerts I'd seen them at, so it was a really nice surprise to hear it here.

It's followed by three tracks from the new album, "Down By the Water," "Calamity Song," and "Rise to Me".  Given that Decemberists albums are usually two-thirds hit and one-third miss, it's pretty much on par. "Water" and "Calamity" are both excellent; "Rise" is okay but doesn't do much for me.

8:42 pm: Yes, that is Jenny Conlee on the accordion/keyboard/auxiliary percussion!  She's undergoing treatment for cancer, and she was scheduled to miss all of the Decemberists' summer tour dates, but she's made a surprise appearance here.  It's awesome to see her, and I've never heard so much heartfelt applause for an accordion player.

Like Death Cab, the Decemberists have done a really good job of sampling music from all over their discography.  Older material (from Castaways and Cutouts and Her Majesty, two albums that I can never keep straight) includes "Leslie Anne Levine" and "Billy Liar," the latter with some fun audience participation.  Picaresque has a nice showing after "The Infanta" with "The Bagman's Gambit" and "16 Military Wives," the latter also featuring some audience input.

The only song from The Crane Wife turns out to be "The Crane Wife Part 3," but that's as good a choice as any from that album.  I'm still irrationally attached to The Hazards of Love, though explaining the album makes me realize how inscrutable it can be on a first (or fifth) listen.  I got to jam to "Won't Want for Love's" prog rock-y intro for half a minute before I realized I should probably explain what in the world was going on to Josh, who isn't nearly as into the Decemberists as I am.

"Okay, this song is from the Decemberists' prog-rock opera The Hazards of Love.  It's sung by the female protagonist, Margaret.  She's commanding forest plants to do various things.  She can do that because she's pregnant with the male protagonist William's child, and William and the forest are tight.  Well, at least until the Forest Queen gets involved, but that hasn't happened yet.  Oh, and William shapechanges into a fawn sometimes."

Later: "This one is called 'The Rake's Song'."  "As in the cut the house takes in gambling?" (Josh plays a lot of poker.)  "No, as in the immoral pleasure seeker.  He's the antagonist in the rock opera.  This song is about him killing his children in especially brutal ways."

And The King is Dead gets some more love (four and a half months out, this is still the King is Dead tour, after all) in "Rox in the Box" and "This is Why We Fight," "Rox" still being my favorite track on the album.  The main set ends with "This is Why We Fight," but I've seen the Decemberists enough to know that their set isn't close to finished.  On the Crane Wife tour, these guys played a seven-song encore, so I'd be surprised if we didn't see at least fifteen minutes more music.

The encore starts with "January Hymn," also from the new album.  I like "January Hymn."  It's quiet and simple, yet evocative; and it gets in, does what it needs to, and gets out.  Afterward, Colin Meloy starts talking like it's actually the end of the show.  They'd better play something big if my "fifteen more minutes" prediction is going to hold up.  He tells us the next song will "fall apart" without our help.  When Chris Funk (hearty round of applause) gives the signal, we're all to scream as if we're being eaten by a whale!  It's "The Mariner's Revenge Song".

I have a schizophrenic love-hate relationship with this song.  On one hand, it's totally awesome.  It's not the sort of song I choose to listen to frequently, because it requires such a big time and emotional commitment.  But as a creative piece of music that's well-performed and tells as engaging story, it's one of the Decemberists' most interesting songs.

On the other hand, I'm puzzled and a little dismayed that the song is so intimately connected to the Decemberists, particularly by non-fans.  Upon mentioning that I like the Decemberists, I've had multiple people independently ask me "aren't the band that does that belly of the whale song?"  Yes, they're the band that does "that belly of the whale song".  And if all you're expecting to find from the Decemberists is nine-minute-long sea shanties, that's all you're going to find.  But I promise, this band does a lot more than that.

Regardless of my conflicted emotions toward the song, "The Mariner's Revenge Song" was a lot of fun live, and it seemed the perfect note to end the show on.  After a few minutes' absence, though, the band retakes the stage yet again for the rare double-encore.  They play "June Hymn," another selection from The King is Dead that I like a lot, but it seems sort of a strange follow-up to the intensity of "Mariner".  This time, the Decemberists leave the stage for real, having played sixteen songs--not as many as the twenty-four-song behemoth of a set that Death Cab gave us, but a healthy bit of music nonetheless.

The Decemberists are the only band that I've seen in concert three times, and it's a testament to how great their live shows are that I haven't gotten tired of them yet.  Sure, they're playing new music every time, but Colin Meloy engages the audience so well, and the entire band is so accomplished at showmanship that I would gladly see them three more times.

11:06 pm, Redmond OR: Back to the Super 8 for our last night in the great state of Oregon.

The Oregon Trail, Day 1: May 27, 2011

New to this?  Start with the prologue!

6:01 am, Berkeley CA: My alarm goes off.  This is literally the earliest I have woken up all year.

7:15 am, Hercules CA: The Burger King Croissanwich might be the best $4 I've spent in recent memory.

10:24 am, I-5 north of Sacramento CA: "London Bridge" be Fergie comes on Josh's iPod.  He claims it's not his fault it was on there.

11:36 am, Weed CA: The men's restroom at Weed's Chevron station smells like gasoline; all things considered, there are worse things for a men's restroom to smell like.

12:05 pm, US 97 north of Weed CA:

Mount Shasta

2:17 pm, US 97 north of Klamath Falls, OR: T-Mobile does not have my back.  I'm on something called "UNICEL," which is presumably part of a United Nations plan to bring cell phone service to central Oregon because the coverage here is so poor.

5:20 pm, Bend OR: After a delicious linner of Red Robin, we've made our way inside the venue.  "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes is playing, and I have total indie cred for knowing the song.

5:53 pm: Jenny and Johnny start their set not on time, but early!

6:12 pm: Jenny and Johnny needs more Jenny, but other than that, it's pretty good music.

6:45 pm: Bright Eyes starts their set, and it starts to rain.  I'm not making this up as some sort of emo joke.  As soon as Conor Oberst gets halfway through his first song, the rain starts falling.

7:22 pm: Bright Eyes finishes their set, and it stops raining.  I'm not making this up either--right before the last song, the weather clears, and it's sunny for the rest of the evening.

8:15 pm: Death Cab finally takes the stage!  They open with "I Will Possess Your Heart," and not the watered-down radio version either.

 The set continues with "The New Year," which is off Transatlanticism and therefore good, and "We Laugh Indoors" and "A Movie Script Ending" from The Photo Album, which is an album I don't know nearly as well as I should.  "Some Boys" is the first track they play from Codes and Keys, and it's probably my least favorite track on the album, though it sounds blessedly less over-produced live.

Death Cab winds their way through an impressive array of music, hitting twenty-one (!) songs in in the main set and ranging from their earliest material (1998) to their most recent.  Three or four songs come from the "old" albums, Something About Airplanes and We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes, which are fine music live but way too lo-fi for me when they were recorded in Ben Gibbard's kitchen the studio.  Most of Death Cab's albums have three or four songs each make an appearance: the Plans contingent is "Soul Meets Body," "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," "Crooked Teeth," and "What Sarah Said".

Both "Grapevine Fires" and "Cath..." show up, and we discuss a bit which is the better song.  I like "Cath..." for the musical structure, and Josh prefers "Grapevine Fires" for the imagery, but both tell awesome stories, and both together are far and away the two best tracks on Narrow Stairs.  The great part about a concert is you get to hear them both!

With the album releasing literally two days later, it's hardly a surprise that Codes and Keys is so well represented. "You Are a Tourist," the title track, "Underneath the Sycamore," and a couple of songs I don't recognize by name yet all show up after "Some Boys".  I liken the new Death Cab album to a Decemberists album (review coming soon!) in that half of it is awesome, a quarter of it is forgettable, and a quarter of it is just sort of bad.  The song where Ben Gibbard sounds like he's singing underwater about "California" and "isolation" is in the "bad" pile, but luckily it's balanced with "You Are a Tourist" and "Underneath the Sycamore," which are both fine songs.

9:25 pm: The set is winding down, and our old friend Transatlanticism has been sorely under-represented since "The New Year".  After my bold prediction of "Soul Meets Body" for the encore was shot down about half an hour ago, I switch to "Title and Registration" and wonder if we could be so lucky as to get "Transatlanticism" on top of it.  "The Sound of Settling" is played, which makes me really happy.  I don't know of a more upbeat song about failed relationships!

9:50 pm: After finishing "Title and Registration," Death Cab finishes their set with "Transatlanticism," and I am thrilled.

10:50 pm, Redmond OR: We arrive at the Super 8, our home-away-from-home for the next few days.  Reflecting on the concert, we're all really happy with the variety and length of the set.  Our consensus Song We Wish Were Played is "Marching Bands of Manhattan" from Plans; "Styrofoam Plates" and "I Was a Kaleidoscope" from The Photo Album and "The 405" from We Have The Facts are honorable mentions.

Midnight: I fall asleep, visions of Portland dancing in my head.

The Oregon Trail, Prologue

March 26, 2011, 10 am: Tickets for Death Cab for Cutie's San Francisco concert go on sale.

March 26, 2011, 8 pm: I log on to Ticketmaster and am surprised to find that I can't buy a ticket to the concert.  "This is odd," I think.  "Surely this concert hasn't sold out in less than a day."

Late March-Early April 2011:  I stalk Ticketmaster (and Stubhub and Craigslist) several times a day... and no luck.  I come to find out that the concert had sold out not only in less than a day, but in less than an hour.  Ticketmaster isn't doing it for me because there are literally no tickets left, and the resale markets are essentially useless because the tickets are will-call, photo-ID only.

But I'm not about to give up on this concert.  I've been a fan of Death Cab for six or seven years, having never seen them live, and they've easily worked their way to the top of my Bands I Need To See In Concert list.  On a whim, I look at the rest of their tour dates, curious if they'd be playing a show elsewhere in northern California.  They're not... but they are playing at this sweet-looking venue called the Les Schwab Amphitheater in some town called Bend, Oregon.  That's "only" eight to nine hours away... and The Decemberists are playing the exact same venue only two days later.  Better yet, all of this happens over Memorial Day weekend, so I could easily make a weekend of it: drive up Friday, stay through Sunday, and come home Monday, only missing one day of work.

Late April 2011: I convince my friend Josh and his girlfriend (now fiancee!) Sonia to come along.  The Oregon Trail is going to happen.

Kathryn Calder: Album and Concert

The great thing about being a fan of a band that's billed as a "supergroup" is that you instantly get five or six more bands and solo acts to delve into.  Neko Case, of course, has an amazing voice (she and Jenny Lewis are almost certainly the best female vocalists in the business today), but her disregard for the "song" when she's singing by herself makes it a little tough to get excited about her solo work.  A.C. Newman's own solo work has enough of the energy and creativity of his contributions to the New Pornographers that I'd pretty much just rather listen to the New Pornographers.  And Dan Bejar is a talented guy too, but his slightly off-kilter vocals on his slightly self-satisfied tracks usually end up as my least favorite on any given New Pornographers album.

Now Kathryn Calder is launching a solo career of her own, which I sort of knew about but didn't pay a lot of attention to until Stephanie (of "whitest day of my life" fame) touted her album as "really really good".  Calder seems determined to show the world that she's a whole lot more than "that other girl singer that the New Pornographers have who's not Neko Case".  Because she was originally part of the band as a touring replacement for Neko Case, and now sings a lot of harmony with her, it can be tough to disentangle what vocal parts are Neko Case's or Kathryn Calder's (or, for that matter, A. C. Newman's falsetto's).

That's why it's such a pleasant surprise to listen to her 2010 album Are You My Mother? and hear that Calder has a lovely mezzo-soprano that weaves effortlessly among Pornographers-style power pop, "conventional" acoustic singer-songwriter, stripped-down piano ballads, and jangly indie folk.  The entirely "ooh"ed chorus of the first track, "Slip Away," is a statement of Calder's vocal register, and "Low" is a fine song if you're a connoisseur of the deliberately lo-fi keyboard-driven, but it's with the energy of "Castor and Pollux" that the album really hits its stride, and it doesn't let up until somewhere around track eight or nine.

The standout track (if I really have to pick just one from the outstanding middle chunk of this album) is "If You Only Knew," and since I'm such a sucker for both indie folk and unabashedly happy music (not to mention songs that mention places I've lived), that's probably not a huge surprise.  But "Follow Me Into the Hills" is pretty excellent too, and so is "Day Long Past Its Prime," and so is just about everything on the album.  Only one criticism lingers for more than a few seconds, and that's how slightly underproduced many of the tracks feel.  There's actually a really touching story behind that, so maybe we can cut Kathryn Calder some slack here.

The silver lining to wanting a better production value from her album tracks is that when you see Kathryn Calder live, you get it!  In true Canadian indie musician fashion, "Kathryn Calder live" is actually Kathryn Calder plus four or five people playing various instruments and harmonizing all the "ooh"s and "la"s that make her music so delightful.  She proves to be an remarkably talented musician, delivering an outstanding vocal performance on top of deftly switching between guitar and keyboard.

After better fidelity (coupled with convincing live musicianship), the second-best reason that Kathryn Calder in concert is actually better than Kathryn Calder on your iPod is that there's more to listen to.  Three songs showed up that aren't part of Are You My Mother ("One Two Three," something to the effect of "Turn the Light On," and another that I don't think she named), and they were all really really good.  Given that these were described as "new," it seems likely that Calder has a follow-up album in the works, which is nothing but good news.

As can be expected from an artist embarking on the first tour of her solo career, Calder's vocals wavered a bit for the first song or two.  And the band members aren't talented enough stage artists yet that they're comfortable vamping or chatting with the audience for the minute it took Calder to get some tuning issues worked out--or maybe they're awkward indie kids, just like their audience.  But they made up for it by being entertainingly Canadian (confirmed: people from Vancouver actually do say "aboat" instead of "about"!) and having genuine fun on stage.

Going to the show was genuine fun.  Buying a ticket was a genuine deal--not since I was convinced to see Zao and Throwdown back in 2006 have I paid twelve dollars to see a live show.  And between the album, the concert, and the promise of more good solo material, I am now a genuine Kathryn Calder fan.


Currently listening: "Blindness," Metric

No Other Show Like It Round Here: The New Pornographers in Concert

I haven’t been a fan of the New Pornographers for nearly as long as I should have been, or nearly as long as you might guess based on what I feed into Pandora and Last.fm on a daily basis. One play of “Sing Me Spanish Techno” last September on my “Indie Pop Bonanza” Pandora station, though, and I was A Fan.  Call them whatever adjective of indie you like, or invoke the “supergroup” label if you must, but it doesn't matter.  These guys make the exact brand of music I like: happy, poppy music with conventional tonality and familiar structure but themes and vocabulary that are anything but ordinary.

The only complaints I can make about this show pertain to things that happened before the New Pornographers themselves started playing.  One of the biggest issues with the show was the merch stand, of all things—and when the merch stand is among your biggest complaints, you’re attending a fine concert indeed.  (Bands, do your male fans a favor and make your shirts available in men’s sizes other than small.)  Dejected (but twenty bucks less poor), I sat through forty-five minutes of opener and half an hour of set change before Neko, A.C., and company finally took the stage.

It's my policy not to comment on openers unless they're any good, so I'll skip to my Concert Gripe of the Day: unnecessarily long set changes.  Clear some guitars out of the way, put some new ones out.  Drag a drum kit twenty feet.  Arrange stools, microphones, bottles of water.  Then let the band play.  It really shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes, and it rarely does, but for reasons that can only be related to the venue wanting to drum up drink sales, we're forced to gaze at the empty stage for fifteen more minutes.

But after the wait always comes good music, so it's something the concertgoer must be willing to endure... and if nothing else, the New Pornographers make good music.  The opening number, "Moves," played out almost like an extended sound-check (something that theoretically could have been done during that fifteen minutes of nothing).  Neko Case in particular took charge of the stage like a general on her battlefield, giving cryptic hand signs to offstage sound guys and sprinting to bark a few seconds of orders in between most of the first six or seven songs.

It was good to see Neko finally start rocking a few songs into the set--"tentative" is not exactly the word you'd usually associate with the woman responsible for the vocals on "Letter From An Occupant," but for the first ten minutes, she seemed strangely out of her element.  It seems utterly ludicrous to associate stage fright with someone who's been at this for at least ten years, but whether it was nerves, an overriding concern for the sound balance, or second-guessing where she'd told the Second Cavalry to make its charge, she settled down soon enough.  By the time they started jamming about "The Slow Descent into Alcoholism," the entire band was brimming with an energy that lasted another entire hour.

Along the way, the New Pornographers completely nailed "Mass Romantic," "It's Only Divine Right," "Crash Years," "Jackie, Dressed In Cobras," and probably a dozen more songs I'm forgetting.  "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk" still has never failed to make me smile.  "The Bleeding Heart Show" was exactly the right way to end the show (though the band missed a golden opportunity for audience participation in the "hey-la" out-tro), "Challengers" was the encore song I never knew I always wanted to hear, and "Sing Me Spanish Techno" made a triumphant actual end to the show.

Three more things made this show awesome.  First, even people who weren't too familiar with the band had a great time, which is a sure sign the band is doing something right.  Second, blessedly few concert fouls were committed--even the weed cloud kept itself at bay until nearly the end of the show.  And third, like any "hey, let's get together and tour for fun and profit" shows, it wasn't tied to an album, and there was a legitimate chance the band will play any given song in their discography; if I'd made a wish list of, say, ten songs I would have wanted the New Pornographers to play, they would have hit at least eight of them.


Currently listening: "Home Is A Fire," from the soon-to-be-released Death Cab album

Birthday Cake

My old friends the Decemberists decided they'd play a show in Oakland for my birthday, which was really nice of them, except that 1) it's impossible to get my friends excited about the Decemberists, and 2) while I'm perfectly comfortable going to concerts alone, doing that on my birthday just seemed sort of depressing.  So, I decided on the next-best thing: go to see Cake (which I could motivate some friends to go to see) the day after my birthday.

Cake is one of those bands, like, say, Guster or the Juliana Theory, that I rarely think "yes, awesome, I need to listen to this band immediately."  But when I do listen to them, I always scold myself for not being more into them, because they are awesome.  Cake has been at this a long time--they're pushing two decades--and none of their albums represent much of a departure from any of their other albums, but there's something to be said for their consistency.

So Cake has never been at the top of my List Of Bands I Must See In Concert (it exists, and Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, and the New Pornographers are all somewhere towards the front)... but now that I've seen them, I'm scolding myself for not putting them up there.  In a reflection of their albums, their show isn't one that blows you away and leaves you, slack-jawed, gazing at the stage at the Fillmore and unable to move.  Instead, it's a show full of really solid material that comes with just enough wry humor and audience participation to make you appreciate the hell out of the band.

(Another thing that makes me, at least, appreciate them is their extensive use of the trumpet.  Trumpeter Vince DiFiore doesn't play a lot of difficult parts, though he plays them really well.  It's when he launches into improv, something you don't get to hear a lot of on the albums, that's when you really start to understand how good he is--and how you're benefiting from seeing Cake live instead of just listening to them in your room.)

The band described their own show as playing two sets, but it felt more like a long set and a half, or like Cake was opening for themselves.  The first half of the show featured some reasonably well-known older material ("Frank Sinatra") and some tracks from their new album, but it wasn't until the second half of the post-intermission set that they launched into iconic Cake, including "Love You Madly," "Sheep Go to Heaven," and "Short Skirt Long Jacket," finally ending the encore with "The Distance".

It's always a nice touch when bands make the audience sing, and it's even better when the audience plays along.  The Cake-going crowd was game enough to provide background vocals on a few tracks, which was fun.  Cake took their audience participation a step further, giving away cool stuff in exchange for knowing the answers to obscure trivia questions, including the date that Gutenberg was credited for inventing the printing press (1440; the prize was a printed page, signed by the band, from a book that Cake put together) and the identity of a mysterious tree on the stage (lemon; the prize was the tree itself).

One thing that made Cake stand out even more: throughout that trivia contest, and throughout the entirety of the show, Cake worked hard to maintain an air of civility, humility, and courteousness.  It's a lesson that a lot of rock bands would benefit from taking to heart, and coupled with some excellent music, it made for a great (if slightly belated) birthday dessert.


Currently listening: "The Only Living Boy in New York," Simon and Garfunkel

Eisley: Over the River and Through the Wood Tour

My first experience with the musical side of Web 2.0 was in fall 2007, when I discovered both Last.fm and Pandora.  Frustratingly, I found that I needed both of them: Last.fm was more diligent in giving me useful recommendations, but its "type an artist and we'll play more music that sounds like that artist" mode was (and remains) nowhere near as strong as Pandora's.  One shared victory of both sites was Eisley: throw in a generous helping of Rilo Kiley along with a pinch of random indie pop and a dash of female-vocalist rock, and the good folks running both systems decided Eisley was a can't miss.

They were totally right.  Fall 2007 saw me listen to entirely too much Eisley, so much so that my Last.fm charts never recovered from my binge.  "Invasion," from Eisley's second album Combinations, will forever be the song I associate with fall 2007, in the same way that Mae's "The Ocean" is summer 2005, or The New Pornographers' "Sing Me Spanish Techno" is fall 2010.  And in the height of that infatuated season, I had the opportunity to see Eisley in concert, though I never ended up going--in part because I couldn't convince any friends that they, too, wanted to go see Eisley in concert.

Part of that is because Eisley's music is awfully tough to categorize.  The right place to start is probably "pop/rock," which is sufficiently broad as to be useless.  There's a dose of acoustic rock, flirting with but never actually touching folk.  A number of their songs have a dreamy, surreal feel to them, but "psychedelic" is not even close to the right word.  Other influences might include "singer/songwriter," which I've only recently accepted as a genre, and "alternative," which I still stubbornly do not.  Finally, there's a strong indie pop element throughout most of Eisley's work.

That raises the question of that now-cliche label, "indie".  To a musical literalist, Eisley is an indie band now, because they're not signed to a major label.  (This is a recent change; up until early 2010, Eisley was signed to a division of Warner Brothers.)  But plenty of music critics will argue that "indie" has evolved from a label of a band's signing status into a genre of its own.  I suspect that whether Eisley is an "indie band" is largely a matter of perspective: if you're someone who memorized every track on Mass Romantic in 2001 but gave up on The New Pornographers by 2005 because Twin Cinema was too popular, then the notion of Eisley as indie is frankly laughable.  But if you're someone to whom "2010 in music" suggests a steady diet of Drake and Ke$ha, then Eisley is probably just another band that you don't hear on the radio.

All this genre-bending and label-defying can be a good thing--if there's one thing that Eisley is not, it's generic--but it can make their music nearly impossible to describe:
"Sure, I might go to that concert with you.  What sort of music do they play?"
"Uh, well, I guess it's mostly rock, but there's a lot of indie pop in it too, not that they're necessarily an 'indie band'... you really just have to hear it."
"Okay... what are their songs like?"
"I mean, they sing a lot of songs about love and happy people, but then there's this surrealist element that shows up when they start singing about animals growing out of the garden or aliens taking over your body."
I'm pretty sure I've given this actual pitch to try to convince a friend to see Eisley with me.  It wasn't any more convincing then.

Thanks in part to a greater sense of independence in concert-going (but mostly to living in a city that has more abundant public transportation in the part of the city where the concert venues are), I decided it was totally okay for me to go to this Eisley concert on my own.  I'm very glad that I did go, because the combination of venue, opener, and set list is something I doubt I'd ever be able to experience again.

 As Eisley is a band of four DuPree siblings and one cousin, it's fitting that another DuPree, younger sister Christie, opened for them.  (Christie was backed up by yet another DuPree sibling, younger brother Colin.)  Christie DuPree's six or seven songs' worth of opening set were probably the loveliest and lowest-key experience of my concertgoing career.  Both Christie and her music are impressive in how genuine and sincere they are.  The natural comparison, of course, is to her older sisters: her singing voice is a natural contralto, lower than either Stacy's or Sherri's voice.  But her vocal resemblance to Stacy in particular is striking, especially in the soprano register or through sustained notes.

The only knock on Christie DuPree that I've heard is that she hasn't developed as a songwriter enough yet to distinguish herself from the army of acoustic-guitar-wielding female singer/songwriters that patrol the nation's coffeehouses.  I disagree, but to the extent that these critics are correct at all, give her time.  She's young--only twenty--and she's only been at this for a couple of years.  Christie DuPree already has the raw vocal talent, and she comes from a family where "writing good music" comes in the genetics, so I'm already expecting some big things.

On top of that, she's a fantastically nice person, something far too often overlooked in the development of young independent artists.  (Career-development-wise, I suppose it doesn't matter how friendly Jason Derulo is when he's on the radio every time you turn it on.)  After she finished her set, I had the chance to chat with her for a few seconds (sorry, Haley Williams, but your tenure as my biggest girl singer crush is ended) and buy her EP (possibly the indiest thing I've ever purchased: this was a CD-R in a plastic sleeve with the words "Christie DuPree EP" handwritten in black pen), and that alone would have made the evening totally worth it.

But then I wouldn't have gotten to hear Eisley, and that would have been a real shame.  Eisley wasn't touring in support of a new album, instead doing a good old-fashioned romp across the US to play some music.  That, along with Eisley's rather limited catalog, really puts them in a sweet spot for touring: they easily have enough content to put on a satisfying show, but they're more likely than not to play any given song.  (Lesson learned: if you're the sort of person who goes to a concert and figures to be heartbroken if you don't hear one specific song, go see that concert immediately prior to the release of the band's third album.)

Eisley's set list was weighted toward music off their full-length albums, but that was about the only bias in their music selections.  They played half to two-thirds of both Room Noises and Combinations, which took up the majority of the show.  It was fun to see Eisley delve into tracks from old EPs, but as a fan, the most encouraging thing about the show was their new material.  Three of the songs Eisley played were new, slated to appear on their third album (which should release in the spring), and if these songs are any indication, that new album is going to be very, very good.  "Ambulance" in particular is easily one of the strongest things that Eisley has ever written.

But the most distinguishing thing about this concert wasn't the inclusion of new music, it was that the show was entirely acoustic.  (Fans of the band probably noticed a surprising lack of Garron and Weston, the bassist and drummer, in that picture.)  When polled, two-thirds to three-quarters of the audience (including myself) admitted to never having seen Eisley in concert before.  The expressions of the DuPree sisters changed from delight to surprise, then to embarrassment, when they started counting those raised hands.  Sherri even apologized to the fans, saying this probably wasn't the best circumstance to see Eisley for the first time, and Stacy lamented that they weren't "very badass" that evening.

Badass Eisley is great, no question about it.  But toned-down, intimate Eisley is in some ways better.  The show was so relaxed that both Stacy and Sherri took some liberties with their vocals, trying a little improvisation and playing with the rhythms a little.  Stacy tended to overdo it a little, but then again, if I wanted to listen to the album cut of each of their songs, I could just as easily sit in my room and do it.  If it's going to give me a unique concert experience, I'll tolerate some mixed-results experimentation.

One more thing that deserves mention in that "unique concert experience" category was the venue, Swedish American Hall.  I love this venue.  It's easily the least pretentious and most charming venue I've seen in the Bay area.  It's a century old and features some beautiful architecture.  There wasn't any alcohol for sale, which might have been a deterrent for some concertgoers but suited me just fine.  Best of all, their were chairs, so I could enjoy my live music in comfort rather than stand in an awkward semicircular clump around the state and be subject to the whims of six-foot-three guy.

In fact, thinking back on it, none of the nine unforgivable concert fouls were committed at this show.  I'll conclude by leaving you in jealous contemplation of a concert full of good music but sullied by neither weed cloud nor totem-pole couple.


Currently listening: "Sun's Light and Willow's Shade", Christie DuPree

Mae: Goodbye, Goodnight Tour

This was a concert five and a half years in the making.

(That's longer than Isoceleria has been around!)

Ever since March 2005, The Everglow has been at or very near the top of my list of favorite albums.  It's nearly impossible to describe why--I've tried in the past and failed miserably every time.  But it probably has something to do with it being a really, really good album.  The musicianship is outstanding, the scale and execution of the concept are impressive, and the emotion that drives the album (avoiding both traps of being either hipster-ironic-tongue-in-cheek or over-produced-insincere) is genuine.  It definitely has something to do with some personal factors that are even more difficult to express.

Yet, despite my five-year love affair with The Everglow, I never managed to see Mae in concert until last Wednesday.  Mae has been back and forth with their releases since then, but nothing could erase the brilliance of The Everglow, and their enthusiasm and sincerity always seemed like they would produce an excellent live show.  And somehow, I've managed to miss them in concert despite adoring their music since I've known what a concert was--not for lack of trying.

When I found out that Mae was coming to Bottom of the Hill, which has recently become my very favorite place in the Bay area to see a concert, there was no question that I'd be at that concert.  And when Mae started throwing around phrases like "Goodbye, Goodnight," suggesting that this might be their last tour as a band, I jump in it.

Opening were Windsor Drive and Terrible Things, both of which turned out to be reasonable openers for Mae.  Windsor Drive was a fine complement to Mae's gentler, acoustic side, while Terrible Things more closely matched rocker-Mae (or closer still, Anberlin).  I hadn't heard of either band prior to the concert, but seeing both bands turned out to be worth my time, something that can't necessarily be said of every opener out there.

Mae themselves turned out to be everything I've been waiting five and a half years for them to be.  Despite some fluctuation and unfortunate drama with their personnel over the last year or two, Goodbye, Goodnight Mae is Everglow Mae--and that's the only way we fans would have had it.  They were enthusiastic, energetic, and obviously grateful to their fans (to the point of taking pictures of the audience after the concert), and they sounded remarkably cohesive for having not really toured together as a band for years.

While halfway a tour in support of the (E)vening EP, Mae's set list featured songs from every album and every era of their music.  The concert was unsurprisingly Everglow-heavy--apparently there are many, many Mae fans out there who feel the same way I do about that album--with about half to two thirds of the album getting played.  We also got to hear a little over half of Destination: Beautiful, the band's first album, from all the way back in 2003.  The rest of the concert was a smattering of Singularity, the seasonal EP's, and a couple of B-sides/rarities.

Prior to the concert, I made a list of ten songs, saying if Mae was going to play just ten songs for me, I'd want it to be these ten.  I hit seven out of ten: "Embers and Envelopes" and "Sun" from Destination: Beautiful and "Suspension," "Someone Else's Arms," "The Ocean," "Breakdown," and "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making" from The Everglow.  They left off "All Deliberate Speed" from D:B (which surprised me a little, because I think it's a well-known song, and it features a sing-along-ready chorus) and "The Fisherman Song" and "Boomerang/Two Birds" from (M)orning (which surprised me less, since they're both sort of niche songs that undoubtedly took center stage at the Morning tour last year).

Hands down, the best chunk of the concert was the encore.  The main body of the concert had somehow gone by without either "Sun" or "Someone Else's Arms," so during the "let's clap for five minutes even though we all know the show isn't really over" session, I turned to a friend and asked "There's no way Mae play a concert and doesn't play 'Sun,' right?"  A minute later, I got my wish, as Dave Elkins climbed back on stage with an electric-acoustic guitar, smiled, and said "Here's an old one."

As I stood there thinking the concert couldn't get any better, the entire band rejoined Elkins on the stage and launched into the piano-heavy "We're So Far Away".  It's a nice track, and I'm not about to turn down anything from The Everglow, but it seems an odd track to include by itself in a time-constrained encore situation.  But just as it does on the album, the concert "We're So Far Away" was really just a buildup to the sheer exuberance of "Someone Else's Arms," and there was no better way that Mae could have ended the show.

Mae gave its fans more than an hour and a half of music that night, and it was an excellent capstone to the five and a half years of music they've given me already.  If Mae decides to keep on making music after this tour is finished, I'll of course eagerly await it.  But if not, it was a fitting way to say goodbye and goodnight.


Currently listening: "Mass Romantic," the New Pornographers

The Age of Adz: Album and Concert

Sufjan Stevens' proclamation of "electronica influence" for his newest album didn't exactly instill much confidence in many fans.  We want the solemn resilience of Michigan, the understated reverence of Seven Swans, the sincere exuberance of Illinois.  The very mention of "electronic" from an artist who'd build an indie empire out of acoustic, folk, and orchestral modalities just screams "now it is time for my seventh album and I am going to do some crazy experiments with it!"  And experiments go oft awry.

But hey, in 2003, if you'd asked me what I thought of a Ben Gibbard-"electronica" collaboration, I would have said that would be a bad idea too.  And I would have been very, very wrong.  So, bring on Age of Adz and all its electronic glory.

You can tell just by looking the cover that we're not getting the joyous proclamation of America that the Fifty States Project gave us.  Instead, it's raw emotion, something that Stevens dreamed up under some combination of influences including his disenchantment with his earlier, lyrical approach to songwriting; his battle with some mysterious disease over the last year or two; and the post-apocalyptic, schizophrenic art of Royal Robertson.  It's Robertson's treatment of the End of Days that colors a lot of the aesthetic on the album, including some downright "spacey" sound effects that would have seemed miserably out of place on any of Stevens' earlier records (even when the songs were about UFO's.)

At first, I was admittedly Not A Fan of Age of Adz.  I was such a massive fan of Stevens' earlier work--Illinois in particular is easily one of my top ten favorite albums--that any drastic departure from his earlier aesthetic was a change I just did not want to deal with.  Besides, when that change is to intentionally introduce dissonances and elements that make the music sound less good, I'm immediately biased against it.  (When Mae tried it, it didn't work out too well for them either.)

Then again, I was admittedly Not A Fan of All Delighted People, Stevens' ambush of an EP earlier this year... but I warmed up to it after only two or three listens.  In much the same way, I'm warming up to Age of Adz slowly but surely.  The thing to realize here is that Stevens' music is and always has been excellent because he's a master at arranging sound.  Whether that's the banjos and guitars of Michigan, the orchestral explosion of Illinois, or even the blips and buzzes of Age of Adz, Stevens is incredibly good at taking several different sorts of sound at once and putting them all together in a way that makes sense.

Age does have some standout tracks.  "Vesuvius," especially, has quickly become one of my favorite Sufjan Stevens songs ever.  Daring to use volcano imagery, the song begins slowly and quietly before erupting into an incredibly powerful message of following your heart and doing what you feel is right even in the face of dire consequences.  The title track "The Age of Adz," "I Walked," and "Too Much," are all quite good as well.  I'm less a fan of "Get Real Get Right" and "I Want to Be Well," which strike me as experiment for the sake of experimentation rather than for the sake of making interesting and innovative music.  But all in all, Age of Adz has good stuff on it if you know where to look.

So when I had the opportunity to see Sufjan Stevens live, even though I knew most of his material would be from Age, I figured I liked enough of the album that I'd be able to appreciate the live show.  And I'm glad I went.  Stevens doesn't exactly have the reputation for being conventional, and that showed as soon as he took stage--with a dozen people.  Among his retinue were two drummers, two trombone players, a handful of multi-instrumentalists, and two women who serves as both backup vocalists and streamer-waving dancers.  On top of all of that, a video screen behind the stage showed various cosmic and apocalyptic scenes taken from or inspired by Royal Robertson's work roughly synced to the music.  Spectacle is an important reason to see a live show, and Stevens absolutely nails it.

It's true that I'm feeling better about both All Delighted People and The Age of Adz than when I first heard either--and seeing songs from both live certainly helped me appreciate both better.  But it was still a little disappointing when all of Stevens' material save two songs came from either the EP or the recent album.  Of course, Sufjan played "Chicago"--even though this is the single most recognizable artifact of an era that he's clearly trying to distance himself from, there's no way Sufjan Stevens plays a concert and the fans let him get away with not playing "Chicago".  Stevens' encore started with the opening track from Illinois, which contains "UFO" and (in true circa-2005 Sufjan Stevens style) about ten other words, and it's a nice piano piece, but I would have liked even more Illinois throughout the show.

Though seeing most of the songs live helped me appreciate them better, I'm still not convinced that "Impossible Soul" is any good at all.  It's an oblique, 25-minute sprawl that closes the album, which Stevens referred (potentially tongue-in-cheek) to as his "magnum opus".  It's the potential tongue-in-cheek nature of this entire song that bothers me.  For a few miserable minutes in the middle of it, Stevens decides it's cool to use auto-tune.  This could be for one of two reasons: either he thinks this effect actually sounds good or he's going for a supremely hipster irony in smugly referencing a pop music phenomenon.  The first reason is simply incorrect; the second is actually more dangerous because it represents a departure from the deeply emotional sincerity we've come to expect from Sufjan Stevens.

Much like a metaphor for the entire album, "Impossible Soul" has its good parts, its parts I could do without, and its parts I can't really stand to listen to.  The Age of Adz is something I can get used to--but that means it's strictly worse than Illinois, which was utterly brilliant the first time I listened to it and has remained equally as utterly brilliant the dozens of times I've listened to it since.  As I've said before, Sufjan Stevens will not and should not be an artist who re-releases Illinois six times, puts his feet up on his desk, and sips cognac.  But we wouldn't mind it if he decided to release, say, Arkansas instead of Some Galaxy Following a Supernova.


Currently listening: "Adlai Stevenson", Sufjan Stevens

Three Dudes at a Paramore Concert

Admit it: however rational, respectable, and artistic the rest of your musical taste is, you have that one musical guilty pleasure hanging out on your iPod.  Disco?  Kylie Minogue?  50 Cent?  I won't judge--I can't--because I too have a musical guilty pleasure.  It's pop-punk, in all its shapes and sizes, but in particular the angsty, high-school, half-assed-rebellious glory that is Paramore.

And I'll be the first to admit it: Paramore's music is not really that special.  Their biggest hit, "Misery Business," is about as lyrically creative as an emo fifteen-year-old's Xanga account circa 2003.  Their electrically driven brand of pop-punk hasn't been original since Green Day gave us Dookie in 1994 (back when they were still good and hadn't started whining about politics).  And they only know how to write a handful of musical tempos and dynamics: loud and fast, loud and sort of fast, quieter and really slow.

Paramore transcends that heap of mediocrity to become just plain good in a way that's difficult to express or even make sense of.  They're credible musicians, if not necessarily virtuosos.  Their songs are infectiously catchy in a way that makes you want to listen to them over and over again, even though you know you're not going to get anything more out of them the second (or seventh... consecutive) time.  And Hayley Williams, the group's feisty and fire-haired girl singer is legitimately talented.

In fact, it's Hayley (yes, apparently she and I are on a first-name basis) that gives the band any distinction at all.  Without her, they'd be a competent but forgettable addition to the middle-2000s slate of pop-punk bands and entirely overshadowed by the likes of Fall Out Boy, Motion City Soundtrack, Sum 41... and just about everyone else who was making music last decade.  It's no secret that I like rock music with girl singers--in fact, I have a Pandora station called Awesome Girl Singer Stuff that prominently features Paramore (also Eisley, Vedera, Rilo Kiley, and a handful of Scottish female singer/songwriters).  It's a nice aesthetic, and it gives me an instant celebrity crush, so what's not to like?

And it was mainly the promise of seeing what sort of antics that Hayley would come up with live that got me excited about going to see Paramore in concert.  One day in May, I stumbled upon a television commercial advertising their coming tour (try finding a television commercial proclaiming the Decemberists coming to town) and I knew I'd be going to that show.  I half-jokingly floated the idea to a few friends... and four months later, there we were in downtown San Jose, three twentysomething dudes going to see Paramore in concert.  Better yet, although I was genuinely excited about seeing the band, I could still play it off as hipster irony if anyone really pressed me on it.

Nothing about the concert disappointed.  From before we even parked, we knew that our anticipation of the demographic was hilariously accurate: teenagers abounded, with about one in three concertgoers looking to be a seventeen-year-old girl or her barely-fighting-the-scowl boyfriend (who was probably secretly into the music anyway).  In true signs of the times, the massive screen above the stage showed closeups of the band during the show (which is incredibly helpful in such a massive venue as the HP Pavilion), and during the set changes, it was filled with "<3"-laden texts from high schoolers.  (Our plan, fueled by a handful of beers, to start trolling the text board with messages touting the superiority of Berkeley to their high school, never quite came to pass.)  And once Paramore actually started playing, an alarmingly piercing shriek resounded from the audience, many members of which knew every single word of everything Paramore played.

The first surprise at the concert, a pleasant one, was the sheer amount of music we got to experience.  The tickets said 6:30, but we weren't sure if that was the door time or the show time, so we arrived fashionably late at 7:30... only to find ourselves in the middle of the second of three opening bands.  Usually, "second of three opening bands" spells certain obscure doom, but in Paramore's case, they'd managed to bring along New Found Glory, a band that everyone has at least heard of.  The third opener, in a slight breach of concert protocol was the lesser-known Tegan and Sara.

I've heard about three songs each by both New Found Glory and Tegan and Sara, and I find concerts a miserable venue to learn new music, but both bands put on the sort of performance that if I were a fan, I would have enjoyed immensely.  (The best thing that Tegan and Sara did was be dryly hilarious in a way that the teenage audience didn't necessarily pick up on.  The best example was when they proclaimed that Paramore would "rock the shit out of this place," an amusingly inappropriate sentiment to deliver to a bunch of fifteen-year-olds.)

Paramore themselves came on at roughly 10:00 and played at least a solid hour of music.  Minus set changes, that meant I got three and a half hours of music, and I would have gotten another hour or so if I'd bothered to show up on time.  Unsurprisingly, the set list was weighted toward more recent material--they played nearly all of their 2009 album Brand New Eyes, a handful of the better-known tracks from 2007's Riot, and a song or two from their freshman All We Know is Falling, released in 2005.  I have a new-found appreciation for both "Emergency" and "Pressure" (from Falling)--it's amazing what six years of touring and maturation do for your sound.  The album cuts of both songs almost sounded like lo-fi garage rock in comparison to their live performances.  Unfortunately, I couldn't gain the same respect for tracks like "Misguided Ghosts" and "Playing God" (from Brand New Eyes), which are still boring even live in concert... and "The Only Exception" (also from Eyes) is still boring and infuriatingly angsty.

Paramore played a few acoustic versions of some of their songs, which I could take or leave--though I understand the necessity for slowing the tempo and lowering the volume in the middle of a high-intensity show.  They only played one cover, and it was Hayley singing a country song.  Normally, I like covers, especially if they're of super-obscure songs that I happen to know.  Not being the world's biggest country fan, I couldn't tell you if the one Hayley sang is well-known or not--but it turns out she's a pretty darn good country vocalist.  I said so to one of the guys I was with during the show, and he admitted that "she's a pretty darn good vocalist in general."

Yet another part of the concert that didn't disappoint was the appearance of several of the top concert don'ts.  Six-foot-three guy, totem pole couple, and spilling your beer all happened.  Elbowing your way to the front and "you mind if I squeeze in here?" probably did too, but in our advanced age, it wasn't like we were rocking out on the floor next to all the really enthusiastic fans.  The good thing about going to a concert populated with a bunch of only-mildly-rebellious high schoolers?  No weed cloud or getting in fights.  It seems there are worse people to sit down and listen to some generic pop-punk with.

One striking part of the show for me was  its unabashed corporatism.  It wasn't a Paramore tour, even, it was the "Honda Civic Tour with Paramore and Tegan and Sara".  It was certainly the first concert I've been to that was headlined by a car.  During set changes, we had to watch commercials for the Honda Civic--I'm not even making this up--prompting one of my friends to lament that we were "paying to watch a commercial."  "Yeah, we are," I responded.  "I'd love to see them try to get away with this in the East Bay."

For a lot of reasons, the unabashed corporatism being one, and the immense scale of the venue and the performers being another, this was not a concert that could have happened in the East Bay.  On the other hand, it was one that I was perfectly happy having to travel to the South Bay to be able to go to.  It might not be bleeding-edge indie cool to be a fan of Paramore... but it's also impossible to deny that they put on a fine show.


Currently listening: "Viola", This is Ivy League

Concert Don'ts

In the last few weeks, I've had the pleasure of attending concerts from both Minus the Bear and Flight of the Conchords. Both shows were fantastic. I would strongly recommend either of them. But a few friends and I noticed some troubling patterns of behavior in our fellow concertgoers.

Six-foot-three guy: Obviously I'm not going to sit here and call you out on your height. You can't change the fact that you have four inches on me, and almost nine on the average American concertgoer. What you can change, however, is where you're putting those inches. If you're going to tower over the rest of the crowd, do us all a favor and tower over it from the relative back. Rule of thumb: if you can comfortably take a picture by lifting your camera over my head, you're encouraged to do so.

Totem-pole couple: As a sort of corollary to "six-foot-three guy", if you're closer to 5'3" than 6'3", it is not okay to perch yourself on your boyfriend's shoulders and then stand in front of everyone. In this case, I might suggest the method of "stand closer to the stage"... as long as you've gotten there legitimately, of course.

Elbowing to the front: Look, I appreciate that you're a fan of the band, and that you're excited to see them live and in person. After all, that's why you're at their concert. But... I'm a fan of the band too, and I'm also excited to see them live and in person. After all, that's why I'm at the concert. If it's imperative to you to stand twelve feet nearer the stage, then I admit being a lesser fan than you. In that case, it would befit you to arrive earlier than I do so you can secure that prime spot.

Spilling your beer: I don't feel like I should even have to say this, because presumably you paid money for your beer, and it is not something you would like to waste. But an inordinate amount of time, it would appear that the enjoyment you derive from drenching the floor in front of me with beer is greater than what you would have gotten from drinking it.

Make-out couple: If you started saliva-swapping on some street corner, chances are good that you'd get some dirty looks, and people would sarcastically tell you to "get a room" or something similar. Therefore, why would you assume it's okay to do it at a concert? I'm all for affection, but might I suggest the more subtle "holding hands" or "arm around the other person"?

Getting in a fight: To quote Jake Snider, lead singer of Minus the Bear, "we're all cool people... how about you just relax and enjoy the music?" Seriously, if you feel like you must join a mosh pit (and a Minus the Bear concert is an odd place to do that, to be sure), keep it peaceful.

Weed cloud: I'm every bit libertarian enough not to care if you want to go to the privacy of your own home, light one up, and rock out to some Minus the Bear. That does not mean I want to smell it at a concert.

"You mind if I squeeze in here?": Let's think about this for a second. We're at an event with general admission seating. I'm on row 15 out of 20, which is not the best seat in the house, but at least it's not on the lawn behind all the bleachers. All of the seats in the bleachers--all of them--are taken. During an intermission, you see some open seats. Either 1) you have stumbled upon the only three open seats in the whole venue, or 2) those three people are using the restroom. Which seems more likely?

Wearing the shirt of a lesser band: It's a bit like wearing a Mississippi State shirt to a Florida-Alabama football game. You're supporting a direct competitor, and not even one that's any good. It's bizarre and out of place. I think you could get away with wearing a shirt of an entirely different kind of band--like wearing a Juliana Theory shirt to a Flight of the Conchords concert, or a Cal shirt to the aforementioned Florida-Alabama game.

But wearing a Phoenix shirt to either Minus the Bear or Flight of the Conchords? Nope. I'll conclude with a quote from my friend Nicki, who actually knows what she's talking about when it comes to music: "Phoenix is a band for people who haven't bothered to discover anything better. Not bad, but this album is absurdly overrated."


Currently listening: "Goodbye Girl", the Shins covering Squeeze

Vedera, Live at the Fillmore

Anyone attempting to find a record of the "Vedera concert" at the Fillmore on 11/5/09 will probably not find it. By all rights, it was the "Mat Kearney concert", with Vedera as an opening band. This marks the first time in my concert-going career that I've gone to a show for the sole purpose of seeing the opening band. If this smacks of indie-kid obscurism to you, it does to me too, and I sort of resent it.

Most of the reason I resent it is because Vedera is good--really good. It's just that Vedera doesn't have the massive fan base that's probably required to sustain a headlined tour. But they're clearly accomplished enough musically to headline their own tour, with two full-length albums out. And they're experienced enough; as Kristen May said, they've been a touring band for five years now. I can only hope that as Vedera continues to open for bigger-name acts like Mat Kearney and Eisley, and huge-name acts like the Fray, that they'll become a big-name act themselves.

In other words, while I might be awfully indie-kid in liking a band before they make it big, I'm decidedly not so indie-kid in that I want them to enjoy mainstream success. Fortunately for everyone involved, their fan base seems to be growing by the day, at least if their Facebook "fan" numbers are any indication. And they should continue to grow as long as Vedera keeps putting on concerts like they did in San Francisco.

Probably the most striking thing about the concert was the audience reaction to it. "Their singer is amazing." "She [Kristen May] is adorable." "I didn't know of these guys at all, but I'm buying the album." "I was really impressed." All of that suggests to me that all Vedera needs to do is maintain the aggressive approach to big tours and generating publicity, and they'll do just fine.

The concert itself, unsurprisingly, presented like a sales pitch for the most recent album, Stages. May gently reminded the audience to go buy the album at every opportunity she got--and at least her efforts appeared to have paid off. The set list was more or less straight down Stages, with a couple songs left off and a few others out of order. I might have liked to hear some of the older stuff too, but it's so different from the new material that it probably would have seemed out of place. Save it for the headlined tour, I suppose.

May remarked at the beginning that she had "butterflies in [her] stomach playing the Fillmore." You could tell--May started the evening a little hesitant, without going for the vocal "big plays" that fans know her for. By the end, though, all that trepidation seems to have vanished; "We Sing" was an enormously powerful performance to end the show. The "audience participation" gimmick in that song was fun, and it would have worked much better had the crowd been better sports in singing along.

One of May's most endearing traits during the concert turned out to be that shy nervousness from playing such an iconic venue combined with her coy flirting with the audience. (Bad, bad news for male fans of Vedera: Kristen May is married--actually to the band's guitarist, Brian Little.) Asking the audience if it was our "first date" with her (it was for most of us), maintaining an upbeat indie glamor throughout, and offering signatures and hugs after the concert (I got one of each) is the sort of thing that goes a long way toward building enthusiasm for seeing future shows. And even though I'm never (publicly) going to congratulate myself for "discovering" Vedera before the mainstream music community does, I can't say it wasn't amazing standing close enough to the stage to see the sparkle in Kristen's eye.

Only one regret from the concert: I forgot my damn camera. Photography during the concert was "not allowed", so I had to resort to furtive pictures taken on my phone, none of which turned out to look any good at all. And the lighting conditions were downright horrible when I tried to get pictures with the band, so what ought to have been me, Brian, and Kristen, ended up looking like some hideous red blurs. Still, the chance to meet both of them was fantastic--they're genuine, gracious people who clearly appreciate their fans and are willing to take some time out after their show to talk with them.

So go buy some of their music.


Currently listening: The Blue Album, Weezer

The Hazards of Love, Live

If you're a Decemberists fan, like the new album and have a chance to catch the Hazards of Love tour, by all means do. The format is this: Hazards of Love in its entirety, about twenty minutes' (well-deserved) break for the band, and then roughly an hour of old music too.

I've been a big, big supporter of Hazards of Love since I first heard it, but after hearing this concert, I don't know how you could dislike the album. Most of what I said in my review of the album still stands, with a few new observations.

The band does a wonderful job, as it always does in concert. Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond, who plays the role of Margaret) is excellent. But it's Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond, who plays the role of the Queen) who really steals the show with her stage antics. Excellently cast.


Colin Meloy and Shara Worden, my new favorite person. Who knew the brooding, villainous Forest Queen was so short and cute?

Listening to the album by itself, I've been finding it easier and easier to stop listening after "Annan Water", because the songs seem to get less exciting after that. But remembering the theatrical conceit, of course the songs should get less exciting after "The Crossing", which is the climax of the story. (Specifically, I think it's the cool rock organ/electric guitar bit that really seems like a sonic destination for the album.) Seeing the whole production live, those songs become not only necessary but narratively interesting.

Because the framework of the album is more theater than pop record, this is a collection of songs that really does improve when you see it live. We get scenery, costuming, lighting effects. To carry out the stage performance a few steps further, it might have been cool to do some scene changes--though the background pulled off both "forest" (with green lighting) and "river" (with blue lighting).

This probably strains the upper limit of feasibility, but how about recasting the entire staging to put the band in a pit, orchestra-style? Obviously, the point of the pit is to hide the orchestra, and the point of a live concert is to watch the band. I'm not advocating covering up the band, but maybe there's a spatial organization that creates visual distinction between the "actors" (Colin Meloy and/or Shara Worden and/or Becky Stark, depending on who's important at the time) and the "band" (John Moen, Chris Funk, Nate Query, Jenny Conlee).

And as long as we're going over the top anyway, how about live fireflies?

The rest of the show promised a "tidy selection" of old material, but we ended up with as much material is in Hazards of Love--not that that's a bad thing by any means! The general aim seemed to be to hit a highlight or two from each old album.

If I were momentarily in charge of picking the Decemberists' set list, and I knew that the goal was two songs from The Crane Wife, I certainly wouldn't have picked "O Valencia!" and "Shankhill Butchers". Personally, I'm partial to "The Island", but since that's stylistically very similar to The Hazards of Love, I can understand the not wanting to play it. That restriction probably rules out and of the "Crane Wife" cycle too.

With those constraints in mind, the obvious next choice is "Yankee Bayonet". It's not a song that's easy to perform on tour--you absolutely need a female vocalist to cover the duet part, or the song doesn't work at all. On this tour, though, we have not one but two talented female vocalists, so the Decemberists could have taken their pick--or used them both. I also like "Summersong" a lot, but that one never seemed to catch on with the general fan base as much as I think it should have. Failing "Summersong", I guess "O Valencia!" is an acceptable substitute. I never really got into "Shankhill Butchers", though. I think it's too much buildup, too much brooding tension, and no payoff.

On the other hand, if I had to pick two songs from Picaresque, "The Engine Driver" and "16 Military Wives" would have been up there on my list as well as the Decemberists'. I don't agree with putting politics into music in almost any case, but damned if the Decemberists don't make "16 Military Wives" fun to sing in person. They probably do the "pit halves of the audience against each other" during the "la di dah" bit of the chorus at every show... and it never gets less awesome. (Do they ever perform "The Infanta" on tour? It was the first Decemberists song I heard and still among my favorites.)

The crowd's tepid response to "Raincoat Song" showed how few people payed attention to Always the Bridesmaid. It was pleasant if not particularly memorable. I was surprised to hear "Shiny", which has been around for something like nine years now, and I get the idea it's not oft-performed on tour. Probably the Decemberists just seized the opportunity of "well, we have this steel guitar around, so let's do something with it." I sort of psyched myself into thinking we'd get "California One" too, as long as the steel guitar was just sitting there, but no such luck.

"July, July!" is still one of the most fun songs the Decemberists do, so I was glad to see it show up. "The Bachelor and the Bride" is still not my favorite song, but at least it sounded good. And I wonder if they end most shows with "A Cautionary Song", or if they just coincidentally did at both of the shows I've been to? Those two accordion chords are a darn fine way to end a show.

One thing that absolutely deserves mention is the Decemberists' improv theater. You've got Colin Meloy on stage, backed up by Jenny Conlee on accordion and Nate Query on bass. Chris Funk, John Moen, Shara Worden, and Becky Stark are standing in front of the stage, and Colin Meloy starts making up a story about trains and gypsies. In true "Whose Line" style, the actors and the music change in time with what Meloy calls out. The result is something profoundly entertaining and something that gives further proof--as if we needed it--as to the Decemberists' artistic mastery.


Currently listening: "Don't Bring Me Down", Electric Light Orchestra

Stars Concert (and Various Other Sundries)

At Tech, pursuant to all that I've noticed about the population and related behaviors, there's something fishy about the weekends. Either people shut themselves in their rooms or flee campus like Abaddon himself brought the keys to the Pit of Fire and unleashed it upon the Kessler Campanile. (There is something shady about that place...) In downtown Athens, this is not the case. People are out, walking around, doing things, and not wearing a perpetual "the world is out to screw me" frown.

I was later assured that no, it's not some sort of fantastical paradise, just an extension of the UGA bubble. That's in much the same way, for instance, that Atlantic Station or the Howell Mill Kroger seems like an extension of the Tech bubble at times. (Tangent: that Howell Mill Kroger has been very, very good to me, on at least three occasions. They carry Stewart's Key Lime, for goodness' sake.) Essentially, it's yet another "grass is greener" case. But I do need to go back sometime.

My reason for being in Athens in the first place was to go to a concert by the band Stars. They're a bit on the obscure side, so I'll try to elucidate their music a bit. They're Canadian, and they describe their own music as "indie rock", but if you really want to pick and call it "indie pop" you wouldn't be off-base either. The first description of their music I heard was "like the Postal Service" which isn't incorrect, but I think a more apt description is "like the Postal Service, but a bit less electronic." Or, if you wanted to go further on a limb, "a bit like Rilo Kiley but less folksy." Even "sort of like Metric but a lot more melodic." If you can get those three to converge into a consistent sound, that's Stars. Last.fm also lists similar bands to be The New Pornographers and the Most Serene Republic, both bands that I have heard of and would probably like but am unfamiliar with.

One thing I feel like I need to bring up even before the concert itself: timing. Given "doors open at 8 pm" and "two opening bands", Matt logic would go something like this. Give people half an hour to straggle in, and for the opening bands to get their crap together. Start playing at 8:30, allot half an hour for each band, stop at 9:30. Allow 30 minutes for a set change (in my opinion, those things never need to take longer than 15 minutes, but I'll be generous here). No reason Stars should start playing any later than 10. Matt logic would have been incorrect. My intrepid band of concertgoers rolls in at 10:40 or so, and we still have to wait a few minutes to hear the main attraction. (That said, our timing was downright impeccable.) Perhaps this is too harsh, but I'd really like it if bands gave a reasonable approximation of their start time, not some wishful thinking to get everyone milling about for the better part of an hour.

The concert itself didn't disappoint. Like every show, it had its strong and weak points. One of the less-than-stellar (ha! pun!) points of the concert was the tendency to turn backs to the audience at otherwise-impressive technical moments. Big guitar solo? Better hide my guitar. Crucial riff on some synthesizer? Can't make eye contact with the people listening to it. That's not unique to Stars--it happens at just about every concert I've been to recently. And it's sort of irritating.

Some Stars fans would add another weak point was "anything that came off the most recent album". I've had that one since it came out (okay, since I got to the US after it came out), and I wrote a largely positive review of it. Yet several people I've talked to that have been Stars fans for a while disliked it. Why the negativity?

First, I believe that Heart and Set Yourself on Fire are sort of similar in character (the two albums before the most recent), and that Set Yourself on Fire and In Our Bedroom After the War are sort of similar too. If you're a Stars fan who's been listening to the early stuff since 2005, and this comes along in mid-2007, it's probably tougher to reconcile than for someone like me.

Second, the album contains a lot of what I've started calling "tofu songs". That is, they're neither remarkably good nor bad on their own. Instead, they take on the flavor of the rest of the album. And the rest of the album is gimmicky in parts. "Genova Heights", "Life 2", "Personal", "Barricade", and the title track all have some amount of gimmick to them. If you don't buy into the gimmick, you're probably going to hate these songs. Then, even give the strength of the truly good songs, the filler "tofu" is going to seem that much worse.

And finally, something I touched on back in August, the track placement is bad. You hear "The Night Starts Here" and "Take Me to the Riot" and think "yes, this is good music." Then, when the rest of the album fails to deliver to that standard, you naturally get disappointed.

While a lot of Stars' unique sound comes from the female vocalist Amy Millan, it's clear that the real showmanship comes from the male frontman Torquil Campbell (hey, he's Canadian). He was the one behind all the audience interaction, the one really getting us into the act. Even more impressively, he showed talent in both tenor and falsetto ranges, in addition to key harmonica, the mini Korg that so plagued Stars all night, and even the trumpet. I'd always assumed that the trumpet licks were studio jobs, and maybe on the CDs they were. But when Campbell pulled out a trumpet and did a surprisingly credible job, that pretty much made the concert for me.

Add that to a chance to break the Tech bubble (albeit entering the UGA one) and some excellent company, and it ended up being a great time. And as always after a concert, I have some awful amalgamation of the collective works of Stars stuck in my head.

Another concert alert: Eisley is headlining a tour, and they're coming to Atlanta. I'm not missing this one. But exactly one of three hundred-something people whom I'm friends with on Facebook proclaims to like them.... it's going to be a tough sell to get people to come along.


Currently listening: "What I'm Trying to Say," Stars, and "Listen," Chicago