Friday, June 5, 2009

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Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 02:13 PM PDT

Christmas Eve 2007, I paid my king’s ransom for a movie ticket to see the feel-good-hit-of-the-season, Juno. In all of its improbable caustic teenage wit, something other than the teen pregnancy caught me while I was crushing all over Michael Cera– a very well placed joke. Well, not a joke. While Ellen Page is trying to storm out on the all of a sudden creep , she tears into him one last time by demeaning his favorite band: “Oh and you know what? I bought another album and it sucked… it’s just noise.” That was harsh, Juno. Though her diss was provoked by a torrent of hormones, her sentiments have been echoed in the thirty plus year lifespan of one of alternative rock’s reigning royalty.51cgns2dql_ss500_

I’ve had snuck into mixes made by friends with “superior” musical tastes and I mostly skip over it or forget that a song is even playing. Musically, I appreciate what does, but in reality I can’t name any of their songs let alone hum a few bars of a popular one. This isn’t an indictment on the band or their newest release– mainly it’s an indictment on my lack of expertise. I saw it as an opportunity to listen to something well-established with a fresh mind rather than comparing it to everything else has ever recorded.

Indie rock husband and wife, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon established in the late 1970s and made it their business to make the noisiest rock imaginable to demonstrate their music ability without being super polished like their contemporaries at the time. This attitude and commitment to their principles afforded a longevity that is rare in any industry. By 2009, can promise that their newest work possesses the same level of earnest rock that sets them apart from the pack. Gordon told Nylon that their work on Matador, their first without Geffen Records in almost twenty years, was like their “apprenticeship was over” and they felt the freedom to do what they did best– surprise, impress and provoke. Sure, I rolled my eyes at a few songs and I wanted to give up after “Anti-Orgasm”– the second track. However, I had a long bus ride and no more NPR podcasts to catch up on and no more excuses. My patience was certainly rewarded with literarily constructed songs like “Antennae” and “What We Know”. ’s hard rock sound is well-worn without sounding tired and the lyrics are constructed over years of experience in a noticeably grownup way.

Yes, Juno MacGuff did come up with a pithy comeback for a creepy guy, but is supposed to sound like that– that’s why people love and respect their accomplishments and experiments. Noisy? Yes. Bad? Absolutely not. I was pleasantly surprised that I listened to a few tracks more than once and can sing along to “Thunderclap (For Bobby Pyn)”. Clearly for a fan, The Eternal offers a different level of entertainment that I took from it; but, my experience was mostly enjoyable. Maybe I’ve been missing out all these years?

Be sure to try and catch this summer: it’ll be noisy and hot but completely worth the sweat.

Sonic Youth - “Sacred Trickster”

Tracklisting:
01. Sacred Trickster
02. Anti-Orgasm
03. Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso)
04. Antennae
05. What We Know
06. Calming the Snake
07. Poison Arrow
08. Malibu Gas Station
09. Thunderclap (For Bobby Pyn)
10. No Way
11. Walkin Blue
12. Massage the History

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The Eternal
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Chairlift - “Bruises”

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 09:51 AM PDT

Chairlift: website | myspace

Does You Inspire You
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Dot to Dot Interview with: Edd Gibson and Ed Macfarlane of Friendly Fires (Part 1)

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 09:45 AM PDT

One of the hottest acts in the world of British dance electropop is a trio of mates from St. Albans known simply as Friendly Fires. I had the pleasure of chatting with two of their members, and , just hours before they took the stage at Rock City as headliners of the Dot to Dot Festival in Nottingham, England, on the 24th of May.

In this first installment of my three-part interview with them, guitarist Edd and singer/bassist/synth man Ed tell me about recording their debut album, what it was like traveling all over America, and an exciting new addition to their live show.

dottodotgraphic1
Mary Chang, PopWreckoning: I'm in Nottingham, England, at the Dot to Dot Festival with "the" band of the moment, Friendly Fires. Ed and Edd – Ed with one “d,” Edd with two “d”s.
, Friendly Fires: That's right.
MC: How are you guys doing? Thanks for sitting down with me.
EG: Doing well, thank you. (grins)
, Friendly Fires: Yeah, lovely, amazing weather today. Nottingham has a lovely park called the Arboretum. We’ve been sitting, drinking beer in the sun…
EG: (interjects) Drinking hot beer!
EM: Yeah, hot beer. Yeah, I'm getting the kind of “two beer blues” at the moment, I need to get myself back up.
EG: Just got to ride the storm so to come through on the other side. (all laugh)

MC: Before we go any further, do you mind terribly introducing yourselves, and what you contribute to the Friendly Fires sound?
EG: I am , and I play the guitar and feign vocals – I can’t sing properly. I haven't got much rhythm to me. I just stick to what I can do.
EMac (to Edd): You contribute lots of washy, delayed, droney guitar lushness.
EG: Hey up, listen to this guy! (chuckles)
MC: See, he's building you up! (all laugh)

EMac: I’m , and I contribute playing synths with loads of delays, ’cause I can't play in time. And it’s all washy so no one will ever know. And I sing…I try to sing in tune, and I dance around on stage. Yeah.
EG: You do a bit of go-go, a bit of bass…
EMac: Yeah a little bit of bass, a little bit of go-go as well. I try! (smiles, nods) Yeah, so I play lots of instruments, but I can’t play any of them of particularly well.
MC: No, I wouldn’t say that, either of you.
EG/EMac: You’re very nice!
MC: I can’t tell, let me put it that way!
EG: Yeah, that’s what we need! (laughs)

MC: So…if you don’t mind, let's talk about your debut album a little bit. As a whole I felt it was a great, cohesive unit of dance euphoria. My only complaint: it was too short!
EMac: We get that a lot.
MC: What was it like recording it? I heard you recorded it entirely in a garage?
ffmyspace1EMac: Yeah, we kinda started with…we did “Photobooth”, yeah, “Photobooth” was the first one we started recording. Yeah, we did it in our garage, and it was mainly because there were no studios in the area that we could use that were any good, we didn’t know any producers, and we didn’t have any money. And um, yeah, it seemed the easiest way of doing it.
There were so many benefits to recording it ourselves, because we were in total control of what we were creating. And it’s kinda affected us positively and negatively in some ways, because we started working with Paul Epworth now, and it’s quite hard to have someone else sort of taking control of the situation, when you’re used to sitting there and making it sound exactly how you want it to sound. You’ve got to learn to be at little more at ease with, yeah, what’s other people’s input, and other people’s ideas of what’s good.
MC: Yeah, and I thought the finished product was so polished. That’s why I was so surprised to hear you recorded it in a garage, um…
EG: All done on one microphone!

MC: Yeah, how in the world did you manage?
EG: (points to Ed) Yeah, this guy laboring night and day.
MC (to Ed): A lot of sleepless nights, I’m sure!
EM: Yeah, we had to put one microphone over the high hat, yeah. (mimics air drumming with sound) And say to Jack [Jack Savidge, their drummer], “hey, you have to hit the tom at this point!” (continues air drumming)
EG: It's really weird, it’s like dissecting everything down to single kinds of parts, then building it back up again. But that means, yeah, you get the best sound out of everything when you focus on everything individually.

MC: But did you end up doing everything a thousand times?
EMac: Uh, no, we wasn’t just…we didn’t have to do everything a thousand times, it just takes longer because you have to do everything separately. But, kind of in a way, I think the record sounds quite electronic. It's only now we’ve been able to record a drum kit as a full drum kit and trying to make things sound, a little more natural, a little more real. But I still think our first record has a kind of human element. Not just like an electronic processed record. Like I hear [the] Killers’ records and Bloc Party records, and you hear the drum sounds and you’re just like, it doesn’t sound like a human being even remotely playing it. It's so quantized. The effects are kind of, you know what I mean (mimics repetitive drum pattern). It sounds like a really linear drum sound. I think we try to avoid that. By recording our album the way we did, it sounds a little bit strange and odd, but it doesn’t sound really uninspired, boring, and linear.
MC: You mean completely computerized or something.
EM: Yeah, yeah, done in a completely computerized way. And though it is…
MC: Yeah, but it’s pieced, that's the thing. It’s not like you pressed a button and the drums just go for the whole time.
EM: Like the computer's doing all the work. Exactly.

MC: What impressed me the most when I saw you guys perform in D.C. in March for the “NME Presents” tour – exactly 2 months to the day, March 24th incidentally! - was how well your sound translates to the live performance. Because as you mentioned, a lot of bands rely on computerized stuff to make themselves sound good on their records and when you see them live, they’re terrible.
EMac: Yeah.

MC: What do you think helps you in terms of the live performance that makes you sound great? Is it special chemistry of you guys writing together, playing together?
EG: Well, I dunno, we all busy ourselves as much as we can, and there’s a lot of energy between us that comes from us playing together back when we were playing all punk songs early on, kind of chaotic thrashing about, having genuine fun.
EM: And there’s no real desire to imitate the record as well.
MC: Right.
EM: Like, when we play “Jump in the Pool”. If you listen to the record, there are bongo parts, loads of them, and you’re missing a lot of that live. And it doesn’t really matter, it’s substituted with different guitar lines or different synth parts. Yeah, we’re never worried about trying to just play the record, we want to do something different.
EG: And when we’re recording, we never think, “we can't do this live, so we can't do this on recordings.” We've got to embrace what's then and there.
EM: I think it works well because yeah, I mean definitely we've been together in a band for like, 10 years. We've gotten used to the way that each person takes direction, and we know what to expect.

MC: This leads to another question I had: so you guys have been playing together for 10 years, and now you're constantly in each other’s faces, performing together, and sharing a tour bus. When you go home, do you feel like you need to have a mandatory break from each other?
EG: No, when we go home, we've got to try to record the next album.
EMac: (looks at Mary in mock disgust) What? There is no break. (looks at Mary with deadpan expression, then smiles and laughs)
EG: I think we get 11 days’ holiday at the start of June…
EM: (gives Edd a funny look) I’m not having a holiday, I’m writing music! (chuckles)
EG: So I dunno, that’s the first time we'll have off from each other since January. We still spend time together, like we were in the park together earlier. (smiles)

MC: That’s one thing that I think is really great about you guys – having been mates before you started playing together.
EG: Yeah, I find it really odd that you could form a band and be launched in the world so soon, because you have to learn everyone’s foibles and how to get along with them in such a limited space. You see those horrible reality tv shows like Big Brother, or I guess the Real World, and they’re screaming at each other, and this [gestures to the tour bus we're sitting in] is a tenth of the size of those places. I’ve got respect for people who can do it, I would not want to be in their shoes.

MC: Yeah, well I was just walking up those steps thinking “this is total claustrophobia” and you guys are taller than me! I don't know how you do it. (Edd and Ed laugh) So, this is like home for you guys for how many weeks now?
EM: Months now…(low chuckle)
EG: Uh, 13, 14 weeks?
EM: Yeah.
EG: Well, we were in a different tour bus in America, but they’re pretty much all the same.
EM: (nods) Hmmm, yeah, they’re all the same.
MC: (laughs) Well, at least it’s somewhat comfortable, because I know you didn't have a tour bus the first time you toured America.
EG: Yeah. Although we did get to see a lot more of the country. It’s a good way to see it, not the ideal way when you're trying to get proper rest, sitting upright in a chair. Last time we were in a [tour] bus, you just kind of play your show, and then sleep during your journey, so you don’t see any of the country, and you wake up in a new city.
EM: And then you go to a Denny’s or something.
EG: And that’s your America! (laughs)
ffll20081EM: I remember that tour with , it was amazing because we drove through, like, the Rocky Mountains, just snow everywhere, and you’re gonna have to stay awake. Our sound person was driving as well, and I had to sit in front with her, asking, “all you all right? Any insanity going on in there?” (all laugh)
MC: Miles and miles of the same landscape, man!
EG: Right. The Badlands. Really boring!
EM: When we were driving through the Rockies, there were loads of cones everywhere, it’s like playing that computer game, dodging all those cones, you know? (all laugh) But yeah, you know, I like that, I kind of miss it in a way. I know a couple people in our crew don’t mind, but I don’t particularly like sleeping on the bus. I kind of like the traveling in the day, then sleeping. Especially at hotels in America, the beds are so fucking massive! Catering to large Americans, they’re not as slender like me, so that means I've got room to roll around and stretch out.

MC: Um, okay, so let’s go back to the album. I know I have my favorites off the album and the songs off your 2006 EP – how about you, are there songs that hold special meaning to you with the way they were recorded, or perhaps a particular night when you’ve performed them on tour?
EG: Um, I dunno, there are definite songs I prefer. I really like “Strobe,” I think because it sounds very different on the record from when we perform it live, so I can still easily listen to that, because I haven't heard the same version for so long. But playing live, there are certain songs you know work well. “White Diamonds” and “Jump in the Pool” – they have a good energy about them that everyone seems to sink their teeth into.
EM: Yeah, I really like playing “Jump in the Pool” live. I feel like it’s…I like the fact that it's not the usual 4-4 bass line (drums fingers on table to demonstrate), it’s disco, and it’s a bit samba-ey. Interesting. And live, the verse of “jump in the…!” That's the thing about being in a hardcore band, you want to go, “yahhhhh!” (all laugh) It reminds me of being 13 again. And I really like playing “Exlover” as well, just because we play it last, and it's able to be kind of chaotic and noisy and kind of not worry about the pop stuff. You can be noisy and just create a jam.
EG: And pretty recently we had a brass section introduced and tour with us as well. And they just add an extra element to all those songs, which makes them new to you again and exciting.

MC: Are they going to be here tonight?
EG/EM: Oh yeah!
EG: Although some guy we've never played with before is on trumpet, he sounded good at soundcheck, but…
MC: He wasn’t with you in Bristol last night?
EM: No, our normal trumpeter’s lost…run off somewhere.
EG: He’ll be back.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview with Friendly Fires coming soon!

Friendly Fires: website | myspace | Friendly Fires album review | Remix Monday: Friendly Fires "Skeleton Boy" | @ Black Cat, Washington D.C. | @ Dot to Dot Festival, Rock City, Nottingham, England

Friendly Fires
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Victor Victor Band to play June 18th Battle of the Blogs

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 08:19 AM PDT

bob2a-jun18-500pxPopwreckoning is ecstatic to announce that Victor Victor Band will be joining the June edition of Philadelphia’s .

Come out and support Popwreckoning and Victor Victor Band on Thursday, June 18th at .

Philly 2:

27th & Poplar
7PM - $8 - 21+

Victor Victor Band: website | myspace

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British Sea Power - Man of Aran

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 07:39 AM PDT

It wouldn't be unfair to call British Sea Power in some ways the British equivalent of . Both play grandiose indie rock with orchestral ornamentation and a buried (but evident) post-punk influence; both are known for exciting and unorthodox stage shows; both have been around for nearly as long. British Sea Power, however, have always favored enigma; , pomp. Whereas 's lyrics revel in imagery and anthem, British Sea Power's are often cryptic and obscure. question whether life can go on in a world guided by questionable leaders with a media-brainwashed populace and a looming ecological crisis; British Sea Power wonder whether human life is worth living in the first place. And while recently made a film about themselves (the excellent Mirror Noir), British Sea Power soundtracked a 1934 docufiction film. The Robert J. Flaherty-directed Man Of Aran portrays the premodern life lived by the inhabitants of the Aran Islands, located off the coast of Ireland. From listening to British Sea Power's soundtrack alone one would surmise the film is likely slow, grey, and morose, though perhaps not without some melancholic beauty that underscores the affair. british-sea-power

It's tempting to describe the Man Of Aran soundtrack as post-rock. On the album, British Sea Power sound a lot like Godspeed You Black Emperor, and even . Pretty, atmospheric guitars? Check. Tempos that shift from slow crawls to driving dirges to waltz? Check. Violins, cellos, etc? Check. And yet some x-factor – possibly one related to the fact the British Sea Power are a legitimate rock band – holds it a step away from sounding exactly like the aforementioned. And then there's also "Come Wander With Me", the one album track that does include vocals. Fans, however, shouldn't expect anything like what they've heard from the group before: the track is a gloomy but tidal piece of strange pop that follows in the vein of 's "Some Velvet Morning", croaky baritone and all.

As a film score, Man Of Aran is great. I haven't even seen the film but I can't imagine it not being seriously, seriously cool. As a standalone work, it has its share of blissful moments, but if your answer was "yes" to the title of British Sea Powers last album, (2008’s Do You Like Rock Music?), make sure you keep your expectations in check.

Tracklisting:
01. Man Of Aran
02. The South Sound
03. Come Wander With Me
04. Tiger King
05. The Currach
06. Boy Vertiginous
07. Spearing The Sunfish
08. Conneely Of The West
09. The North Sound
10. Woman Of Aran
11. It Comes Back Again
12. No Man Is An Archipelago

British Sea Power: website | myspace

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