FEBRUARY 22, 2005

Brazilian star Jorge Ben Jor just played a two-night stand at the HotHouse in Chicago the first time he's ever played here to wildly enthusiastic audiences. I was there for night 2 and thoroughly enjoyed it. His guitar playing is highly rhythmic and slightly funky, his singing has the soft tones of typical Brazilian vocalists without being too mellow, and his songs have superbly catchy melodies and danceable beats.

 

The crowd sang along with many songs, and when I turned around at point, I saw the people just behind me waving a Brazilian flag over their heads. Appropariately enough, the Jorge Ben Jor song I know best is a tribute to a soccer player, "Ponta de Lanca Africano (Umbabararuma)."

 

The 1976 song, which I discovered when David Byrne included it as the opening track of the 1989 compilation Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1, has an infectious guitar groove, and Jorge Ben (as he was billed on that CD) delivers some of the verses in a sort of pre-hip-hop patter that I want to chant along with even though I don't know of a word of the language. The songs shows up occasionally as a bit of segue music on the public radio show "Marketplace."

 

Let's hope Jorge Ben Jor's back in Chicago soon.

 

SEE PHOTOS OF JORGE BEN JOR.

 

FEBRUARY 20, 2005

Adult subject matter?

For the first time in its history, The Simpsons was preceded tonight with a warning — white type on a black screen — that the show would contain adult subject matter... namely, the subject of gay marriage.

 

Huh? Is this topic so radioactive that it merits a special warning? The Simpsons has gotten away with a lot of racy references in the past, and gay marriage is talked about all the time on the news. It's not as if this cartoon was going to show explicit gay sex or anything. Sheesh.

 

First of all, let it be known that I am a huge fan of M. Ward's music. His last album, Transfiguration of Vincent, was my favorite CD of 2003, and it also may be my favorite disc released so far this decade. Some fans will swear by the previous Ward album, The End of Amnesia, as his best. That one's great, too. I can think of few songwriters working right now I admire as much as Ward. I'd also rank him among the best guitarists around, and one of the best singers.

 

Have you ever heard a band or singer for the first time and felt as if the sound was something you'd been looking for? In my case, M. Ward is one of those artists.

 

So it shouldn't come as a big surprise how much I'm enjoying Ward's newest CD, Transistor Radio (which comes out Feb. 22 on Merge Records).

 

Given my high expectations, I felt disappointed the first time I listened to Transistor Radio. That M. Ward sound was still there, but the songs seem quite as strong as those on Transfiguration. Maybe that was because some of them are muted, deliberately sounding distant, like broadcasts from a mysterious radio station (that being the theme of the album). I wouldn't be surprised if some critics and listeners have the same first impression. The three-star write-up in the new Mojo reads like a review by someone who hasn't listened to it enough.

 

But with repeat listens, all of the melodies and musical nuances made themselves clear. Transistor Radio is another Ward classic, with one beautiful song after another, the sort of album I'd gladly listen to more than once in a row.

 

Although Ward describes the CD as a sort of concept album dedicated to underground and independent radio stations, it's not clear how the concept applies to most of the songs, at least as far as the lyrics go  — other than "Radio Campaign." The concept has more to do with the spirit of the songs and the way they sound.

 

Transistor Radio starts out slowly, beginning with a brief instrumental version of the Beach Boys' "You Still Believe in Me," followed by a song obviously designed to sound old-timey, "One Life Away," in which the narrator directs his song "to the people underground." It's not clear until the end whether the "fraulein" he's talking about is one of the living or dead people. (Even at the end, I'm not sure it's totally clear.)

 

The next three songs, "Sweethearts on Parade," "Hi-Fi" and "Fuel for Fire," are typical Ward — melodic folk-rock tunes that could have been hits in the Simon and Garfunkel era of the '60s or cult favorites from the likes of Nick Drake in the '70s.

 

Then the album shifts into a bluesier section, with a trio of songs using more electric guitar, piano and elements of early rock. They're far from standard wannabe oldies, though. "Four Hours in Washinghton" is a haunting scene of insomnia, without anything resembling a chorus, the lyrics more like a poem with a circular structure. The melody is slight, ranging no further than a few notes, and maybe not that original. Somehow, Ward makes it all his own. The song reaches its climax as the words end and acoustic guitar picking emerges from the mix. The next track is the instrumental "Regeneration #1," the kind of echo-laden jam that Ward's pals in My Morning Jacket might pull off. And then there's "Big Boat," a rocking gospel number with a bass piano break that echoes late '60s Kinks classics. In case the ferry references in the lyrics aren't clear enough for you, the CD cover shows a book titled, "Coins for Charon's Ferry."

 

As "Big Boat" ends, the CD reaches what would be the end of Side 1, and Ward says he intended for people to listen to the album as a two-sided LP. That's an outdated conceit — how many people are actually going to listen to this on vinyl? — but it's still not a bad way to organize the songs for an album.

 

"Side 2," such as it is, begins with "Paul's Song," a pretty and melancholy tune that declares every town seems the same to a touring musician. From there, Transistor Radio runs through a series of six more classic Ward songs, showing his great knack for coming up with tunes that sound simple on the surface but work their way into your head. The title of "Radio Campaign" refers to a single line in the song, and it's a wonderful idea: A guy putting out the word in a radio campaign that he wants to get back his old "peace of mind." One of the last songs, "I'll Be Yr Bird," was already as a bonus track on the reissued version of Ward's first album, "Duet for Guitars #2," but I don't mind hearing it again, here in its new context.

 

Closing as it began with an instrumental guitar performance, Transistor Radio comes to a peaceful and achingly lovely conclusion on "Well-Tempered Clavier"  — actually, the first prelude of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier." It's a beautiful composition that has almost become a cliche as a study piece for piano students, and yet I'll never grow tired of hearing it or playing it, and it's such a joy to hear Ward transcribing it for guitar.

 

And at that point, I feel like going back to that Beach Boys song that began it all. If this really were an LP, I'd be turning it over to Side 1 again.

 

Mysterious monkeys are making more appearances in music. Are they merely metaphorical? The latest monkey allusion comes in the great opening track of the Low album The Great Destroyer — titled, simply enough, "Monkey." The somewhat ominous chorus proclaims, "Tonight, you will be mine. Tonight, the monkey dies."

 

So is someone about to commit primate sacrifice in order to achieve a romantic conquest? Poor monkey. Who knows what these guys from Duluth, Minnesota, are up to, but they seem like a pretty wholesome bunch, so let's assume this tale of monkey death isn't based on personal experience.

 

The Low song follows Gillian Welch's "One Monkey," from the 2003 Soul Journey album, in which she engimatically declared, "One monkey don't stop the show..." (No, I suppose not.) "...so get on board." This particular monkey has something to do with a freight train.

 

Of course, Peter Gabriel had a hit with "Shock the Monkey," though I'm not sure that song's in the same spirit as these. (And I prefer the novelty of the song's German version, "Shock den Affen.")

 

More appopriate is the Beatles' "Everything's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey." No one seems to be hiding their monkeys these days, though.

 

FEBRUARY 18, 2005

The Comas

Empty Bottle, Chicago

I have certain gaping holes in my knowledge of current pop culture, especially anything related to celebrity gossip. So unbeknownst to me, this album I've been listening to, Conductor by the Comas (Yep Roc), is apparently focused on lead singer Andy Herod's romantic woes concerning a certain former girlfriend who is an actress on some television show I've never seen before.

 

(Maybe all of this would have been more obvious if I'd actually bought the CD, which comes with a DVD depicting the breakup story, rather than downloading it from emusic. Clue #1: The song called "Tonight on the WB.")

 

Yeah, I have heard of Dawson's Creek  — I'm not that out of it — but if you'd asked me who Michelle Williams is, I wouldn't have had any idea. (Or I might have remembered her as the cute chick from The Station Agent.)

 

Now that I know what Conductor is all about, I'm inclined to think: "Oh, great, some celebrity whining about breaking up with a celebrity girlfriend." But that wouldn't be fair, and this is a more-than-decent collection of rock songs. In any case, breakups are a great topic, no matter how famous your former partner is.And Herod doesn't qualify as a celebrtity, not yet at least... Somehow, I had the idea that the Comas show at the Empty Bottle might sell out, given the press that the band's been getting. As it turned out, it was a decent-size crowd, but there was enough space for me to roam around in front of the stage taking photos.

 

It's hard to get a handle on exactly what style of music the Comas are playing. The album's an eclectic mix of various rock genres and subgenres, though the core is melodic indie rock, not supercatchy enough to qualify as power pop, not quite extreme enough to qualify as postpunk. Ah, who cares about these labels, anyway? It's good stuff, and the band pulled it off in concert, too.

 

Though the Comas recorded a couple of albums before this one, you wouldn't have known it from their Empty Bottle show, which was less than an hour long, drawing almost exclusively (or was it exclusively?) from Conductor. And they aren't the kind of band that transforms good studio songs into reveletory rave-ups in concert. But I wouldn't call the show disappointing. Several of the songs moved toward more intense catharsis when Herod upped the intensity of his vocals. And when the Comas play in concert, the interplay between Herod and guitarist/backup vocalist Nichole Gehweiler becomes more apparent — their loose harmonies keep things interesting.

 

The opening act, Vietnam, was also interesting — and just as hard to pin down. Sounding at times like slightly sludgy '70s blues rock, Vietnam's percussion occasionally surged into Arcade Fire territory.

 

SEE PHOTOS OF THE COMAS AND VIETNAM.