Month: July 2007

I’ve been a big fan of Bat For Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) since I heard her debut album, Fur and Gold, last year as an import from the UK. In fact, I put it on my top 10 list for 2006. The record’s finally coming out this week in the U.S., and Khan and her band came to Chicago for the first time, playing Friday night (July 27) at Schubas. It was an excellent show, similar to the Bat For Lashes concert I saw in March at SXSW. It’s wonderful to watch Khan and her three musicians (all female, all wearing headbands and similar accoutrements) switching instruments and creating these spooky songs with violin, autoharp, a harpischord sound on the Yamaha, bells and drums. No drum kit, though. Despite the lack of standard rock percussion, the songs never drag. Khan has a great voice, and she’s beautiful, too. Her encore was a new song called “Moon + Moon” (or something like that – that’s how it was punctuated on the set list). For someone whose songs are so moody and dramatic, Khan was suprisingly lighthearted and giggly in between songs. The only flaw in the show was that it only lasted about an hour – but since she has just one album out so far, I guess that’s to be expected.

See my photos of Bat For Lashes.

Chicago’s Garbadine played a nice opening set of chilled-out, low-key songs that reminded me of the quieter moments of Magnolia Electric Co. and Palliard. I enjoyed it, though Garbadine could stand a little more variety in its music. My photos of Garbadine will be coming later…

What is Grinderman? It’s really just Nick Cave playing with a smaller unit from his usual big group, the Bad Seeds. I loved the apocalyptically huge sound of Cave’s most recent Bad Seeds double album, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, which came complete with a gospel choir. But there’s also something to be said for pounding out rock songs with a just a few musicians. That what Cave does on Grinderman, a strong record that ranks with his best work. There are a few mellower moments on the album (mellow in a way that’s still pretty intense), but the overriding sound is driving rock, with Cave playing more electric guitar than he has in the past and singing with unbridled emotion. He finds an original way of expressing the classic rock-song premise of frustrated lust with one of 2007’s best songs, “No Pussy Blues.”

Chicago was lucky enough to get one of just four Grinderman concerts scheduled in the U.S. (one is opening for the White Stripes at Madison Square Garden in New York, and the other two are in San Francisco). It was exciting to see Cave in a club like Metro.

Cave always performs like he means it, and the show last night (July 25) was no exception. Sporting a modified-Fu Manchu-style mustache, Cave kicked his legs at the crowd, gestured with his arms like a mad preacher and wielded his guitar like a prop — grabbing it at key moments for loud bursts of notes. The rather hirsute Warren Ellis made lots of noise, too, with a peculiar miniature electric guitar, a violin and shakers, while bassist Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos kept the rhythms tense all night. At some points, Cave added little purrs, moans and other vocal tics to his singing, making the songs seem almost like spontaneous creations rather than well-rehearsed compositions.

After playing the entire Grinderman album (though not in order), Cave and his cohorts left the stage, then came back for two encores of Bad Seeds tunes, with Cave sitting down at the piano for the first time all night. The first encore was “Red Right Hand,” “The Weeping Song,” “Deanna” and “The Lyre of Orpheus.” The second encore was “The Ship Song” and “Jack the Ripper.” Some of the audience requests for other Bad Seeds songs caused Cave to protest that he did not have enough musicians present to pull off the bigger-sounding numbers. And in fact, the Bad Seeds that he did play seemed fairly stripped down, with an impromptu looseness. That didn’t detract at all from how great they were, though. This was surely one of the year’s best concerts in Chicago. (I’ve said that a few times recently, but I think the shows by Grinderman, the Wrens, the Arcade Fire and the Decemberists are near the top of my list right now.) Cave departed with a promise. “See you next year with the Bad Seeds,” he said. I can’t wait.

See my photos of Grinderman. My photos will also be featured on Spin magazine’s web site.
The opening band was Digital Primitives, which is a ridiculous name for a fairly good jazz trio. It was an odd choice for an opening act, but I like the group’s mix of jazz, Eastern music and spoken-word rants.

Somehow, even though I saw just about every other band on the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar labels when I was at SXSW this year, I missed one of the groups from the family that I really wanted to see, the Besnard Lakes, who have a superb album out this year with the peculiar title The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse. (Or is the album just called Are the Dark Horse? That sort of thing is always confusing…) I also missed this Montreal band on an earlier stop in Chicago, but I made up for that last night (July 23) by catching the Besnard Lakes at Schubas.

The band’s male/female vocals and lilting melodies remind me of Low – but Low in its livelier moments. There’s a similar tripped-out quality to the songs, but they also know how to rock out, specializing in repetitive guitar grooves. It was a very good show, making the songs sound even better than they do on the record. I was unaware of an earlier Besnard Lakes album titled Volume 1, from which they played a song or two. I picked up a copy at the merch table and I’m listening to it right now for the first time. The songs seem a little hazier and less distinct than those on the new CD, but I’m still liking it. The Besnard Lakes also have the distinction of being, I believe, the first band I’ve ever seen that used a fog machine at Schubas. It set the mood perfectly. See my photos of the Besnard Lakes.

I also wanted to be at Schubas Monday night to see one of the opening bands, Handsome Furs, who are also from Montreal. I think I’d only heard one song by the group, a guitar/electronics duo featuring Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Alexei Perry. I’d been hearing some buzz about these guys as a new band to watch out for. I enjoyed their set quite a bit. Although Perry’s role is basically standing at a wee keyboard and another electronics device or two while Boeckner plays guitar and sings, she was pretty lively in her largely stationary role, creating a decent rhythm section. Boeckner played some sharp, spiky guitar parts. I liked it enough to buy their album Plague Park at the merch table. See my photos of Handsome Furs.

The first act of the night was Scottish singer-songwriter Chris Connelly. I have to say that his vibrato-heavy singing style and his heavy acoustic-guitar strumming were not really to my taste, though I think some of his songs might interest me more in their studio incarnations, if they’re produced with some creativity. I have to give him credit for doing a solo a cappella song, which takes guts. See my photos of Chris Connelly.

Eleventh Dream Day shows up at least once or twice a year for a show somewhere in Chicago. They had a great record last year, Zeroes and Ones. This time around (July 20 at the Empty Bottle), there was no new record to promote, but the band was still in fine form. And it was the biggest lineup of Eleventh Dream Day ever. I’ve been more than satisfied with the group’s shows as a trio, though having a keyboard player or a second guitarist does give Rick Rizzo a little more freedom with his soloing. For this show, regular keyboardist Mark Greenberg was there, as well as former EDD guitarist Chris Brokaw. Brokaw’s presence was especially welcome on some of the early songs.

Here’s Rizzo’s set list. I see it includes little reminders of the song lyrics…

Someone (Rizzo, I think) remarked that Doug McCombs had seen the ZZ Top concert the night before, calling it the best musical performance he’d seen in his life, and McCombs picked up a few ZZ Top moves for his switch to guitar during the encore, with Greenberg taking over on bass.

See my photos of Eleventh Dream Day.

The first opening band was Faceless Werewolves from Austin, Texas. They were pretty enjoyable. I detected a little bit of bluesy roots music within their garage/indie-guitar-rock sound. See my photos of Faceless Werewolves. The second band was The Means, who were all right. I have to admit I was biding my time at that point, waiting for Eleventh Dream Day to play. See my photos of The Means.

I arrived at this free concert July 18 a little too close to the starting time, and saw multitudes of people already sitting in the Pritzker Pavilion seats and out on the lawn. What a crowd. You had the Grant Park Orchestra regulars (including subscribers who got first dibs on the seats), plus a ton of indie-rock kids, teenagers and twentysomethings, and a whole range of other people. I could feel the excitement in the air. This seemed like a reallly cool event. Despite all of the critical buzz and a fan base big enough to fill theaters like the Riv, the Decemberists are not exactly superstars of the sort that you’d expect to pack a major downtown park. Or to play with a full orchestra. How great is it that all of these elements came together for an evening of fabulous music in a beautiful Chicago park? Anyway, I thought I was going to be stuck watching the concert from a position far back, without any chance of getting photos, but I lucked out when I got into the line for standby seats, and ended up snagging a seat in the second row close to the center of the stage. (It helps sometimes when you’re by yourself.) And so I was able to see and hear the music up close, grab a lot of photos and then get even better pictures at the end when the crowd surged into the space in front of the seats.

I’m a Decemberists fan but not a fanatic, but I have to say this concert was one of the best I’ve seen this year, an all-around triumph. The marriage of rock music with classical strings doesn’t always work, but the Decemberists’ ornate songs lended themselves really well to the format, and in those moments when the violins, violas, cellos and woodwinds surged up behind the rock band, it was utterly magnificent. Wow. The performance included the major songs from The Crane Wife plus older song such as “The Infanta,” “I Was Meant for the Stage, “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” and the entirety of the suite from the 2004 Ep The Tain. Colin Meloy was pretty lively for a guy singing in front of an orchestra, including one run into the audience. For its final encore songs (sans orchestra) the band engaged in a little bit of performance art as it acted out and played “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” from Picaresque, much to the delight of the Decemberists fans who gathered in front of the stage to raise their hands and sway back and forth.

SEE MY PHOTOS OF THE DECEMBERISTS WITH THE GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA.

On Sunday, Pitchfork started the day with yet another band that might seem more apt at midnight, DEERHUNTER. (Emcee Tim Tuten called them Deerhoof, but as he noted later, he was just joking; he did know which band was which.) They took the stage to a wall of droning noise. Eventually, some psychedelic emerged out of the racket, quite compelling stuff. (Some of the noise was deliberate, but this was also one of several shows on the Connector Stage on Sunday that were nearly drowned by seemingly implacable feedback problems.) The lead singer of Deerhunter, Bradford Cox, is one strange-looking front man. I feel a little bad pointing that out, since a disease is the cause of his extremely thin physique (according to allmusic, “the exceedingly skinny 6’4″ lead singer has Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder of the connective tissue that gives him abnormally long and spindly limbs”), but Cox emphasized his own strangeness by wearing a gauzy dress. He also dangled little puppets of some sort from one of his hands during the first song. SEE MY PHOTOS OF DEERHUNTER.

I’ve been a fan of THE PONYS for a few years now, thinking that these Chicago guys deserve wider fame and success. I have to admit I haven’t listened that much to their most recent record. It didn’t grab me like the first two, not that it’s bad or anything. The new songs and old tunes sounded strong in their Pitchfork set. Or at least they would have if the sound had been properly functional. It was frustrating to see the Ponys playing their instruments even as the notes they were playing mysteriously went in and out. SEE MY PHOTOS OF THE PONYS.

MENOMENA’s recent album Friend and Foe is an interesting and hard-to-categorize blend of piano, guitar, sax, strong drumming and even stronger singing. I don’t really know what genre this band belongs in, if any; it’s indie-rock with one foot in piano-based songwriting but a sound that’s far removed from typical piano music. Whatever it is, it sounded great onstage at Pitchfork, one of the festival’s best performances. SEE MY PHOTOS OF MENOMENA.

JUNIOR BOYS is an act I was unfamiliar with. The electronic pop music sounded fairly pleasant, but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. SEE MY PHOTOS OF JUNIOR BOYS. I missed the second half of the Junior Boys set while catching some of NOMO over on the Balance Stage. Nomo plays Afrobeat music in the tradition of Fela Kuti, and they opened with an enchanting mix of bells and horns. SEE MY PHOTOS OF NOMO.

THE SEA AND CAKE were victims of more feedback problems. Their delicate jazz-pop tunes really needed the sort of audio clarity that the Pitchfork sound system was woefully inadequate to provide. Still, after a few songs, the sound snafus grew less noticeable, and Sam Prekop’s smart songs and Archer Prewitt’s sharply played guitar lines came through. SEE MY PHOTOS OF THE SEA AND CAKE.

JAMIE LIDELL wore a crown of tinsel (or something resembling tinsel) and belted out his songs in a soulful voice, creating a sonic mix that straddled the line between pop and experimental electronica. SEE MY PHOTOS OF JAMIE LIDELL.

STEPHEN MALKMUS noted that this was only his third solo concert ever, and I happen to have seen one of the other two, when he opened last year for the New Pornographers and My Morning Jacket at Northwestern University’s Patten Gym. He sounded more confident and sure this time. Although his solo and Pavement songs seem designed to be played by bands, they come across really well as quirky solo songs. Malkmus experienced more of the feedback problems that had plagued other bands at Pitchfork, remarking at one point: “It’s a weird mix, but it’s kind of cool. It sounds like ‘Sister Ray.’” SEE MY PHOTOS OF STEPHEN MALKMUS.

Is it OK if I’m not a big OF MONTREAL fan? I can see they’re a beloved band these days in the indie-rock world. And I don’t dislike them, but I just can’t get that excited about their music. The electronic production smoothes out the parts that I might interesting in another setting, I think. Anyway, they are definitely an interesting visual spectacle, and were fairly fun to watch. (We photographers were allowed to shoot only the first three songs, the standard rule throughout the festival, so I didn’t get any shots of Kevin Barnes later in the concert, when he was wearing considerably less clothing. Sorry.) SEE MY PHOTOS OF OF MONTREAL.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS sounded as excellent as they always do. They’re more excellent when Neko Case is singing with them, and unfortunately, she was a no-show for this gig (as was Dan Bejar), but you know, keyboardist Kathryn Calder sounded pretty darn good on vocals. Besides, despite being a sort of supergroup, this is mostly Carl Newman’s show. The audience at the front was singing along to every word of the old songs. One of the songs from the forthcoming album Challengers briefly morphed into Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” The concert was a nonstop hit parade, with one great hook after another. SEE MY PHOTOS OF NEW PORNOGRAPHERS.

DE LA SOUL closed out the festival on the Aluminum Stage. Now, I listened to the De La Soul album 3 Feet High and Rising years – decades – ago, but I can’t say I’ve stayed up on these guys. They put on an entertaining show, though. I cut out of it for a little bit to catch KLAXONS on the Balance Stage, who had the crowd dancing and singing along to catchy “oooh”-filled choruses. A lot of fun. Back to De La Soul, I catch one of the rappers asking the audience how many “hip-hop heads” were present. He defined the people he was looking for. “We’re talking about people who don’t need radio or TV to tell them what good shit is.” That’s as good a definition as I heard all weekend of the crowd at Pitchfork. SEE MY PHOTOS OF DE LA SOUL.

FOR AN OVERVIEW OF ALL MY PITCHFORK PHOTOS, GO TO THE PHOTO GALLERY INDEX.

Pitchfork’s second day started bright and early with THE TWILIGHT SAD, a fine band out of Glasgow that I saw recently at Subterranean. I’ve had a chance since then to listen a little bad to their debut, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, and it’s an enjoyable listen. Maybe I’m a sucker for a Scottish accent, but things sound better with a burr. Their show at Pitchfork was fairly fun, though it did feel like their music would be more appropriate for a dark room late at night than a sunlit stage at 1 P.M. (A common problem at these fests but, hey, at least it’s easier to photograph these bands in actual light… Speaking of which, my photos from the first half of Saturday afternoon mysteriously disappeared when I thought I’d transferred them onto my computer. Oh, well…)

CALIFONE followed, with the sort of low-key yet involving set that’s typical for this Chicago band. I know some people love their records, but I’ve always found them better in concert. More of the groovy vibes that are hidden between the grooves of the records come through. (I also caught just a few minutes of KEN VANDERMARK’S POWERHOUSE SOUND on the side stage… not enough to offer a critical judgment other than noting that Vandermark was blowing his sax with gale force for the little bit that I saw.)

VOXTROT put on quite an entertaining set, replete with lots of rock-star posing and leaping. They didn’t dress like glam rockers, but I picked up something glam in their sound.

GRIZZLY BEAR is growing on me. I’ve seen them open for Feist and TV on the Radio; at Pitchfork, the band offered more of its subtle and mostly quiet music. It’s quiet, but it occasionally soars into more anthemic territory. The set was slightly marred by some sound problems, forcing a delay between songs – just one of many technical difficulties at Pitchfork. For the most part, the good music cut through the feedback and sonic murk this weekend, but it was disappointing that so many sets ran into sound problems.

I ran over to the side stage and caught a few songs by BEACH HOUSE, whom I saw recently at Subterranean. Pretty and chill music. Do I hear a little Nico?

BATTLES is winning a lot of praise for its virtuosic, intricate and highly percussive rock. They seem almost like an instrumental band, because the songs that do have vocals feature heavily processed singing. Personally, I find those cartoon-character vocals a little annoying. It would be OK on one or two songs, but after that, it becomes a gimmick. Battles was fairly impressive as a live act (despite a long lull due to more technical difficulties), but I’d like to see them either go with real vocals or none at all. I liked the weird setup for the drummer, with one cymbal high above his head. I’m not sure what the point was, other than creating a strange look, but it was interesting. SEE MY PHOTOS OF BATTLES.

IRON & WINE is another band I haven’t totally fallen for, despite the adoration they (or he?) receive elsewhere. I do like Iron & Wine’s studio music in small doses, and when Sam Beam recruits a good band to play behind him (as he did with Calexico), the results can be an improvement over the super soft studio tracks. For this show, he had a group of Chicago musicians backing him, including ex-Wilco member LeRoy Bach on keyboards, giving the music more of a roots-rock feel. At moments, it almost rocked. SEE MY PHOTOS OF IRON & WINE.

MASTODON is not exactly my kind of music. I can’t profess to listening to much metal, even the newer and more critically respected variations of metal. But these guys rocked like hell and were fun to photograph. For headbangers and their ilk, I’m sure the Mastodon set was a highlight of Pitchfork. A cloud of dust got kicked up from the ballfield near the stage, creating an appropriately hellacious visual effect in the middle of the show. SEE MY PHOTOS OF MASTODON.

OXFORD COLLAPSE is an excellent band from New York on the Sub Pop label, putting across indie-pop songs with a vocal intensity that reminds me of groups such as Wolf Parade and Modest Mouse. They do it all with just three musicians, and they were an enthusiastic and fun bunch onstage. SEE MY PHOTOS OF OXFROD COLLAPSE.

CLIPSE got a lot of plaudits last year for the hip-hop duo’s record Hell Hath No Fury. To a neophyte such as myself, the raps were not too appealing and the words were only intermittently intelligible in the mix. Late in the set, one of the Clipse dudes proclaimed that they’d made the album of the year (or was that “motherfucking album of the year”? I can’t recall exactly where he interjected that ubiquitous four-syllable swear word as a modifier), not matter what anyone else thinks. SEE MY PHOTOS OF CLIPSE.

(Around this time was when Dan Deacon prompted some havoc over at the small Balance Stage, with lots of crowd surfing and crowding. When the fence separating the audience from Ogden Avenue looked like it might topple, the fest’s crew shut down the performance early. I missed all of that, but heard about it all weekend.)

CAT POWER’s show Saturday night show with her new backup band, Dirty Delta Blues was one of the highlights of the festival for me. As the group’s name suggests, it was a bluesy set, with organ and guitar licks giving Cat Power’s music a sound akin to 1960s British-invasion blues rock. Although Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) apologized a few times, apparently unhappy with the sound or her vocals, her voice was in fine form. In addition to her own tunes, she played covers such as “Satisfaction” and “The Dark Side of the Street.” Sticking to lead vocals without playing guitar or piano, she kept the show on track, unlike some of her erratic concerts of the past. SEE MY PHOTOS OF CAT POWER.

None other than YOKO ONO was the headliner Saturday night. She’s revered by many but also frequently mocked for her music. I think she was just too different from the Beatles for pop music fans to understand. By including her in the festival, the Pitchfork folks made the case that she was a big influence on many of today’s cutting-edge rockers. She preceded her appearance with a overly long video emphasizing a message of peace. She opened with a simple little song she said she’d just written, before launching into the wild sort of screaming that she’s known for. A good portion of the audience headed for the exits. That’s not too surprising, I guess; she’s never had real mainstream appeal, and even the sort of people who turn out for an event like Pitchfork don’t necessarily like this kind of music. Myself, I liked some moments of it quite a bit. At other times, it was grating. It’s hard to define why some caterwauling is good and some isn’t, but that is the case, as far as I’m concerned. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth joined Ono for a sort of duet – a duet, that is, between his abrasive guitar soloing and her abrasive banshee yells. SEE MY PHOTOS OF YOKO ONO.

It was perfect weather last night (July 13) for the first day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. This was the extra day, presented with help from the All Tomorrow’s Parties folks in the UK, with three artists playing albums in their entirety. I like that concept – it runs so counter to the iPod shuffle mentality of today. As you might guess, I’m one of those people who still spends a lot of time listening to albums in their entirety. (Not that I don’t like a good shuffle.)

Slint got things started with a performance of Spiderland. I missed this band entirely when they were around the first time, and now they’ve viewed as influential in retrospect. It’s a good record, and the performance was decent – lots of precise and, yes, spidery guitar lines. The band is pretty staid, though, just standing there (or sitting there) as they play, and the crowd was just standing in place, too. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not every band has to jump around. But it does subtract a little from the potential for an exciting concert. The songs did build to louder peaks, and at some moments, all that mannered playing did build into something majestic. See my photos of Slint.

Next, GZA (aka Genius) performed Liquid Swords. The concept of playing an old album from beginning to end is especially novel when it comes to hip-hop artists. GZA noted that he made a trip from Europe just to do this concert and was missing a Wu Tang show in Amsterdam as a result. He and his co-rappers frequently exhorted the crowd to clap louder – “You’d better represent!” – and there were plentiful “Wu Tang!” chants and casual uses of the M.F. word… It was a pretty energentic and lively set. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m not a huge hip-hop fan, so this set was less meaningful to me than the other two shows on Friday, but it was an enjoyable showcase for a noteworthy hip-hop record. See my photos of GZA.

The highlight for me, of course, was seeing Sonic Youth do Daydream Nation. What can I say? It’s a great double album that has become a classic, and I’ve liked it for a long time. I’ve seen Sonic Youth several times over the years, so I imagine I’ve heard some of the key tracks from Daydream Nation performed live a few times, but nothing like this. Sonic Youth did what they do best, making great noise but also great songs, all in that singular musical vocabulary they’ve developed. For a bunch of middle-aged rockers, they still show a high level of intensity and energy onstage. As they came back for an encore, Thurston Moore said, “Welcome back to the 21st century,” and Sonic Youth proceeded to play three tracks off the 2006 record Rather Ripped (“Incinerate,” “Reena” and “Jams Run Free”), which is one of the best records they’ve done in recent years. The record shows Sonic Youth sounding tighter than ever, and that came across in concert, with Kim Gordon setting down the bass and pogoing with abandon on the last two songs. See my photos of Sonic Youth.

The Fugue State festival, June 29 and 30 at the Empty Bottle, was two days of bands playing what is often called “drone music.” It was also billed as a festival of “expansive music.” Whatever you call it, these are musical acts that stretch out notes way past the duration you normally hear. Some of it is loud guitar feedback, some of it more like acoustic freak folk or Eastern music or minimalism. Given the seemingly narrow confines of the genre (if it really is a “genre”), it’s actually a fairly diverse field of music. Not for all tastes, of course.

These two days offered a stimulating sample of what’s going on with drone music, especially in the Chicago scene. Highlights included the looping guitars of The Number None, Estesombelo’s masterfully constructed glaciers of notes and the slightly more song-oriented work of The Zoo Wheel. All of the acts featured some sort of visual accompaniment, including a lot of abstract shapes morphing in video projections. Lisa Slodki’s montages – which she created live by mixing together images from four VCRs (how analog!) – were particularly strong during the sets by Haptic and The Fortieth Day.

My favorite bands of the festival were the headliners each night. On Friday, DRMWPN (aka Dreamweapon) played another performance of what is basically the band’s one song, a mesmerizing and spiritual drone with wordless vocals by Jim Dorling floating above it all and a spinning column of light. On Saturday, David Daniell assembled eleven musicians, including acoustic guitarists and classical strings, to perform a piece from sheet music that featured recurring, overlapping and repeating patterns of notes. It sounded more like Steve Reich than true drone, but that’s fine with me.

See my photos from Fugue State.