Holiday Shores played a few songs that I thought were great, but there were also many which didn’t grab my attention. They certainly do have great energy and I hope they develop more songs like those that ended the set, which had creative melodies and harmonic progressions. I don’t mean to single them out here, but I am really over the whole shout-a-couple-words-in-unison thing. Unless you’re the Beastie Boys, don’t be afraid to sing some harmonies once in a while.

The praise surrounding Small Black’s music is deserved. They combine electronics (drum machine, keyboards, sampler) and more traditional elements (live drums, bass guitar, vocals) to create a lush soundscape which is packed with ideas and propulsive, but not overbearing. Having been a fan of lead-singer Josh’s previous band Slowlands, it was nice to hear his ideas executed using a new sound. His voice – treated with copious amounts of delay and reverb – is subservient to the dense musical landscape that envelopes it. Although, for this reason, I do think the vocals translate better on record then they do live. When there’s a human in front of you, standing downstage-center, opening his mouth and emitting noise, you can’t help but focus the bulk of your attention there. Worth special mention is Small Black’s bassist, who had great stage presence and sound. As soon as I started to think he was being made redundant by the synths and drum machine, he would stop playing bass to bang out some percussion parts and it became obvious how much he contributed to the low end of their sound. More bass players need to stop playing during a song just so that people can miss them while they’re gone.

The evening turned out to be a laid-back affair at The Living Room with two bands who defy grammatical convention – papercranes and KaiserCartel. This version of papercranes was quite different than the one who played an electric set at last year’s After The Jump Fest. Here, they were stripped down to acoustic guitar, bass, piano and a snare drum which allowed the vocals, all four of them, to take center stage. Highlights of the set included a cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen” and the beautiful wordless chorus of “Synapses” which you can hear on their myspace page.

Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel are fantastic musicians with strong, confident voices and precise musicianship who execute their relatively simple and catchy songs with ease. If you have heard their most popular song “Oh, No” (video here) then you would know what to expect from their songwriting, but their performance exceeded my expectations. Few artists connect with the audience as well as they do. Courtney tried her best to sing a bit of their final song to each and every audience member as they performed while wandering through the crowd, but that level of intimacy was achieved during the entire set. Dressed in red and black it was hard to keep from thinking of them as the folk version of the White Stripes and I wouldn’t be surprised if their career begins to approach such popularity in the coming year.

The only thing that bothered me about KaiserCartel was that they were described in their CMJ blurb as a “Minimal, lo-fi indie folk duo creating wistfully pleasant music”. The Lo-Fi term certainly seems to have been overused and abused in the past year. As I have come to understand it, elements of Lo-Fi include vocals that sound like they were recorded using microphones that have been dropped a few hundred times (or purchased at radio shack), amplifiers with vacuum tubes just barely clinging to life, digital bit crushing, tape noise, reduced intelligibility of lyrics, etc. KaiserCartel’s music may be simplistic, but it is polished, shiny and very much high fidelity as far as I’m concerned. There are some great current bands who I certainly would consider low fidelity such as The Beets and Times New Viking, but alas, Lo-Fi is losing its edge as it’s reduced to the newest buzz word.

The more bands I see this week, the less I’ll probably write about them, so enjoy this update.

But don’t take my word for it. Click here —-> clickity-click to download the three song Burn Bridges EP (I’d call it a “single”, but then again it does have more than one song…)

The Grates are still the only band I have ever interviewed. I’ve also just obtained a fabulous Woody Allen brooch from sniffle corp a.k.a. John from The Grates. You just have to see it to understand the awesomeness.

If you’re in New York and you aren’t going to SXSW I think the next best thing would be this upcoming show at the Bell House:

Thursday 3/26: 6pm / $12 / comes with BBQ and more
THE AUSSIE BBQ: AUSTRALIAN MUSIC SHOWCASE
THE DRONES / THE FUMES / YOUTH GROUP / THE GRATES / THE RESIGNATORS / THE RED RIDERS / THE BOAT PEOPLE / INFUSION / HELL CITY GLAMOURS.
Free Baron’s Beer!!

BBQ? Free Beer? Nine bands on one bill? Sounds like Austin loves The Grates so much it’s going to hide in their luggage when they leave for New York. They also play Mercury Lounge on the 23rd and Pianos on the 25th.

Land Of Talk’s show at Mercury Lounge was split evenly between songs from their 2006 EP “Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss” and songs from the brand new “Some Are Lakes” (buy: LP, CD) released by Saddle Creek.

On all of Land Of Talk’s recordings, Liz Powell’s voice is doubled in a very obvious way. It leads to an effect which I personally love. At the live shows there’s only one of her, but she’s still amazing. The vocals were a little low on the first few songs, but the sound was great after that.

Three-piece bands are my favorite because everyone needs to pull their weight at all times and there is little room for error. Even though Liz’s vocals are the most pronounced element of Land Of Talk’s sound, each instrument plays a unique role. Eric’s transitions to the off-beat hi-hat are seamless and he is always in sync with Chris’s bass playing which carries as many melodies as the lead vocals. The chords that Liz chooses to play on her guitar are perfectly dissonant and she knows just when to pluck out arpeggios and when to strum away.

Land Of Talk are currently on tour with Broken Social Scene. Liz often joins them on stage for 7/4 Shoreline and other songs that Feist and Emily Haines are too busy to sing.

Land Of Talk live at Mercury Lounge – September 11, 2008

01 Yuppy Flu
02 Summer Special
03 Some Are Lakes
04 Give Me Back My Heart Attack
05 Sea Foam
06 Speak To Me Bones
07 Death By Fire
08 Young Bridge
09 Street Wheels
10 Breaxxbaxx

Yay! I posted something besides an After The Jump announcement!

Cafe Campus/Petit Campus
57 rue Prince-Arthur est
Near bd. St-Laurent, Plateau Mont-Royal
Métro: Sherbrooke
www.cafecampus.com

Mother Mother sound promising. They’ll be down for CMJ later this month, playing Mercury Lounge on the 24th. By the way, I just realized that the myspace music player has been revamped. The sound quality of the music still leaves something to be desired, but at least the moving EQ bars are actually reacting to the music and are not completely random. Audio dorks care about this stuff.

Jukebox The Ghost hail from Washington D.C. and their first full-length album “Let Live and Let Ghosts” hits stores on April 22nd. They are touring quite a bit this spring and I recommend that you catch them live. I had trouble believing this sound came from only three people until I saw it with my own eyes. All tour dates are listed here.

photo by irockiroll

01 Hold It In
02 Beady Eyes On The Horizon
03 Victoria
04 My Heart’s The Same / Lighting Myself On Fire
05 Under My Skin
06 End Of The World Trilogy
[Fire in the Sky -> Where Are All Your Scientists Now? -> A Matter of Time]
07 Good Day

Friday 3/14, 7pm
The After the Jump Backyard @ 1204 Salina St. – East Side
Free and open to the public + Free beer and bbq!
7 Laura Palmer
745 Senryu
830 The Physics of Meaning
915 Salt and Samovar
10 Oliver Future
1045 These United States
1130 The Lisps

Saturday 3/15, High Noon
ATJ/Indie Outlaw/Paper Garden Day Party @ Lucky Lounge 209 W 5th St,
Free and open to the public, Open bar + bbq and free shirts and bags courtesy of Speakerheart!
1215 Peasant
100 The Pendletons
145 Darla Farmer
230 The Answering Machine
330 LoveLikeFire
415 Morning State
5 Cloud Cult

Saturday 3/15, 2pm
The After the Jump Backyard @ 1204 Salina St. – East Side
Free and open to the public + Free beer and bbq!
215 Bell
3 Laura Gibson
4 Luke Temple
5 The Lisps
6 White Ghost Shivers
7 Jukebox the Ghost

Saturday 3/15, 7:30pm
ATJ Official SXSW Evening Showcase at Lambert’s BBQ
401 W 2nd St – badges and limited tickets @ door
8 The Teenage Prayers
9 Care Bears On Fire
10 Neimo
11 Tigercity
12 Cassettes Won’t Listen
1 Project Jenny, Project Jan

During this Sunday night show she played a little banjo, shared stories of her quiltmaking adventures (with samples) and debuted a brand new song for the attentive crowd at Union Hall. Though it hadn’t been named at the time, her new song has been listed as “To Be Held” on her recent setlists.

Laura Veirs – To Be Held (live at Union Hall 1/27/08)

Aside from the dull thump of bocce balls coming from the bar above, the atmosphere was just about perfect for this solo show. It was the first time I had seen folding chairs (about four rows deep) set up in front of the stage at Union Hall, allowing for everyone to have a great view.

Below is the setlist along with some highlights from the show.

[photo by David Trawin]

01 Pink Light
02 Ether Sings
03 Wandering Kind
04 Song My Friends Taught Me
05 Magnetized
06 Cast A Hook
07 Rialto
08 To Be Held
09 Through December
10 Cluck Old Hen
11 One Thin Dime
12 Nightingale
13 Ocean Night Song
14 Riptide
—-
15 Black-Eyed Susan
16 Wrecking

“It’s so fucked, eh? The Internet, eh? We perform and you go off and you blog that shit.”
- Adrian Jewett, 12/14/07

I agree that the internet is fucked (we have a love/hate relationship), but I wouldn’t be blogging this shit if I didn’t think it was fantastic. Since I first heard them play live at CMJ two years ago, The Most Serene Republic have only gotten more and more exciting. Their latest album Population is simultaneously overwhelming, enveloping and infectious, and their live show is no different. You may wonder how a person with only four appendages can play such complicated drumbeats, or how three guitars can be so tastefully combined into such a cohesive sound, or how music so progressive can still be so catchy. Or you could just stop thinking about it and get lost in the music.

Almost invariably, it seems that my favorite time to see a band is between their second and third albums. The catalog is deep enough that you don’t know exactly what they will play, but you’re sure to hear most of your favorite songs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy going to see… let’s say Radiohead, these days. But at this point they have so many songs I love that I know I won’t get to hear all of my favorites. I can only wish that I’d seen them touring The Bends while trying out songs from OK Computer.

Last Friday, The most Serene Republic played mostly songs from their new album along with 3 selections each from their first record and their EP Phages, which is still my favorite of their recordings. I especially enjoyed the three-part vocals on “(Oh) God”, the pots and pans opening up “Humble Peasants” and all of the keyboard and drum segues between songs, which sounded partially improvised and partially born of sections from various songs.

The Most Serene Republic at Mercury Lounge

December 14th 2007

full show (65 MB).zip

01 Humble Peasants
02 You’re Not An Astronaut
03 Anhoi Polloi
04 The Men Who Live Upstairs
05 Phages
06 (Oh) God
07 banter
08 Sherry And Her Butterfly Net
09 Why So Looking Back
10 banter-intro
11 Compliance
12 Career In Shaping Clay
13 You’re A Loose Cannon McArthur… But You Get The Job Done
14 Content Was Always My Favorite Color
15 Present Of Future End

P.S. Though it was hinted at, there was no encore. I was happy to get such a nice long set considering they needed to clear the hall for the late show that night.

The University of Phoenix ad:

Here’s the full length trailer for “Feast of Love”. The New Pornos chime in during the last 40 seconds or so.

Here’s an excerpt from a Pitchfork interview on the U. of Phoenix commercial:

—————————–

Pitchfork: I saw an ad for one of those quasi-legit universities, the University of Phoenix, and it happened to have a song of yours in the background.

One thing that made me feel better was, right around the time that commercial started showing up, there was also the Outback Steakhouse commercial with Of Montreal in it. And I thought, “thank God, that’s really going to deflect some attention away from us.” At least we didn’t give our song to Outback. Now I’m afraid if I accidentally say something about the University of Phoenix that a hammer is going to come down on my head, or I’ll find myself in a lawsuit. My official stance is, “I fully support the University of Phoenix,” but to back that, I honestly didn’t know what it was. But then again, if I did know what it was, I’m not sure that I would have said no. We’re just trying to get by in this world. When you play music for so long and don’t make any money, and people start offering you money for things that involve no effort on your part, you start going, “I’ll do that.”

—————————–

This all allows me to point out that Band of Horses recently licensed one of their songs to Wal-Mart. I finally have a legitimate reason to rail against them, you know, besides their songs making me want to run a rusty spike through both of my eardrums. They really sound like they couldn’t come up with enough words to write a legitimate album and they just drag out the same sorry chord progression for years. I mean, for God’s sake… their lyrics are published with ellipses.

“Then I’m sure… I could steer…”
[chorus]
The Title Of The Song
[end chorus]

Sorry, I’m not mean very often. I feel better now.

The Most Serene Republic – Present of Future End.mp3

I’ve seen them only once, which was at the Arts & Crafts showcase during CMJ 2005. It was simply awesome. They have one of the most insane drummers you’ve ever seen and the talent of the rest of band does not lag far behind. But while you might revel at their musicianship for a song or two, you’ll quickly come to hear them as a cohesive group, not a bunch of hot-shot prog-heads. Most of their songs are in crazy meter, but flow so smoothly that you barely notice the changes.

Here’s a live performance of my favorite song from Phages, the title track:

Anyway, they are playing three New York area shows and I’ll have to miss two of them, but there is no place in the world I’d rather be on September 21st than Union Hall. My friends at Neon Lights are presenting the bill and I hope to be recording the show. From their press release:

NEON LIGHTS PRESENTS announces our return to Union Hall, following a victorious two night stand in July (Ola Podrida, De Novo Dahl). In an effort to top ourselves, we’ve brought in a secret Canadian weapon, THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC. The Ontario seven-piece were the first group signed to the Broken Social Scene’s Arts and Crafts label that weren’t a direct off-shoot of BSS themselves. The lovely expansive pop sound of their upcoming sophomore release, Population, will place the band on the level of their celebrated countrymen like Stars or Metric. Joining MSR will be hotly tipped Brooklyn newcomers, HIGH PLACES and SHE KEEPS BEES. The sweet melodies and alien instrumentation of HIGH PLACES have earned the duo Pitchfork love letters and an opening spot on the Blow’s upcoming Northeast tour. The spooked songwriting and soulful voice of SHE KEEPS BEES’ Jessica Larrabee have garned favorable comparisons to Fiona Apple or the early work of Chan Marshall. Between sets, music will be lovingly selected by our fellow blogging /concert promoting guest DJ’s, Justin and Nghia from CRACKER’S UNITED/ FRICTION and Chris from THE BATTERING ROOM/ KNOCKOUT.

I can’t make their Mercury show because I’m helping to produce Beirut on the 20th at Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene. We scouted the venue today and I have to tell you, it’s going to be an amazing show. One of the greatest things about this season of the Wordless Music Series is that WNYC has signed on to record and broadcast all of the shows. This means their extremely knowledgeable engineer and all of his expensive microphones will be there. I can’t wait to hear Zach playing his trumpet through a ribbon mic that’s three times his age. Honestly, in that hall with those mics, Beruit will sound better than ever. And if you can get over your fear of the G train, the venue is not very hard to get to and very unique with superb acoustics. Or come to Manhattan on the 24th, both shows will be great. [details at Wordless Music Series]

I can’t make the Maxwell’s show on the 22nd because I need to be at Battering Room’s Knockout: Round 6. Some good friends of mine are playing… Details on that are forthcoming.