fire-jumpers and singing saws

i make the following admission only with the certainty that i do not stand alone in its embrace: as a genre, "christmas music" instills in me the urgent desire to make madly for the hills.
there are certainly exceptions to this acerbic and frankly humbuggish rule. the lush limited-edition seven-inch "he's coming home" b/w "old toy trains" by dean and britta (with sonic boom) is one of them; so too low's genre-busting ep, "christmas," originally self-released on cd and now available on vinyl. (both succeed where most pop x-mas offerings fail in different ways. dean and britta's little disc downplays the overt christianity of traditional carols and focuses instead on the warmth and feeling behind the rituals and atmosphere which permeate the holiday season--nostalgic reference points for even we amongst the secular cynic listening audience. as practicing mormons, low brings their spirituality to the table with their album, which includes some christmas standards, but also originals. however it withdraws to a matter-of-factness that doesn't try to proselytize, and the music can be heard and felt without inner conflict for all but the strictest existentialist.)

anyway, with this holiday caveat ideologically embedded, i found myself at a crossroads when i was invited to a leg of the music tapes' marathon "caroling" tour, which a pair of good friends was hosting in their home.
on the one hand, i was excited that my friends had landed the opportunity to host the gig, they being enthusiastic fans of the elephant 6 collective, and because i (rightly) suspected their house, with its impressive stacks of tapes, records and cds, its andy kaufman and kiss figurines, and its daniel johnston and james mcnew art, would provide an apt and welcoming venue for such an intimate event.
on the other hand, there was no escaping the cheery holiday vibe as the show loomed closer on the calender, and the un-apologetically christmas-ness rumored to be due fostered a finicky apprehension that i would go to an intimate gathering around former neutral milk hotel instrumentalist julian koster, and find myself nose-deep in schmaltzy regurgitated indie versions of "rudolphs" and "jingle bells."
on the other hand, the chance to attend (and as it turned out, to participate peripherally in) such an unusual event was palpably intriguing. and with the venue a scant five blocks away, it was too ridiculously convenient to skip out on. of course, if you're following along, this math results in three hands, which is creepy. hmmm...

in the end, of course, we stuck a flask of bourbon into warm coat pockets and strode through the frigid night to my friends' place.
the house was lit with colored lights and filled with a small crowd of cool-looking people; the sense that we were all in on a secret together was inescapable. no real spacial divide existed in the living room between the audience, seated in folding chairs, sofa and floor, and the three band members surrounded by lights, vague automatons (a snowman, bell-ringing mice, etc), and a barrage of well-worn or outright tattered instruments. still not sure what to expect, we settled in as koster, in a high, excited voice, began his show.
what followed was a journey through a highly personalized version of the idea and practice of christmas, set to music ramshackle and sophisticated, eked out through bow-played banjo, collaged re-purposed recorded material, singing saws, brass and keys. subtle moments of beauty, such as the pure sonic bliss of saw duets, were juxtaposed with almost over-the-top jokes and nearly too-saccharine personal stories (some no doubt based in fact, some certainly false, and both peddled with equal candor and import). the impression was that koster was actually living the fantasy he was acting out for us, weirdly evocative of pee wee's playhouse, the film "delicatessen," indie shows and schoolboy recitals, and though it was actually magical at times, at some points in the show the only thing that saved it from being pathetically contrived was that sense of honesty. it was a delicate balance struck, therefore, with the scales tipped just to the right side, but retaining that sense that catastrophe was lurking in the corner, waiting for its opportunity to spring.
with this in mind, the utter disregard for the "fourth wall" shown by the music tapes seemed especially ballsy but, in that they succeeded in compelling jaded seattle hipsters to happily be woven into the fabric of the performance through highly interactive actions (including passing around a huge gift-wrapped box, being blindfolded, and incredibly, jumping over a flaming can full of our own incinerated totems). this is remarkable in that people here seldom even move at shows, much less dance, and audience participation is a rare and painful-to-observe occurrence at the best of times. so koster's blend of musical ingenuity and (faux-?)naive presentation definitely seemed to have charmed rather than chagrined.

after collecting our coats and shoes, we walked home, keeping warm with a shared nat sherman and sips from the flask, we debated: what did we just see? was it good? was it weird? i guess it was both. and that was alright.

i dreamed last night that i saw the music tapes play a more conventional show, and woke up thinking, "aha! now i can contrast the two for a better review!"
i have no idea what they must have played like in my dream though, so that write-up will have to wait until reality provides me the opportunity to see them again.

it's not the radio

with almost exactly one year passed since my last post, i supposed it might be time to renew my ramblings on the meagre wealth of indie rock. though funds have been severly short of late, somehow music has still managed to eke its way into my life, slowly in the earlier days of 2010, but more steadily as a new job paid it's way up to the point where mere survival had been sated and small luxuries could be brought home.
the first of which being a decent turntable.
accordingly, i have been listening to a lot of records on vinyl.
accordingly, i have been listening to other people's vinyl records also.
it's cool, i get to hear stuff i haven't really heard or paid attention to before.
like, whe alex chilton recently died, i felt like i was the only one who didn't know who he was, because i never listened to big star before. rectified!
also, how did i never pay attntion to teenage fanclub?
well that, too, is being paid proper due now.

amongst this cultural re-excavation, i happened to become re-acquainted with the two albums by low, "secret name," and "things we lost in the fire," that i had on cd, and enjoyed listening to once, but never really got deeply into. i thought they were pretty, especially the harmonies of singers alan sparhawk and mimi parker, but it never made too much of a impression besides.
as i listened to those records again with the attention one feels requisite for playing such things on vinyl (which takes "more work" obviously, and therefore yields a sweeter response.... right?), they struck different chords within me, and their impact was deepened by listening also to previously unheard (by me) "trust" and the collaboration with the dirty three, "in the fishtank," which is frontrunner for my favorite record of the minute.
the sounds i was hearing somehow resonated more in my head this time around, as i became of their structures and technical merits, and struck anew by the gorgeous simplicity of low's practice, and so when the opportunity came to catch the band on the opening show of its west coast christmas tour, and nearby in my neighborhood, and for fifteen bucks, i felt i ought to go along.

seattle's tractor tavern is a venerable rock club in these parts, intimate, immediate, raucus and raw all at once. boots line the ceiling joists, and crushed (though seldom dry) pabst cans litter the floor. the stage rises a scant few feet from the floor, and the performer is only an arm's length from the front row.
after dinking around with his guitars for a little, low frontman alan sparhawk retreated to the green room to reappear in a handful of minutes with wife and drummer mimi parker, bassist steve garrington, and eric pollard from the sparhawk/garrington side-project retribution gospel choir, in tow.
two rows back, between the majority of the room and the band, it felt like old friends were being welcomed into a home, though who played the role of which protagonist seemed negotiable.
with a minimum of fuss and banter, low kicked into gear with their long, droning, gorgeous songs, working with tight skills and enthusiastic energy through their set. the energy and synergy between the performers was palpable, with silent looks and nods being exchanged throughout, and with a good deal of grinning during songs, especially between sparhawk and garrington, who seemed to be enjoying the experience mightily.
after regaling us with low songs newer and older, eventually the tone switched to seasonal topicality, and the carols were broken out, with the band running powerfully through nearly, if not all, of their fabled self-released christmas ep.
were that not enough, after the set, when they returned to the stage for an encore, the band entertained requests and happily played six more songs, bringing the entire set to a run time just below two hours, and a memorable time indeed!
the only real downside of the evening, musically, was that the opening performer, minnesotan bluesman charlie parr, was brought on to the stage twice to accompany low on his resonator guitar, and though his achingly beautiful sliding notes could be discerned, it was only just barely, which was a shame (we could hear them where we were because we could hear them partially un-amped as well as on the p.a., a luxury many present could not have been accorded).

otherwise, the show, for me, was a revelation, seething with an energy i had not expected, and a pleasure to be playing that inspired and awed. the sonic crush enveloped one, with sparhawk's guitars (there was a gorgeous white les paul custom, an epiphone les paul-style baritone, and a fender twelve-string that defied belief; bassist garrington was rocking a gorgeous vintage fender) growling and cooing while parker's drum sent reverberations rollicking through the floor into our bodies. the singing was at once lush and spare, and pollard's keyboards and effects set the stage for the the six-string acrobatics that scratched the songs into existence. all the while garrington carefully and precisely delineated the rhythm with sharp, heavily amped bass notes, his long fingers poising and pouncing on the strings.

alan sparhawk remarked somewhere towards the middle of the encore that "[they] don't usually play for so long," yet neither he nor his bandmates seemed tired or bored; rather they seemed delighted to be back on the road, and the crowd surrounding us could not have agreed more.

still happening

when i was a kid, my parents listened to judy collins and abba and john denver.
i remember feeling pretty fucking cool in 1987 or so when i discovered this amazing band called the beatles.
there were only a few radio stations that i could get--on my brand-new magnavox am/fmradio/doubletapedeck/recordplayer stereo--in the room that i finally had to myself, away from my little brothers. one of them was not kcmu, the college radio station that was broadcast from less than ten miles away, but which was overridden by larger in-city frequencies. at least in my neighborhood.
i got the king fm, the classical public radio station, and kbsg, the oldies station, at first (technically, when i was twelve i listened to top-forty shit to try to understand girls in my class at school; in retrospect it was not worth it, and it didn't work anyways). but it was these two stations i actually listened to a lot. especially the oldies, because it was actual rock'n'roll, which mysteriously drew me in. i knew all those old songs by heart, buddy holly, herman's hermits, ritchie vallens, tommy james & the shondells, all sorts of stuff. as the eighties waned, more songs from the seventies started creeping into the playlists, but at school i was getting hooked up with period music that didn't fit into the suited and boted conformity of '60s pop product. late beatles, like "obladi-oblada" and the acid-trip psychedelia were tantalizing and taboo and i flew through generations every couple months or so.
then two things happened when i was maybe sixteen or so. 1). a friend gave me they might be giants and violent femmes tapes, and 2). the slot on fm 107.7 became kndd the end, which started playing home-grown "grunge" bands in a mix with band like iggy and the stooges, david bowie and talking heads: bands that were already either venerable or deceased elsewhere, but still raw and vibrant on seattle's shitty commercial radio, and therefore, to its young listeners. i remember being blown away by elastica without knowing how deeply they werein debt to wire and the fall. i heard L7 and thought they were the meanest sexiest things on earth.i was scared my parents would hear this degenerate noise and take my stereo away from me.
you could not see (good) live music in seattle in 1993 if you were under 21 and you were me. obviously some kids got away with it, but i was way too timid to even think about getting a fake id. i didn't even start drinking until i was twenty.
finding new and interesting music became a game for my friends and i. we felt triumphant to have discovered the pixies, so raw and smart, from exotic new england. we swooned over belly's tanya donnely, and we were amongst those fooled into thinking urge overkill was worthwhile. along the way we learned about the vaselines from kurt cobain, realized that pearl jam was less relevent than superchunk (though if you'd asked us why, we would have had a hard time answering). we were beginning to catch up with those more savvy than we, but while most of us were thrilled to have a label like subpop operating in our own downtown, only the edgiest of us (of which i was not one) knew that the real shit was happening, and had been since the early eighties just down the interstate in olympia where calvin johnson's k empire was one of the hippest enclaves outside of the bowery.
i began getting a hint about this activity on my self-imposed exile to upstate new york for my one inglorious year of college. my new jersey roommate was listening to bands from olympia, and my reaction was nothing short of shock. really? this was going on under my nose? my high school cohort barry was also getting awoken to the rest of the world, and he sent periodic mixtapes from home off to me on the east coast. so did my friend jay. things were opening up and i think we all felt like we'd been blindsided a little. or maybe it was just sheltered me...

anyway, i don't remember exactly when i first heard beat happening, but it was not1983, when they first started recording songs like "our secret" and "down at the sea." it was not even 1992, when you turn me on was released.
i often wonder how different my brain would've processed things if i had heard beat happening earlier: would i have started making music before my thirties? as it was, i first started listening to calvin, heather and bret in my mid-twenties, and they were a revelation then, years after plunging into the musical deep end head-first.
beat happening still stuns me.
the wry disregard for polishand studio tricks; the offhand lyrics, ripe with poetic import but too playful for the arty-farty folks, and far too hip to be dismissed as gimmicky; the utter contempt for anything other than emotive immediacy where recording and production were concerned; all these things make bh's music unique.
the very name is romantically hip, summoning images of some musical lovechild of the two great counterculture allens, kaprow and ginsberg.
one sees old photos of the band, heather lewis' big glasses and roni horn-haircut, calvin johnson's slouchily sensual pout, and bret lunsford's impenetrable veneer or cool quietude. a litany of borrowed drums and guitars, that sexy old archtop, the crappy sears silvertone (sadly stolen recently from bret's protegée karl blau), all these brutally yet sweetly coerced into providing the minimal support for heather or calvin's plaintive voices.

when i listen to beat happening now they summon a nostalgia that i am not entitled too, but which should have been mine.
i had the ratty sweaters, and the yearning for something simple and beautiful: rimbaud with a snare.
bat happening could have helped to fill the void that haunted me back then.
but i didn't know they were there and as happy as i am to have them now, i wish i had them then...

i call "bs" on you! yes i do!

i was going to start out by saying, "ok, man, you know i don't like calling people out, but..."
i shouldn't start out that way though, because my mouth has gotten me in more trouble oer the years than i'd like to think about. almost getting kicked out of college? yup. gotten me into a bad relationship? oh yeah. landed me the job i've had for the last nine years? worst of all...
however, though i've tried to temper my responses (slightly) i still itch to voice my contrary opinions. laced with less salty language perhaps...

a couple weeks ago, while meandering through the youtube labyrinth, i came across this video of "the new pornographers" in the back of an english taxi (at www.blackcabsessions.com--which sounds like a porn site, but in fact is comprised of musicians in the back of black cabs performing in situ and rough-and-ready versions of a particular song). it was not, in fact, the whole band, but rather carl newman and kathryn calder, with carl on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, and kathryn on accordian and harmonies.
wow, it sure was gorgeous. that sounds a little disingenuous, but i assure you, i'm straight up. it wa so good, i'm convinced tnp should do an album just like that: acoustic and stripped alllllll the way down. it would be amazing. a.c., hook me up man?

anyway, i had heard kathryn singing with tnp when they opened for belle & sebastian a couple years ago, when they were "controversially" touring without neko case, and everyone was poo-pooing them, because she is the indie-goddess, and they are thebacking band (i could mention that bejar wasn't with them either, but that doesn't help my case). kathryn sounded fantastic, hitting all the "neko" notes right on target, and delivering a powerhouse performance with the rest of the band. so after seeing this video (in the interest of disclosure, i am a lonely-boy songwriter guy, and kathryn calder is ethereally lovely with a voice to match)...
*coughs sheepishly*
...so after seeing this video, i did the ol' google-search to see if kathryn calder, like the other members of canada's most hippest "superband," had a side project or two, and i came across immaculate machine.
i have just spent waaaaaaay too much money on music in the last several months, and though it is on my hotlist(!) i haven't ordered their cds (ones and zeroes and immaculate machine's fables, both on mint), i notice there's another due this spring, so maybe i'll just make a typical matt-move and buy them in bulk.
there are a couple videos out there on the web, and (and here comes the gripe!--"aha," you say, "i wondered when (if?) that would come along") a daytrotter session.

now. i am not gonna ladle out a heaping serving of shit upon the good peeps at daytrotter dot com, because i believe in and am appreciative of what they do.
BUT
in the mini-essay introducing the session, author sean moeller writes:
"[immaculate machine] find familiarity in "dear catastrophe waitress" era belle and sebastian and travel with the wind-dried melodies of the new pornographers,* but they write songs that have some of that crackle of grungy seattle, via the 1990s, when sub pop was just getting its sea legs** there in the salty northwest."
to which i responded with a silence. mainly because i was alone, with no one to talk to. not that i am deterred by solitude. i talk to myself for hours. but i was stunned, in this case, into speechlessness.
immaculate machine do in fact sound a bit like the new pornographers. one could argue that if your uncle were in a hugely popular and influencial band, you might sound similar, too.*** i can see the b&s comparison too, since there's a nice amount of melody and musicality to the band that has been given more free rein since chamber-pop's ascendency. i can even see the 1990s thing. it's official, we born in the seventies are officially oh-el-dee (but luckily not as old as you even older fogies out there!), and the styles of "alternative" or "college rock" bands that we grew up on have deeply influenced a number of newish bands. but the '90s band that i hear most in immaculate machine is belly, the tanya donelly project that had my friend pulling out his hair in obsessive frustration back in high school. of course also the breeders and throwing muses and all that crowd (not so much pixies, though). they also sound like the defunct australian band the clouds. they kinda sound like the feelies a little too, but honestly, every other indie pop band sounds like the feelies (hello vampire weekend. i am talking. to. you.); i need to get ahold of their records so i can stop relying on their myspace fansite and the three songs available there. serious. also, it's a little funny that all four tracks (i never catch on fast enough for the temporary downloads) start with a very similar snap of the drums.
what bugs me is that, strictly from my own experience of seattle in the nineties, im doesn;t sound like anything me and my friends were listening to (from seattle--they sound like the boston stuff (but not "boston," which, in all honestly, we were listening to. i am so sorry...). they sound nothing like grunge. is that what the rest of the country thinks we were doing? i mean, "grunge" was the unholy spawn of hard rock (sometimes metal) and punk rock, with a very small dose of sarah records and postcard records stuff. that stuff was more of an influence on the olympia scene though (which in turn influenced kurt cobain and others up here). grunge was hard. it was violent and angsty, loud and emotive (it had close ties to proto-emo bands like fugazi and even ministry--all mentioned in the same breath with nirvana and mudhoney (we try not to mention other associated acts like pearl jam and chicago's urge overkill). grunge was scary for us kids. we liked it a lot, and we totally tapped into that rage and anger (and the indisputable feeling that there was depth to it: substance to enrich the feelings of frustration and anxiety--remember, we were involved in an iraq war then too). on the other hand, we were pretty sure that if we ran into mark arm at dick's he could've happily kicked our asses into the ground. (i hear mark arm is a great guy, but when we were in our teens, these guys were like "all doing heroin" and smashing guitars and all sorts of things we imagined happening behind the impenetrabe doors of the comet.****
i could be really nitpicky and go into how pavitt and poneman actually got revved up in the eighties, and how, by the early-nineties, sub pop was not only in full-flight, but was on the way towards transcending the "seattle sound" and becoming more eclectic, and *gasp* gentler. much later i would recognise, retrospectively, that arc in the rise-and-plateau of the "dunedin sound" in new zealand, and its connection with flying nun records, not to mention the untold number of scene and label histories out there.

i should actually make it clear that i am in love with immaculate machine. i heart them. they sound so good. i want to buy their records. i want to kiss kathryn calder's hand. their melodies will rock you with beautiful chiming feedbacking harmonizing pounding dance-in-your-chair songs.
they really sound a lot like belly though...
and that essay wasn't really bad, i was just all, "yo man, i was there! that's my youth you're talkin' about!"
knowwhaddimean?

notes:
*i don't know what this means: they're crusty? dessicated? pleasantly unscented?

**maritime references abound in the piece

***fyi: calder is newman's niece. and she in that band.

****one thing a lot of people may not understand, is that it was really, really difficult to get into shows if you were under 21 here. there were bands i had to wait a decade for (until they came back to town), and the ones i did see were in horrible stadium or festival formats--i mean, seeing nirvana and the meat puppets was groundbreaking for me, and seeing sonic youth at bumbershoot was like the deus ex machina, but largly we felt that the only way we could connect with our own hometown scene was to trade tapes and buy whatever records we could with our scrounged funds.