1. Dustin Morris - Balance 2. Mom - Little Brite 3. The Polyphonic Spree - Live from Austin, TX 4. The Crash That Took Me - Orchestrated Kaleidoscope 5. Flat People - Flat People
(again, I'm pretty amazed that Mom seems to have appeared on this list more than any other band this year.)
OVERALL TOP 20
1. M.I.A. - Kala 2. M.I.A. - Arular 3. Dustin Morris - Balance 4. Joy Division - Closer (2CD Collector's Edition) 5. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin 6. Beirut - The Flying Club Cup 7. Octopus Project - Hello, Avalanche 8. Mom - Little Brite 9. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala 10. Castanets - In the Veins 11. Soundtrack - I'm Not There 12. Ween - La Cucaracha 13. The Polyphonic Spree - Live from Austin, TX 14. The Crash That Took Me - Orchestrated Kaleidoscope 15. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand 16. Thrills - Teenager 17. Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - Follow the Lights 18. Great Northern - Trading Twilight for Daylight19. Robbers On High Street - Grand Animals20. Phosphorescent - Pride
Nothing happening tonight other than the usual Monday night stuff (Cool Out at the Cavern, Bad Ass Jazz at Amsterdam, etc.). We'll have more stuff for you later today and this evening. Don't shoot the messenger.
THU: Monotonix/Young Widows/Life-Death Continuum/Rival Gang (8th Continent) FRI: The King Khan and BBQ Show/Wax Museums/Uptown Bums (Rubber Gloves) SAT: The Evens (Public Trust) SAT: Old Tme Relijun/Burnt Sienna Trio/Violent Squid (Hailey's) SAT: Estaw/Chew Fu Phat/Select/Prince William (Sloppyworld) SAT: Meneguar/Record Hop (715 Panhandle) SUN: AIDS Wolf/Undoing of David Wright/El Paso Hot Button/Church of the Snake/Pretty Vacant DJs (Public Trust)
Girl Talk | Busdriver | Daedelus (Palladium Loft) As I sit here writing this, I'm listening to Girl Talk's demo mix CD he did for Vice Records a couple years back, and I think it serves as a decent example of what this guy does, even though it is nothing compared to his live show. Some of the We Shot J.R. crew caught his performance at Pitchfork's Day Party during SXSW last year, and even though it took place at like 4 in the afternoon, the guy completely owned the crowd the entire time, mixing everything from Doug E. Fresh to Night Ranger into a set that provided the only good argument I've ever heard in favor of mash ups. Girl Talk fans who have yet to see him perform will NOT be disappointed, trust me. I saw Busdriver a couple years ago at SXSW as well, and I thought the guy was a dork even though he's got an incredible technical flow that is worth witnessing for sure. AND LET ME KICK A SHOUT OUT TO RADIO UTD FOR ALLOWING US TO GIVE AWAY AN EXTRA PAIR OF TICKETS TO THIS SHOW.
Witchcraft | Saviours | Vorvadoss(Doublewide) Parade of Flesh has put together a nice little metal show this evening featuring Sweden's Witchcraft, a band that seems to draw from classic metal influences in a highly effective manner that should please any of the random metal dudes at Doublewide despite the fact that at least one of their songs features a flute. Really melodic and loud and good. Kemado's Saviours have a harder edge to them although they seem to be influenced by the same early days of metal, albeit with more of a Motorhead (meets Jesus Lizard) thing happening. I bet they'll be pretty brutal live.
Final Fantasy | Cadence Weapon (Hailey's) Final Fantasy I can really take or leave, but Cadence Weapon is so fucking good that you'll never even think about the fact that dude was a hip hop critic for Pitchfork.
Frightened Rabbit (The Cavern) Frightened Rabbit might be the lamest new bands I like. I'd be willing to bet that most people who share similar musical tastes will think I'm a major pussy for putting this show on the list, but I really dig their Britpop/poppunk tracks, which is a sentence I didn't think I'd ever write.
Life-Death Continuum ( Nine Eyes Studio, 130 N. Peak at Peak and Elm) LDC will play a set at 11pm at this free party that will include free food and drinks. You'd be dumb if you were in Dallas and didn't stop by.
Spoon | New Pornographers | Emma Pollock (House of Blues SOLD OUT) Whenever I saw that Spoon was playing in town this weekend, I decided to listen to a little bit of Goo Ga Ga or whatever its called in order to determine whether I was at all interested in going to this show. And despite the obligatory 8 point something Pitchfork review and the other general praise it has received, listening to Spoon's new album really made me wonder when these guys started being so boring. Or maybe I just got more exciting. Everything is fine enough on it I suppose, but over the past couple of years, I've become totally Spooned out. New Pornographers' anthemic indie pop is much more enjoyable than it should be, but hey, this is sold out anyway, so if you're going you're going, and if you're not, you're not. I'm not.
SATURDAY
Celebration | Fog | Dragons of Zynth(Rubber Gloves) For me, Celebration's Modern Tribe is one of the most pleasant surprises of 2007. The band's sound has been built up and refined considerably since their last release in 2005, and the extra layers of noise and melody, brought to you by some great organ synths and increasingly sophisticated songwriting, help push the band to new, if slightly less rhythmic heights. You can stream their entire album on their Myspace page if you want to, and you do. Fog sounds pretty interesting as well. Do the same with them.
Tim Sweeney (Minc) I guess you could say that Tim Sweeney is the Chad Hugo of hip American electro dance, but if you did, you would be as big of a jackass as I am for thinking of it in the first place. But Sweeney, one of the founding members of DFA, doesn't need my dorky Neptunes references to attract interest, as he has played a major role in one of the most important movements in American underground music in the past decade. He doesn't have a project that reaches the height's of partner James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem, but I'm guessing it would be quite difficult to find a more choice DJ set anywhere than the one he'll play on Saturday. Respect to Stereo on Strike for putting this show together.
1919 Halloween Show with Dead Ramones as Descendents | Shortest Distance as Woody Guthrie | KojiKondo as Flipper (1919 Hemphill) A slightly untimely Halloween party featuring local bands dressing up and playing as other bands. Usually not my favorite theme for a show, but at least they picked some good ones, especially KojiKondo as Flipper.
Robbers on High Street (Good Records, 3pm) These guys are also playing later this evening at the Cavern, but I'm only interested in them to the point that I'd watch them if I happened to be in a record store on a Saturday afternoon and it was free. So there you go. At least they don't sound exactly like Spoon anymore. And in fact, I think I might like their new material a little better than Spoon's. It's kind of like how Stone Temple Pilots were better than Pearl Jam.
SUNDAY
M.I.A. | The Cool Kids (House of Blues) Now here's a show that's a must see despite the fact that it's on a Sunday at House of Blues. I'd be shocked if I had to tell anyone reading this what M.I.A. sounds like, but I will tell you that 1) her new album is really good, and 2) Cool Kids are honestly one of the more exciting hip hop groups to emerge in the last few years. A lot has been made about their stylistic shout outs to the glory days of mid to late 80's east coast hip hop, but they also seem to have incorporated many of the best aspects of everyone from Jay Z to Jurassic 5 to Spank Rock to Clipse in both production and flow. Go listen to some of their tracks on Myspace and tell me you aren't planning on show up early for this one. And by the way, MIA is doing an autograph signing at Good Records at 4pm. I'd get there early too.
Of Montreal | MGMT | Grand Buffet (Granada) Too bad this show is going on the same night as MIA. I hope that the Granada's recently improved sound situation helps to make this performance better than the last Of Montreal appearance at the Granada, which found the group sounding very small. If the sound issues are all worked out, this will be a good one.
White Rabbits | Red Monroe | Record Hop | Burning Hotels (The Cavern) White Rabbit. Boo. Don't even really feel like telling you why. In fact, Red Monroe and Record Hop are really the only attractions at this show, but both are worth your time live.
80's Night with DJG (Hailey's) We love DJ G and everything, but 80's Night at Hailey's has pretty much become a frat boy meat market downer. Or maybe I'm just too grumpy for this kind of shit.
Health | Crime Novels | Daniel Francis Doyle | Nouns Group | Eat Avery's Bones (Eighth Continent) So there are two big Halloween shows in Denton tonight-- and this is going to be the LOUD one. You can learn more about Health by reading DL's interview just below this post, and I'm guessing that many of you are looking forward to this. You really haven't been able to wander around MP3 blogs for the past few months without seeing something about Health or one of their noise/art/hardcore L.A. contemporaries, and just about every account I've ever read of their live shows indicates that yeah, you probably want to see this. Not sure what time things get kicked off tonight or when Health is due to go on (maybe someone from the 8th can fill us in in the comment section, and please don't tell us that thing is going until 2), but just about any time you get there will be a good time, with a solid line up all the way through to keep you company.
Mom | Florene | Mistress | Fizzy Dino Pop | Sticky Buns (Rubber Gloves) Maglium Records affiliated event servers as the (mostly) softer side of Denton Halloween this evening with an interesting and eclectic line up that will be free to see if you wear a costume. Sticky Buns, Mom AND Mistress on the same bill? If that doesn't demonstrate some of the diversity in Denton music, then I don't know what does.
Halloween Party with DJs Nature, Sober and Select (Granada) Not sure what else is going on in Dallas tonight, so I'm thinking this party will be the place to be tonight. Last time I heard Nature at Granada, the sound system seemed surprisingly sufficient for dance music, and if they fill this place up tonight, I'm guessing this show will be really fun.
And the Great Tyrantis playing at the Chat Room in Fort Worth, but I don't know the rest of the line up and don't have time to find out.
Dokodemo Doa (Cool Beans) Just wanted to add that the beloved and recently reformed Denton act, Dokodemo Doa is playing the roof of Cool Beans tonight at 10. This set will consist mostly of old songs but they are apparently going to start working on new material. Show is free.
And if you really want a good scare on Halloween, think about the possibility of reading ANOTHER update on the state of Deep Ellum in the Observer. Can boring be scary?
I first saw HEALTH roughly a year ago, playing in front of a fairly small audience. After attending a couple of better attended shows, they always seemed to dwarf their surroundings and the crowd especially, with the expansive crush of their sound-a nightmarishly pounding throb that was laced with shrieking electronics and intricate poly-rhythms. The frantic immediacy of HEALTH's live show is offset by the ghostly and eerily beautiful singing. It is these contradictory sonic factors that have contributed to how much HEALTH's music has lent itself to what is arguably some of the most intriguing remix work of a band's music in recent memory. It has gotten to the point where they have put up a separate Myspace page to showcase the reworked music. After a remix of one of their tracks by the highly influential Crystal Castles, HEALTH found itself in a much different place than the tiny space where I first saw them a year ago: in the top 10 of the UK Indie Singles Chart. It now seems possible that HEALTH's audience will perhaps seem more evenly matched with the gargantuan sound they make. Founding member and multi-instrumentalist John Famglietti was kind enough to speak with WSJR by phone yesterday:
So are you guys in Houston today?
Yeah, we're gonna be in Houston probably a little bit late actually. We're going to be there in like, three hours.
Oh, really? Is that at Super Happy Fun Land? Or some other place?
No, it's at somewhere I've never heard of called The Proletariat. We've never played there before.
Tell me a little about the catalyst for Health and how you formed. Were you all drawn to LA from other places? Or are you all natives? How much do you feel the surroundings affect your music?
Two of us are from LA, that's Jupiter (Keyes) and BJ (Miller). BJ's from Riverside, which is the IE (Inland Empire), which is pretty close to LA. And Jupiter's from El Monte, so pretty much from LA. I'm from San Diego and Jake (Duzsik) is from Seattle. Jake moved there to go to school, and I moved to LA when I was 18. So that's basically it. We just wanted to, it's mostly out of we met and wanted to form a band. The surroundings, I don't know if there's anything like landscape or anything that inspired us. Definitely not. But the scene is definitely very inspiring. And the community. I don't know how that comes out musically, but that definitely makes it a lot easier and a lot more encouraging to make music, to have that support.
Yeah, I was actually wondering about how you perceive the creative culture in LA, geographically. Is LA as defined by location or as split up as New York tends to be? Are there specific neighborhoods that have a lot going on or does the sprawl tend to cut into the clusters of activity?
I guess the only real difference I see is that pretty much everyone you're going to hang out with or is part of the scene, almost all of them live on the East Side, or east. And of course the hip neighborhoods are definitely east of Hollywood now days, or closer to downtown, and the shows are around there. Because it's LA, it's very rare that stuff is really centered around a neighborhood. You know, kids who are part of the scene or a part of the shows and all the cultural shit are living, as usual, really fucking far. Or they live in the IE and they're fucking driving an hour to go to a show and they're always there. So people are driving really far and that's just LA. So nothing to really slow it down at all, but there's definitely a vibe and cool things going down on the East Side and around downtown, in Echo Park and areas around there, where it's cheaper. And then that's where we live. But it's not really localized into a little borough or whatever the hell. And the IE is the Inland Empire, the very edge of LA County, in the fucking desert. It takes an hour to get to the city. It's just over the mountain, where Riverside is. That's where's BJ's from. And a band like Abe Vigoda, are from the IE. They're an LA band and they're driving an hour to come in every time they go to a show, which is really awesome.
Since you mentioned Abe Vigoda, the first half of the decade seemed to have been dominated by East Coast acts, specifically out of New York, and now the West Coast seems to be producing a lot of quality music. Especially in the past few years and definitely more than the overhyped East Coast in the first part of the decade. What are some of your favorite bands from LA? Maybe you can name some that people might not be aware of.
Captain Ahab is probably one of our favorites. I think the LA bands that are getting the most attention are the ones that are more rock-oriented. Captain Ahab is really awesome, doesn't get very much mention, and is probably the best. Also there's a really awesome, really active noise scene in LA. But it's kind of hard to name their people because they just change their name and you can't well...fucking whatever. (Laughter) Also, Anavan is really awesome. Nosaj Thing, he's electronic, really awesome. I know it's getting to be a lot. There are a lot of good bands! The good thing is that bands from LA are getting a lot of attention so I don't even need to mention them, but they're getting a lot of attention. That's really cool. Really exciting. I still think that the East Coast is still on top, not New York anymore, but Baltimore is a really good scene with the highest quantity of really good bands.
I guess Baltimore, Providence, and Williamsburg have been the main places, East Coast-wise.
Yeah, but I think the impressive thing about the LA scene though, really, is no one is fucking moving there to make a band. So all the bands we have are people who are pretty much from the area for the most part, or around the area. Very few people are moving to LA now days to be part of something hip or cool like all these people moving to different cities, who have been the whole decade. It's pretty cool that we have this many good bands of people who are just already here.
Hopefully, it stays that way. That's usually what ruins it.
(Laughter)
I believe there's some age diversity in the group. Do you feel that affects how your tastes differ from each other or the different influences you each might bring to the band?
Yeah, yeah. But I think we're close enough in age that we still have formative...I don't know. Well, Jake and I had formative experiences with punk rock like most do, and BJ and Jupiter didn't. I don't think that has anything to do with their age, just how they grew up and stuff like that. Definitely some differences in music, but we all really come together on what we like. I think we're all pretty much close enough in age that we still have the same touchstones of what was popular in the 90's growing up. We all relate just fine. I think Jake and I having a formative experience in punk rock is probably the biggest difference in terms of our diversity in musical taste. But we're all bound to the same stuff.
So did you have mixed feelings about SXSW? Were there any highlights of CMJ for you? Do you see these conferences as a necessary evil or are they enjoyable on some level?
We don't have any mixed feelings about SXSW. We love SXSW. Really love SXSW. I think these are really cool things to do. CMJ,I think we prefer SXSW a lot more. It makes a lot more sense in terms of how much easier it is and how everything is connected and right there. CMJ was a fucking...was a lot of work. Parking and driving in Manhattan, and getting from place to place, and shit like that. But we really enjoyed it. It's really fun stuff. We enjoyed it overall.
I heard you chose to record at The Smell for sound purposes, since that's where you've played a lot. Homecoming shows after tour etc. Is that the whole story, or were there other advantages aside from the field recording methodology of recording at the club where you usually perform?
It was mostly about the sound. We were we were really really scared about our album just not having... Most bands you hear today, you'll buy the cd and they'll always be recorded under the same circumstances and everything is strangely super fucking dry and sounds really really digital and not very good. So we were just trying to find a way, though we were self-recording it for a budget, to still make sure the recording would have character and would sound really good at The Smell. Ultimately we were allowed to record it for free. We had gone to studios that were within our price range and they had asbestos ceilings or something that just we were not going to accept to record our drums in. We had to have concrete or brick or whatever it took, the open walls. And The Smell's got that-it's all concrete and brick and it sounds really good.
Yeah, you can definitely hear the whole room and the drums. So that's part of what you were looking for, that ambient room sound?
Yeah definitely. The Smell was so cavernous that it was really hard to record in, and it definitely changes the tone quite a bit. So it's not the ideal situation, but it sounds really good. We were willing to have that and have way less control, than record in a studio and just be spending all this time just trying to make it sound better and be really unhappy with the results. But we're happy with the results.
I've heard at least one of you, maybe in a press kit, compare yourselves to Animal Collective, and I feel that almost might be selling yourselves short in a way. I was surprised by how much your full length sounded maybe like some of This Heat's first two records at times, along with other electronics-infused kinda scratchy-noisy-punk stuff from the late 70's/early 80's. Is there an interest in electronics from that era, or did you use more sophisticated modern equipment to accomplish those sounds? For instance, when you're beating on drum pads, some people are purists to the point where they want to have the exact drum pads that some early electronic pioneer band used. Do you have that kind of vintage equipment fetish?
We don't have any equipment fetish. We're going to use whatever sounds good to us. But the funny thing is my drum pads are actually from the 80's. They're analog and they do have that sound! (Laughter)
Awesome.
So it just kind of happened that way. We do really like bands from that era, but I mean that's the thing- you know, having more modern equipment, unless you're having something really modern or done with computers. Pretty much anything. We use all type of old pads and shit like that and all our gear is right there, it's all outboard shit. All that stuff was available in fucking Eighty-Whatever. So it's not really that new. I guess the approach is new, so that's the way people want to think about it and it's based on how you go about it. I guess that answers your question. For the This Heat thing, people say that a lot. When we listened to This Heat in The UK, we were like "Oh shit. A lot of similarities." (Laughter) It was really funny because we were reading their liner notes and their was a slang term we use for our microphones that we thought was just our own joke. We had heard This Heat, but it wasn't a driving force. But we've gone back and actually listened to their records, and there are sounds that overlap. Sounds that they have, that we have now, and I'm sure they probably got them in a similar fashion. Which freaked us out. It was definitely after we'd written those songs.
Yeah, i didn't notice that until i heard the full-length all the way through. When i had seen you live before or listened to the first tour EP, I didn't really pick up on that.
With the album, there's a lot more to getting those sounds, a prolonged period. I'd put the track on and I would kind of jam with it on our setup that we typically go through. I'd use parts of that for little areas and overdubs, stuff like that. That's something we didn't get into with our EP, so...
You have a much harsher approach than a lot of bands of late, who are known for incorporating electronics, or maybe what you'd expect from a group that gained notoriety from a remix. Do you feel you aspire to something different aesthetically than a lot of bands that create more dance-oriented material from the beginning? For instance, a group that just throws in disco beats over standard indie rock fare? Your full-length tends to have more interesting structures than bands like that.
Yeah, I guess I don't know how planned it is, but there's definitely...shit, it's really hard to say. We're trying to do our own thing and we're just trying our best to be what a modern, intense rock band could be now, for kids. Because you know all the old intense music, it's awesome, it's the best, but it's so old at this point that it doesn't have that reaction from you anymore. And now, as a teenager getting into that stuff, you don't own that experience. It's all older records, and there aren't that many new bands that are doing something for you here and now to have that experience that your parents don't understand. I feel that there are bands that are on our wavelength. We're trying to do that, and part of being harsher, that appeals to our own tastes. We're trying to make music that, if we imagine ourselves as teenagers now or in high school, to be in a band that would be relevant to our lives now and this year at that age. That sounds a little retarded. (Laughter)
No, that makes sense. It's gotten to the point where you've been remixed so often that you have a separate Health Disco Page for the tracks. Do you ever wonder if it'll get to the point where you might consider the remix before you're even finished writing? Would you consider that a logical progression, or would that be an unnecessary concern?
I don't think there's anything really to be concerned about. We like thinking about the remixes, but we wouldn't change the way we're writing the songs. Especially listening to the remixes now, it's definitely inspired us to look at our music differently. We definitely get a lot of really great ideas from the way that someone's approaching that material, to make a dance song, or how they're playing with a sound or snippets from the original recording and repeating it to make this really cool thing. So it's definitely really become a part of the creative process for us really thinking about it. We're really into the whole remix thing, especially because everyone we're working with is hand-selected by us and we're fans of their work. I would like the Health Disco to just be these sister artists, with recorded performances for DJ's, separate from our original work. Which would be really cool.
Tell us a little about playing a show and releasing a 7" with Crystal Castles. How did your first trip to Britain go? How was the audience reaction? Were some of them maybe a little thrown even, if they were expecting you to sound more like the remix than your live show?
Yeah, that happens a lot, even in America. That happens every once in a while, people hear the show and they'll be really confused. Because you know we're not just playing synth pop or something. It doesn't happen that often, but it definitely happens. In the UK there were some pretty big surprises. The UK reaction was very different depending on where we played. In London it was really amazing. One of the shows, we got to do with Crystal Castles, and I think everyone was on board and they knew that we didn't sound like the remix at all. That was totally fine. In Manchester we played to a mostly experimental, noise crowd and they were expecting that aspect.
Did you become aware of Crystal Castles because they remixed you, or did you already kind of know them before that?
We found out about them a long, long time ago. I forgot which blog, but it was from a blog. We found them and got really excited about them and started talking to them over the internet. They only had one or two remixes out at the time and they were both really impressive. We asked them if they would be interested in doing a remix and they agreed. We also talked about doing a split and they said they would do both. The remix happened pretty early, and they did it in time for our tour CD that we took on the road. The split didn't happen until two months ago.
Lovepump started talking to us because they said they had heard things about us. They ordered our live cassette from DNT, and they really liked it. The thing that kind of put it over is that AIDS Wolf were on tour in Europe and the guy they were staying with was really talking about us a lot. We got in contact with each other and they said that they wanted to wait until SXSW and see us live, but then they just decided to enter into an agreement before they even saw us in Austin.
Anything else you want to add? What has your impression of Texas been?
Texas is really, really, really awesome. We have never had a bad show in Texas. Ever. Every time we've played Austin, it's awesome. We played Fort Worth once, it was awesome. We even played Midland AND Odessa, Texas and they weren't fucking unbelievable shows but they were still pretty good shows. We've never had a bad show in Texas. Attendance is always really good and the crowds are really awesome. I think the vibe of Texas crowds is just really awesome.
HEALTH performs at The Eighth Continent, Halloween Night.
Bleach Boys | Pretty Nasty/No Way (Kharma Cafe in Denton) Apparently, this is one of the last nights Kharma will ever be open, so they decided to have some bands play. Pretty Nasty is a fairly new band that I'm told sounds somewhere along the lines of Husker Du's approach, catchy songwriting coupled with volume and force. No Way is a new project from Lars Larsen and Shane English from The Undoing Of David Wright. The sound is largely driven by improvisation and homemade electronics. Lars documents his DIY equipment projects on his new blog, Lars Attacks. English also has a new blog, where he'll feature a weekly podcast. The Bleach Boys are a great live act that play short bursts of aggressively fucked up punk rock. Show starts at Eleven. Say goodbye to yet another Denton institution.
UPDATE: Apparently Kharma will be open until next August, at least. Still...
