Music

Concert Review: Mark Kozelek, March 22, Lee’s Palace

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Allison in Concerts, Everything, Music | 2 Comments

“A cynic is just a disappointed romantic. They want the world to be different, but know it isn’t, can’t, and will never be.”
-Some guy I used to talk to in the 90’s

Since about 1996, this is what I had always imagined Mark Kozelek to be. More than anything else, his brooding ways made him the misanthropic soulful white man of mystery to me. Teenage girls love that stuff; big girls do too. The perceived vulnerability, rejection, passion, and sad sweetness. The tortured artist (a little extreme, but not by much). Prolific songwriting. Talent pure and simple (the greatest aphrodisiac on earth). Rumors of his sleazy playboy ways with female fans only fanned the flames of desire for me.

Though my love affair with the Red House Painters peaked in the 90’s, I missed several chances to see Kozelek in his various forms after I turned 19. And after finally coming to see this man live last night, a flood of nostalgia took me back to a place when music was a soaring chasm of knife-wrenching emotions. Lost mixed tapes, stalemated relationships, high highs, and low lows. One only wonders how a teenager might ever become bored with such hormonal peaks and valleys naturally occurring on an hourly basis. Listening to Rollercoaster now, the familiar ebb and flow has returned…yes, I have renewed love for this man. I might forget about him again soon, but for now he is back with a new level of fixation.

I am not sure what else to say here. I am still a little shell-shocked at what a bipolar experience the 2.5 hour set was. I felt like I was being put in a hyperbaric chamber of vicissitude followed by joy and laughter, interspersed between one of the most intimate performances I’ve ever seen in my life. Apparently the pattern of what we saw last night was not unusual. I suppose this is Mr. Kozelek’s method of bonding with his audience. Here’s how I saw the events unfolding:

Commanding massive attention. When’s the last time you walked into a venue where a whisper sounded like a scream, and the sound of a cash register opening and closing was the loudest thing in the venue? No matter how we may feel about his abrasive discourse as a performer, this man owns his shows.
Enduring light heckling for a couple of minutes. When are people going to figure out that yelling out requests is the lowest form of human expression at a show?
Cracking some jabbing jokes. There were moments where Kozelek came off quite charming in the show–maybe even likeable, gently winning the audience over with some jokes that started off as sort of mean (at a dork’s expense), and then evolved into being downright cruel. There was a funny moment early on where he described smelling pot smoke during the set as the most dangerous thing he’d ever experienced in Canada. Then a super(loud)fan up close yelled “awesome” as soon as the first couple of chords were being strum for the next song…he stopped and said “how the fuck do you know what song I’m going to play? I don’t even know what song I’m going to play!” that loosened us all up. I have to admit I was afraid my piercing laughter might be called out for extended derision.
Insults, insults, insults. When another unfortunate fan failed to learn his lesson in humiliation, he got a stern talking to. This fan proceeds to yell “What’s Steve Martin like?” to which Kozelek responds, “That’s all you have to say to me? I have like 20 albums and that’s the question you ask!??” From there, it disintegrated pretty quickly into the standard angry jokes about the guy being a nerd who’d never been laid (I suppose this is what male adult bullying is). From there, it was a slippery slope into “My record label tells me I’m not selling well in Canada. Who the hell cares about Canada?? You’re like Australia…no one cares about you.”
Vicious lecture about talking at shows (hey, I can’t say I disagree there). But I have to say that even as an old lady concert matron who is this (*squinches fingers together*) close to carrying a Sophia Petrillo old lady purse, if only to suckerpunch excessive talkers with at shows, thought he took it entirely too far. His policy of no photography or cell phones (the bouncer particularly emphasized how texting would not be tolerated when he carded me) had already struck a lot of folks as being overly…hmm…arrogant? When he had another outburst with a group close to the stage talking quietly, he said “Do I have a sign that says TALK above my head? Do I look like a TV set?”, a series of gradual outbursts throughout the night following this theme persisted. I was happy when he redeemed himself by explaining how it felt to hear talking as a performer…”It’s like having sex and then a cell phone goes off – it’s like a fly buzzing around your head when you’re making love”.

I have to say, that these moments of sharpness were always contrasted by eventual salvation, humbleness, and other amazing things. Not least of which was the music, where a lone man and his acoustic guitar managed to sound like the richest orchestral arrangement in recent memory. If the Flaming Lips show last year was an illustration of collective intimacy; Mark Kozelek’s show last night was the peak of isolated intimacy. When he performed, I felt like I was the only one there listening.

Highs:

All Mixed Up – probably my favorite performance of the night, and certainly my concert moment of the year so far
Mistress
Four Fingered Fisherman
Follow You Follow Me (I told you Phil Collins used to be pretty awesome)
Carry Me Ohio (in encore)

Setlist: Bold indicates blown away

Up to My Neck in You (AC/DC cover)
Glenn Tipton
Third and Seneca
Trucker’s Atlas (Modest Mouse cover)
Tiny Cities Made of Ashes (Modest Mouse cover)
New Partner (Will Oldham cover)
Moorestown
Natural Light (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone cover)
Australian Winter
Heron Blue
Like the River
Bay of Skulls
All Mixed Up (Cars cover)
Follow You, Follow Me (Genesis cover)
Summer Dress
Half Moon Bay
Mistress
Void
Down Through
Blue Orchids
Church of Pines

Encore:

Four Fingered Fisherman (Modest Mouse cover)
Carry Me Ohio
Katy Song

I feel inspired to write classic album reviews again.

SXSW Preview: The Dears

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Ricky in Music, South By Southwest | Leave a comment

Toronto – Between Paul Giamatti blessing the city at the Golden Globes, Karkwa winning the Polaris and little known local band Arcade Fire (who?) winning the record of the year at the Grammies, you can say that the city of Montreal has had a pretty good recent run. FINALLY, they are getting some international attention for what I can only assume is a pretty decent arts and music scene. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Canadian music will have known that this has been the case for a long time. One of my first introductions to Montreal bands was The Dears, a band I first saw all the way back in March of 2003, right about the time No Cities Left was released. I didn’t know anything about the band at the time, as I was still deeply entrenched in the “only will listen to UK stuff” phase, but my friend Nick was able to drag me out to this affair on the promise of a few free beers. They played in front of maybe 30 people at the Power Planet, a small bar in the heart of the University of Alberta campus. I was impressed by the aura of drama surrounding their sound, as well as Murray Lightburn’s ability to just belt it. I picked up that album after the show and was impressed at their orchestral dark take on lovey pop music. It was almost like a UK band. Anyone listening to Canadian music at the time was probably in love with the single Lost in the Plot.

Since that time, the band has changed dramatically. With a revolving door of musicians, the bands encountered some difficult album releases. 2011 marks the release of the fifth album band the band, an album titled Degeneration Street. The album marks the return of members of Patrick Krief, Rob Benvie and Roberto Arquila, three members who had left prior to the release of Missiles. Given Murray Lightburns’ well known volatile personality, I very much imagined the scene where Murray brings his pals back in for this album to be like this:

Murray would then turn around, see Patrick, Rob and Roberto there and exclaim “You guys are here! you guys are here!” followed by the three saying “We were always here, Murray. We’ll always be here”. A group hug would happen before they retire to Murray’s loft and spend the afternoon listening to Morrissey albums.

Degeneration Street is the band’s fifth album. Upon initial listening – it’s good. It eschews the weaker elements of the Dears (lack of focus, indulgence) and focuses on the best elements of The Dears – grandiose dramatic pop powered by Murray Lightburn’s soulful voice, which somehow treads the thin line between desperation and hope. The album sounds tighter and richer then all previous efforts. My friend Dwayne has been quite insistent that this album will be The Dears comeback album, and after an initial listen, I would have to agree. Mired in difficulties with previous releases, Degeneration Street appears to be a large step forward for this band.

Of course, you can decide for yourself check out The Dears in person at SXSW, where the band will be playing various shows, including the Dangerbird showcase on March 18th.

For those of you in Toronto, the Dears will be involved in some sort of chat tonight with music journalist Jon Dekel at the Drake. Facebook event here

They also made a homemade video for their song Omega Dog, it’s posted on this site called “you” tube. Check it out here

Here are some tour dates, I guess

March 4th Sugar Victoria, BC
March 5th The Venue Vancouver, BC
March 7th Crocodile Café Seattle, WA
March 9th Slim’s San Francisco, CA
March 10th The Troubadour Los Angeles, CA
March 17th SXSW Austin, TX
March 18th Dangerbird Records Showcase Austin, TX
March 19th SXSW Austin, TX
March 20th SXSW Austin, TX

Oh yeah, hate to whore it out like this, but feel free to vote for us as your favorite Canadian music based blog for CBC Radio 3’s Searchlight poll here.

Should I Stay or Should I go: Coachella Edition

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Ricky in Concerts, Music | 1 Comment

The Coachella lineup was released Tuesday night, and as you would expect, the knee jerk reactions from hardcore music fans (including myself) ranged from “OMG I have to go!”* to “what a lineup!”* to “I would DIE if I can’t make it!”* Given the usual rush of emotions that comes when a music festival lineup is announced, I’ve decided to write a little article about whether or not you should go to Coachella. For the record, Panic Manual members have been to Coachella in 2004, 2006 and 2010.

Let’s start with the obvious – Can You Afford Coachella?

Let’s say you have 3 other friends interested in going. You are on the East coast in a major city with an international airport, then here are some costs. I am assuming you are going to take Thursday off, and Monday off. Here are some rough estimates:

YYZ – LAX: 400$ if you book early
Car Rental: 30$ a person if you are over 25, and someone has a credit card with collision insurance
Gas: 20$ a person
Accomodation: 125$ a person for four nights stay at a reasonable hotel
Coachella ticket: 280$ (absurd)
Food, Merch, Drinks: 150$ (assuming you don’t go nuts)

This ranges out to about $1000 a person for a five day trip. Not insane prices, but definitely will make you want to assess your plans. Some people might suggest you go camping. I don’t know about you, I don’t really want to camp in a desert. Maybe I’m old, but the weather at Palm Springs varies wildly (as would any place in a desert climate) from day to night. The other thing you have to realize is that music festivals are draining exercises, and the last thing you want to do after a night of music festival going is to wander into your campground, finding your tent, realizing your sleeping bag is in a weird angle and then having to fend off any potential drunk/high neighbors. If you are going to Coachella or anywhere far, might as well drop a few more dimes and get yourself a cozy hotel room with a hot tub, so you can get fully recharge for the next days adventure.

Still, music festivals are a great adventure, and as someone who does go to these things, it comes down to the music. So here is my general assessment:

Reasons to Go#1: OMG bands

Anytime I assess a music festival lineup, you pretty much have to find a few bands there that are in the “oh my god, this is something I won’t ever be able to see” zone. These are either bands that are reuniting after a long period (not DFA 1979, who broke up not even 3 Harry Potter movies ago) or bands who rarely tour. Looking at the list, these are the only bands that come to mind:

Duran Duran
Suede (reunited in 2010)
Chemical Brothers
Lauryn Hill (released from mental institution)
Big Audio Dynamite (reuniting)
Leftfield (reunited in 2010)
Empire of the Sun (apparently put on mind blowing shows, but excessive drug use means they sometimes schedule two concerts on the same date in different cities)

Now if you are a hardcore fan of any of these bands, then by all means you should go, assuming they also don’t schedule a North America tour at the same time, or recently just flew to England to see them.

Reason to Go #2 – Haven’t seen many of these bands

Sometimes I forget that I go to a ridiculous amount of shows, and so basically, I’ve probably seen a majority of the bands playing at any festival so if you have never seen bands like Interpol, Animal Collective, Mumford & Sons, The National, PJ Harvey before and you want to somehow wrap up all those experiences in one weekend, then by all means, go. However, you must realize that festival time slots means that each act other then the major headliners will only play about 40 minutes. Do you really want your first time seeing the National to be a 45 minute affair? What if it conflicts with another band you want to see? (That will happen). Still it’s a great way to see a lot of your favorite new bands for a reasonable price. I am guessing you will see about 10 bands a day, 30 bands in total if you go there day and night.

Reason to go #3 – Never been to Music Festival

If you haven’t been to a music festival, Coachella is a pretty sweet first time festival, it’s warm, there are a lot of pretty people everywhere, they all speak English, you get to go to LA, you might run into drunk celebrities and it’s also a pretty good lineup.

Reason to Not Go #1 – You live in Toronto or New York

Let’s face it, most of these bands are going to roll through here at one point or another. You have your own music festivals in which all the bands in size 12 point font will play two or more shows and really, you’ve probably seen these bands before. The Arcade Fire played Toronto 3 times last year and aside from the OMG bands, every band on the list will be here at one point or another if they are touring/and are smart. There are better ways to spend $1000

Reason to Not Go #2 – Most bands only play ~30-40 minutes/ Crowds / Overlap

The two massive drawbacks of overpopulated music festivals is that most bands play a short set and also some major act will be stuffed in a tiny tent that will be too crowded and you’ll get pissed that you didn’t see them (ie Beck in 2004). There will also be at least one instance where you wish you could be at two places at once, although none will be as bad as having Lady Gaga play opposite the Strokes at Lollapalooza. Either way, these are probably the major setbacks of any festival, if you are one to get frustrated easily, then music festivals might not be for you at all.

Reason to Not Go #3 – Propensity for Heatstroke

It gets hot in Palm Springs. There are also thousands of thousands of people. This will raise the heat further. If you are the type who can’t handle heat or a crowd, then this is probably not a great festival for you, unless you are only interested in seeing the bands in size 10 font.

Conclusion

Going somewhere is always fun. Coachella is always fun. It also has the benefit of being the first North American festival, keep in mind there’s also Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Osheaga, Sasquatch, some thing in San Fran and pretty much every major city that happens every summer, so while you are frantically messaging your friends trying to convince yourself you need to be in Indio, remember that there are other options and it’s not the end of the world if you don’t go. Which you should..probably. I don’t know, I’m not your father.

* I just made those up, didn’t bother looking for references, assumed it to be true. Real Journalism, yo.

Interview: Ringo Deathstarr, January 18, 2011

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Allison in Albums, Everything, interviews, Music | 3 Comments

Austin-based Ringo Deathstarr is one of the best things to come out of Austin since Ricky decided SXSW is the greatest event in the universe.

While touring the U.K. with David Gedge’s the Wedding Present, two of my friends on the tour could not stop raving about how fantastically legendary Ringo Deathstarr were, live. Given the number of opening acts they have seen, I took this to heart and checked out their debut EP, then moved onto Sparkler to find amazing collections of toe-tapping ambiance.

Frontman Elliott Frazier recently sat down with us to answer a few questions.

PM: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. I want to start things off by fully admitting that we didn’t know a whole lot about you prior to 2010. But after hearing so much buzz from the Wedding Present’s 2010 tour, we checked out your excellently noisy self-title debut, that I was surprised to learn was released back in 2007.

Why are we just hearing about you now?

RD: Who knows…we never really had proper labels or distribution in the United States of America*.
*(The band is on the U.K.’s SVC label now)

PM: Tell us a bit about your first full-length LP, Colour Trip, that has already been generating a fair bit of talk. Maybe you can also let us know why you went with the British (which we in Canada are so fond of) spelling, the recording process and you know, if you ate anything particularly memorable during recording (I just had a nectarine).

RD: The British spelling is because the record label behind this whole thing is British and you know, that’s just how the Queen would spell it.

We recorded it a year ago, and we had never really been in the studio for a month straight before, so we took advantage of all the nice toys they have. Some songs were written in the studio, some we had been working on off and on since the previous summer…A studio date here, a studio date there. But once Club AC30 got behind us they put us up for a month and we got busy. The most memorable thing for me was just working with Jason “Computer Boy” Buntz, ‘cuz he was not too afraid to try crazy ideas, and let me tell you, we both had plenty.

PM: How do you feel about all of the Pitchfork publicity? Yay, nay, indifference because publicity is publicity?

RD: Pitchfork gave us a good review once a long time ago, and it did help. but one can’t be too concerned with Pitchfork….we do our thing, they do theirs.

PM: A lot of listeners have decided you channel a lot of JAMC, MBV, and the other usual shoegaze suspects. But I’ve often found that when listeners peg all sorts of influences on a band, the band doesn’t even have them on the
mental list. Do you have a mental list, and if so who are they?

RD: Every time I hear a really shitty band, it inspires me to make something better. So there’s all that…plus you know, there’s plenty of music that influences us besides “shoegaze”: Black Flag, Fugazi, Ramones, Devo, Dance House Children, Descendents, Nirvana, Nirvana, Nirvana, Beat Happening, Guitar Wolf…

PM: For our SXSW attendees, where is the best place to get the best burger in Austin?

RD: P. Terry’s, ‘cuz they have vegetarian burgers, as well as a great meat burger (so I’m told). Hut’s is consistently kick ass.

PM: A lot of your recent tour dates have been in Europe, one of them with the legendary Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (what a bill..G500 fans must be peeing their pants, as I think those that don’t already like you will after the show). It must be weird to play with folks who have been doing this for decades, like David Gedge and Dean, in an intimidating way. Have you noticed a difference between the veterans and the newbies?

RD: Not really, just age I guess. Some people are party animals, and some are not, no matter how long theyve been playing…So we just like meeting the living legends. So far they’ve all been cool to us.

PM: Finally, when are you coming to Toronto!?

RD: In the springtime, when the flowers are in bloom.

You can pick up Ringo Deathstarr’s Colour Trip that is set for release on March 8th.

Ringo Deathstarr – So High by johnout

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