Saint Croix is an island in the Caribbean Sea, and is the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Inhabitants are called Crucians. There are two towns on the island; Christiansted with a population of 2,433 and Frederiksted with a population of 859. The total population of the island as per the 2010 U.S. Census is 50,601. Who knew this even existed? certainly not me.
It is also the title of the new EP from Los Angeles band Family of the Year. Drenched in sunny disposition, the uplifting summertime track “St. Croix” can only be written by people who live in the the year round weather of California. Featuring catchy harmonics and a good head shaking, toe tapping beat, “St. Croix” is a good introduction to this band, who first came around a few years ago with their debut album Songbook. Have a listen
I know I’ve written about UK act Marion before, but the news that they, like all other Britpop contemporaries, have decided to reform and potentially cash in on an aging fan base is still an exciting one. According to reliable music publication NME, Jaime Harding, Phil Cunningham, Anthony Grantham and Julian Phillips are reforming and will soon be playing shows. They are also joined by Jack Mitchell of Haven, a band that had about two good songs.
While Marion never quite reached the levels of success of many other Britpop bands, they are still a favorite among me and my friends with their catchy dramatic pop songs. Tracks like Sparkle, What Are We Waiting for and this track, Miyako Hideaway have never strayed far from my rotation. Hopefully they’ll tour Toronto where they’ll probably play in front of about 30 people, 30 very happy people.
I have to write a few disclaimers before I dive into this review, as I feel it may arouse some impassioned opinions. First, as conflicted as I feel about some band members embarking on tours without others, it’s within all of the songwriters’ rights to tour such material without other members (particularly when one of its key members is dead). Second, it’s not up to me to decide whether a tour should or shouldn’t happen. I can only report on what my thoughts were.
Let me preface this with Panic Manual’s love of Joy Division, albeit in varying degrees, through various phases of our lives. I would say for me, finding this band had more to do with timing in impressionable adolescence. The music was poetic, dark, and rebellious, but on top of everything else there was a dreary upbringing, unhappy marriage, and of course the dramatic finish of a suicide. One needs grand things to explore in youth…be it Star Wars or Joy Division, and this is probably the closest I ever got towards music fanaticism, having collected every album, boxed set, poster, book, vinyl, and t-shirt that I could afford.
That said, I haven’t actively listened to them since I was in 12th Grade. Art is funny that way–the stuff you discover in high school sticks with you forever in spite of abandonment. Your formative years can make a book, album, or film feel like your life is hinging on its consumption. I would imagine that I’m no exception here–being a teenager is all about brooding poetry, after all.
So…onto my thoughts about the show. This past year, Peter Hook has been touring the posthumously-released Closer (my favorite of the two official albums), and he continues on the success of those shows by performing Unknown Pleasures with The Light, which includes his son on bass. The backing band certainly sounded louder and more stadium-rocky than anything I had remembered…that in itself is fine, seeing as a tour should be supporting a new and different ambition towards past material to make it a worthwhile endeavor. I just felt like Hook was scream-singing most of the lyrics, struggling to keep up with the breakneck punk tempo of the songs (however at age 55, we should all be so lucky to be pulling off rock shows passably at any level).
And what was up with those aggressive ceiling and audience points?
On the one hand, I had to admire Mr. Hook’s enthusiasm for rocking out with his cock out. On the other, I couldn’t help but wonder if a different approach to the material might have given us more to enjoy and think about. I’m hard-pressed to suggest what that approach might be (acoustic??), but it just seemed as if the album was turning into a parody of a prototypical ‘punk’ sound when so much of what made Joy Division appealing in the first place was its hollow percussional scarcity.
Some of the songs went off better than others. Shadowplay, Transmission, and Dead Souls, which made me wonder whether I might have felt differently about an instrumental version of the tour because it would have stayed true to Mr. Hook’s true talents. To me, the poetic lyrics are really the foundation of the group’s appeal–something I really felt was missing from New Order. New Order of course had other strengths in electronic music.
I would suspect that given Peter Hook’s interviews about how he thinks anyone who disapproves of these shows should fuck off, he won’t care much about what I have to say. Perhaps you don’t either, but at the end of the day I expected something better from the man who created one of the best singles of 1997.
Toronto – Lately, there’s been a fair number of Elephant Six alumni making their way through our town – Olivia Tremor Control and Music Tapes a little over a week ago, Jeff Mangum’s sold out show back in August at Trinity St. Paul’s, and now former Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes’ current band A Hawk And A Hacksaw.
Touring behind their latest album Cervantine, the New Mexico band played a mostly instrumental set of their heavily Balkan folk-influenced tunes. Accordion and Violin abounded, along with a smattering of trumpet at times, some of it with a mariachi flavour. Mixing in a few weird, moody numbers with a bunch of more upbeat tunes that got many in the crowd dancing (though technically not the right kind of dancing for this sort of music), they put on a fully entertaining show.
Openers Dark Dark Dark also put on a pretty good show, but set a much different mood than did the headliners. Their kind of sombre tunes have been described as “chamber folk” by some and on this night were described as “introspective party jams” by singer Nona Marie Invie. I remember that phrase because she said it twice. After repeating herself, she continued, “That’s pretty funny, right? It’s my first joke in Toronto.” Well … no. Nona, it’s not actually all that funny. At most it’s worth a chuckle. But seeing as how the crowd was getting pretty chatty at that point, I can assume that she was doing this in an attempt to get the talkers to pay attention to her band. If so, I’ll forgive the repetition of an aonly slightly witty quip. They had a fairly rich sound, also full of accordians as well as lots of piano and banjo. I had seen the band once before at the Roskilde Festival, and I have to admit, I was somewhat less impressed this time. Perhaps it was the fact that they didn’t have a cello player with them this time around as I found that added a little extra gravitas or something to their sound. Still, all in all, a pretty solid show.
