shoegaze

SXSW Song Of The Day: Be Forest – Bengala

Posted on by Paul in Song of the Day, South By Southwest | Leave a comment

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A forest can be a beautiful place, but venture into the forest late at night and it can also get pretty dark and a bit unsettling. Fittingly, Italian shoegazers Be Forest seem to have found the right mix of beauty and darkness on their upcoming album Knocturne (out February 8 via We Were Never Being Boring).

Lead single “Bengala” is a perfect example of this, mixing a dark, moody tone with a bit of lightness. The band themselves have described the track as “The spotlight that lights up the stage after the curtains open; a celestial body which at the moment of its impact allows us to glimpse our surroundings — it’s the brightest point, the north of the compass.”

Come this March, Be Forest’s compass will be pointing South By Southwest as the band heads to Austin to play a show (or several) during the week. Check out “Bengala” below:

Concert Review: Ulrich Schnauss, Chapterhouse, October 6, Lee’s Palace

Posted on by Allison in Concerts, Everything | 5 Comments


Mr. Schnauss at SXSW

One of the paradoxical pain/pleasure points of going to a quintessentially 90’s reunion show is that you never know what to expect. I have been kind of disappointed with reunion tours in the past, and with the exception of Bauhaus’s Resurrection Tour back in 1998, find they sort of crush precious adolescent memories. Another thing I find is that unless you’re Wayne Coyne, aging rockers are eventually going to get sick and tired of churning out the same hit tunes over and over in live performances and wonderful treasured songs will lose their luster. In otherwords, unless it’s a tour explicitly (and transparently) to make a lot of money, I think we should let these guys play whatever they want.

For these reasons and more, I had kind of grounded expectations for the Chapterhouse show at Lee’s Palace last night, but the band’s promise of it being a one time only engagement held a lot of allure.

We apparently have maestro Ulrich Schnauss to thank for all of this. At first I thought Mr. Schnauss might be the namesake of a premium German dog food giant but he’s a pretty talented shoegaze-influenced electronica musician. I missed about 2/3 of his set, but I liked what I heard. In terms of what I saw, I’m glad he at least had the foresight to set-up reams of video footage instead of having us tinker around with his computer the entire time, I just wish he had taken a cue from the Flaming Lips‘ video projections. Yeah yeah, I know not everyone can have pulsating vaginas and cartoon bunny rabbits on display, but there has got to be something more to a video display than trippy footage of buildings. It kinda reminded me of Broadcast’s show from last year, only fortunately with much better music.

Chapterhouse at Lee's Palace
Derek took this, not sure if it was with his iPhone but maybe him and Ricky can have an iPhone concert photography face-off.

As for Chapterhouse, they really surprised me. First off, let me say that it helps tremendously when you start hitting your peak as a band in your early 20’s. There weren’t any of the familiar gasps of “holy shit, they got fuckin’ OLD” that we heard at Teenage Fanclub. In fact, I’d venture to say that 80% of the band still looks downright youthful, leading me to believe that they’ve managed to live clean, normal lives. Maybe they’re all school teachers now, chartered accountants, or running their own records stores.

What’s better is that they actually still sound good. I still say shoegaze is one of the most forgiving genres if you haven’t kept your vocal pipes in top order over the years (and that’s not really what it’s about anyway), because these guys certainly still know how to shred their instruments. Frankly, I was surprised that more people weren’t wearing earplugs, because I could easily envision my hearing degenerating past the point of no return as a result of going to a show like this. I’d be the granny version of Abe Simpson, or Larry David’s father on Curb Your Enthusiasm. But no, I think I’ve done enough damage to myself.

The good news is that the wall of sound thing is still great even with 31-NRR earplugs in, and the show was a great demonstration of the old adage that there is always a certain caliber of music that will always play well live. I feel this way even if the musicians choose to move less than a still-life painting, because you will never replicate the experience of hearing it at home like you will hearing it noisy and live. It helped that the boys seemed genuinely touched at the turnout and enthusiasm, and they were more bemused than anything else when obnoxious “requests” were constantly being shouted out throughout their set.

Here’s the setlist:

  1. Ecstasy II
  2. Treasure
  3. Falling Down
  4. Greater Power
  5. Something More
  6. April
  7. Then We’ll Rise
  8. Precious One
  9. Rain (Beatles cover)
  10. Autosleeper
  11. Breather
  12. Come Heaven
  13. In My Arms
  14. Pearl
  15. Love Forever

Encore:

  1. If You Want Me Play Video
  2. Inside Of Me Play Video

All in all, a grand evening.

Concert Review: The Big Pink, Lee’s Palace, November 29

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | 1 Comment

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Toronto – There are so many Asians in the golden horseshoe area of Toronto, it boggles my mind that there is no pho or chinese (or even thai) places along the 401 from Toronto to Montreal/Ottawa. Are you telling me if you are driving along the 401 and there is a service station with some pho there, you won’t instantly get it? We have really limited options when doing that commute. I think the only time I ever eat at Wendy’s is when I’m in a car from one place to another. Did u know their chicken salad now features breaded chicken? How healthy is that? (I had a bacon cheeseburger…mark had the chicken salad)

I got back from an exhausting party trip from Ottawa at about 8:00 pm on Sunday night. I wasn’t too sure about whether or not I had it in me to go see The Big Pink at Lee’s Palace. However, I decided that I only live once and it was too close to not go. Lee’s Palace had conveniently said that the band was going to go on at 10. Great! I thought, I could be home by 11.

Arriving at around 9:45, I saw a moderately packed crowd at Lees. Not too many ‘lads’, which is a pleasant surprise considering its a British band. You know who you are. Stop screaming out whatever small English village you are from whenever you see a Brit band show. No one cares. Anyways, I chatted with a few friends for a bit and then 10:00 rolled around. Then 10:15 ..then finally at around 10:25, the four piece band (guitar, drum, synth, bass) came on to a cloud of smoke and strobe lights. Great! Seriously, I don’t know about you, but if I was going to make a presentation at work and I was 25 minutes late, I might as well start packing my bags. I wonder why this is acceptable for the music industry. All in the name of rock n roll, I guess. I sound like an old man.

I was fairly impressed with their live set. Robbie Furze plays the guitar like a machine gun. If there was a game called “Rock Star Concert Poses Hero”, I think him and his bassist would definitely be able to get a pretty good score on “hard” and maybe a decent score on “expert” levels. The constant strobe lights and smoke machines nicely complimented the wall of sound shoe gaze j&mc feel to their show. I would dare say, the show would only be half as good if there wasn’t smoke and lights. Maybe that says something about the band. I don’t know. They were a bit heavy on the shoegazing and never interacted with the crowd at all, but that is of no surprise given their influences and the fact that they were British.

The live renditions of upbeat songs like Crystal Visions were quite good and just different enough from the album to make you think that they aren’t a studio/production band. I think the slower numbers dragged, but I might be a bit bias because I had been on the road all day. The show was about 45 minute long and closed with the extreme crowd pleaser single “Dominos”. There was no encore, but I think the band had no songs left anyway.

Overall, a decent show. Would have been better if they started at 10 as promised.

Chromewaves was also at the show.

Concert Review: Asobi Seksu, El Mocambo, March 3, 2009

Posted on by Allison in Concerts | 15 Comments

10 bones can get you a pretty big boner in this city.

Case in point, ultimate babe Yuki Chikudate made her way through the El Mocambo last night for an all-out noise-fest with shoegaze darlings Asobi Seksu (you know, the band that was backing her–the three white guys). Asobi Seksu is one of New York’s most prominent indie rock acts right now it’s easy to see why…Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser and  MBV’s Kevin Shields could pass for their long lost music parents and Chikudate could pass for a Japanese spokesmodel.

But c’mon now, it’s not always about how pretty the lead singer is, is it? It was maybe Yuki that left us all slack-jawed, silent, and motionless throughout the show. At least that would explain why the applause had the viscosity of cold molasses–didn’t notice if it slowed down after she stripped down to her tanktop though. Anyone? Anyone?

More noisy than ethereal, I would say the ElMo (or any small venue for that matter) is sort of the last place you want this type of shoegaze to be played at because no matter how ambient your guitars sound you can envision even Grandpa Simpson’s eardrums exploding. More than a few people ran for the hills once the set started and even seasoned show-going veterans could kind of feel their ears’ cilia hairs dying. This is not to say that it wasn’t beautiful music–the gentler, dreamier stuff off 2006’s Citrus sounded lovely, particularly Thursday…it was just that much of the noisier stuff off Hush, which I have yet to listen through, seemed much too loud for a club show.

One last thing…I might be alone on this one but it felt like the pace at which they tore through their set was unprecedented. I think what they were going for was a seamless sound without audible transitions from song to song–a noble shoegazey intention that ended up sounding like it was just another day at the office, at least to me.