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Archive for the ‘Radiohead’ Category

Nick Hornby–“Beyond the Pale” (New Yorker, October 30, 2000)

Posted in Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, Lou Reed, Neil Young, New Yorker, Nick Hornby, Radiohead, Sonic Youth on August 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »

oct30SOUNDTRACK: NEIL YOUNG-Arc (1991).

arcArc came with Neil Young’s outstanding live album Weld (and then later on its own).  It contains one 35 minute track called “Arc (A Compilation Composition).”

This album was recorded during Neil Young’s tour with Sonic Youth opening (MAN, I wish I had seen that tour).

Because it was 1991 and you couldn’t really look up this kind of information, I just assumed that Neil and Crazy Horse had created some kind of 35 minute jam (even though it doesn’t really sound like all one song, but how closely does one listen to Arc?).

Of course, listening to it now, it is pretty obvious that it’s pieces of shows strung together.  (the subtitle also gives it away, although I don’t think that the subtitle was on the actual disc).

Wikipedia talks about an interview that Neil Young gave in which he says he recorded a film in 1987 called Muddy Track

 which consisted of the beginnings and endings of various songs from his 1987 European tour. Young placed a video camera on his amplifier during the 1987 tour and recorded the beginnings and endings of various songs, and later edited them down into the film’s soundtrack. “It was the sound of the entire band being sucked into this little limiter, being compressed and fuckin’ distorted to hell,”

And in what makes 100% sense, on this 1991 tour,

Young then showed the video to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who suggested that he record an entire album in a similar manner. However, Arc was not recorded through video camera microphones, as was the case with Muddy Track, but instead was compiled from various professional multi-track recordings made throughout the tour.

So what you get is 35 minutes of noise (not so much feedback, as guitar rumblings that a band might do as a song slowly grinds to a rumbling halt).

You can hear snippets of vocals.  In particular, you can hear him singing “Like a Hurricane” and “Love and Only Love” in what definitely sounds like the end of a take–as the band’s instruments ring out.

There’s occasional moments where the rumble is interrupted by a burst of drums from Ralph Molina or you can clearly hear some of Frank “Poncho” Sampedro’s guitar and univox stringman.

There’s a little bit of audience response.  At the opening of the disc but especially at the 25 minute mark as a song feedbacks out and the crowd cheers before the band puts out  rocking drum-filled cacophonous ending.

At 28 minutes the “song” actually sort of turns into an actual song with Billy Talbot playing a simple four note bass line.  But that doesn’t last too long before another ending is tacked on.

The last few minutes has someone singing “No more pain” and then shouting a story that is somewhat inaudible although I think I hear “mom” and “post office.”

This is certainly not something to listen to much.  But I found it an interesting sonic experience today.  if nothing else, it made me really wish I had seen that 1991 show.

[READ: August 30, 2019] “Beyond the Pale”

I really like Nick Hornby’s music (and book) reviews.  He and I don’t share the same taste, but we have a lot of moments that overlap (he’s more traditional while I’m more experimental).

In many ways it is no surprise that he hated Radiohead’s Kid A, but the amount of savagery he does to it is quite astonishing.

He essentially compares it to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Neil Young’s Arc.  Not in content, but in the giant middle finger he feels it is to fans of the band.  Although he does admit that Kid A is “nowhere near as teeth-grindingly tedious” as Metal Machine Music.

He feels that the album stems from the idea that fans are interested in “every twist and turn of the band’s career no matter how trivial or pretentious.”  Although a valid question is what has earned Radiohead its huge audience.  I have not figured that one out myself. (more…)

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Elizabeth Strout–“Motherless Child” (New Yorker, August 5 & 12, 2019)

Posted in Colin Greenwood, Jeff Buckley, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Radiohead, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on August 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TAMINO-Tiny Desk Concert #871 (July 26, 2020).

Tamino is a 22 year-old singer of Belgian, Egyptian and Lebanese descent.

I didn’t know anything about him.  But the blurb mentions his voice.  As soon as I read Jeff Buckley and I heard it in the middle part of the first song I knew it was right on.

His voice is powerful and can really soar.  For “Habibi,” (a song about a sweetheart) it starts with just him and his guitar.  He plays a simple, quiet, repeating guitar melody.  After a few verses, he adds the low strings on his guitar.  The song has been so devoid of bass up until now that it’s hard to imagine it coming from that guitar. Vik Hardy adds repeating piano lines that create a tension that continues throughout the song.

Tamino fills this song with yearning in his voice, much the way Buckley did.  And the end of the song has him hitting some gorgeous ethereal high notes.

His use of that falsetto had some faces in the NPR audience gasping in astonishment.

The songs performed at the Tiny Desk by the 22-year-old singer come from both a 2018 EP titled Habibi and later that year an album titled Amir.

The second song, “Indigo Night” (about despair turned to joy) stars in a similar way–quietly with just a little guitar and Tamino’s amazing, deep vocals.

Colin Greenwood (yes, of Radiohead) plays bass on this song, adding some nice lines to the moody piece.  There is definitely a Radiohead feel.  The blurb lets us in on a bit of personal humor:

The Radiohead bassist shared a brief text exchange with his son, basically telling his hugely accomplished dad that playing the Tiny Desk was “the coolest thing he’d ever done!” That made us all smile.

Midway through the song, as Tamino’s voice wordlessly soars along with the guitar melody, it feels even more like a Radiohead song, except with a more impressive voice than Thom Yorke’s (sorry, Thom).

Tamino’s grandfather was Muharram Fouad, a well-known Egyptian singer known as “The Sound of the Nile.”

The final song, strangely called “Tummy” starts with Tamino’s almost plucked guitar style.  He learned on his grandfather’s guitar.  He gets such an interesting sound out of the instrument.  Ruben Vanhoutte adds some simple drums to flesh out the sound.

It’s a truly impressive set and he has a truly impressive voice.

[READ: August 5, 2020] “Motherless Child”

Olive Kitteridge is an older woman with a grown son.  The son is married with children of his own.  They have been rather estranged for the last few years.

But Christopher was finally coming to visit his mother with his wife and children. But they were late.  In fact, Olive had lunch set up for them, but Christopher had just called to say they were going to eat lunch on the road (it was two P.M.) and that they wouldn’t be there for a few more hours.

Olive had been taking things down in her house–it looked almost bare.  Her husband had died three years ago and she was ready to move on.  She just hadn’t told Christopher yet. (more…)

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Jill Ciment–“Then Again” (Harper’s, June 2019)

Posted in Ensemble Signal, Excerpt, Harper's, Jill Ciment, Jonny Greenwood, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Memoirs, Memory, NPR/PRI/PBS, Olivier Messiaen, Radiohead, Sex, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Tiny Desk Concert on June 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ENSEMBLE SIGNAL PLAYS JONNY GREENWOOD-Tiny Desk Concert #850 (May 20, 2019).

The blurb for this piece is actually by Jonny Greenwood (instead of an NPR staffer), so I’ll keep the whole thing.

I’ve watched a lot of Tiny Desk concerts over the years. It’s good to see musicians in the raw, away from stage lighting and backing tracks — as if they’ve just stopped by an office to play over a lunch break, with desk-bound employees watching on. The performances should expose flaws, but instead they tend to expose musicians being casually brilliant, like the members of Ensemble Signal, who certainly play these pieces beautifully.

Unfortunately, I was nowhere near Washington, D.C. for this recording. And I still find it bizarre that you can put a musical idea on paper and have it reproduced at such a distance — and with such added life. We’re used to sounds and images being shared as exact clones of one another, but the pleasure in using ink and paper is that the music is interpreted rather than just reproduced. All those years of practice, in all those players, distilled into 15 minutes of music. It’s a big privilege — and a continuing motivation to write the best I can.

The first piece, Three Miniatures from Water, was originally a sketch for an Australian Chamber Orchestra commission in 2014. I thought it’d be easier to approach writing for full orchestra by starting with a piano miniature and scaling it up. In fact, only some of the material made it to the final commission, and I always felt the original three miniatures hung together well enough as its own piece of music.

I’m a big admirer of composer Olivier Messiaen, and one of the musical scales he favored was the octatonic mode. It’s a lot like an Indian rag in that it’s a rigid set of notes, yet isn’t necessarily in a major or minor key. There are hundreds of rags in Indian music, but I was surprised to find that Messiaen’s octatonic scale isn’t one of them. Despite this, it sits nicely over a drone — and that was the starting point for this music. That and the glorious sound of the tanpura, the drone instrument that underpins everything in classical Indian music.

The piece is called Water, after the Philip Larkin poem with the same title, and was especially inspired by the final stanza:

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

The second piece, called 88 (No. 1), is also in one of Messiaen’s modes in the first half, before becoming a celebration of the mechanical nature of the piano. The performer has to put fingerless gloves on halfway through, partly in tribute to the immortal Glenn Gould, and partly because the technique requires some painful hammering. But don’t let that fool you into thinking the music is dark or angry: It is — or is meant to be — joyful.

“Three Miniatures from Water” features lots of drones from the strings ( Lauren Radnofsky on cello and Greg Chudzik on bowed upright bass).  There’s also the excellent tanpura drones from Paul Coleman and Elena Moon Park. The violin from Olivia De Prato plays a slow melody that seems to appear and disappear while the piano plays a somewhat spooky pizzicato melody.

“88 (No. 1)” is a solo piano piece by Lisa Moore (who played piano on the other piece as well).  It does seem to use all 88 keys in various fashion.  Indeed, she does put on fingerless gloves a little more than half way through the piece where she does play quite possibly every note (I can’t imagine what that looks like on paper).  For the last 45 seconds, she seems to be banging relentlessly (but tunefully–are there chords?) all over the keys.

Neither one of these pieces seem particularly joyful to me–they both seem kind of scary, but I am fascinated at the kind of compositions the guy from Radiohead makes.

[READ: June 1, 2019] “Then Again”

This is an excerpt from The Other Half, a manuscript that Ciment is writing to rebut her own 1996 memoir, Half a Life.

In that original memoir, she wrote about meeting her husband.  At the time she was seventeen and he was forty-seven (and her art teacher).

She asks what should she call him now.  “My husband”?  Yes, if it is the story is about the man she married and lived with for forty-five years.  But what if it is about an older man preying on a teenager.  Should she call him “The artist” or “the art teacher.”

She says he didn’t know what to expect when he kissed her for the first time–she could have screamed or slapped him.  But she had fantasized about him for the last six months, so that was not going to happen. (more…)

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Bruce McCulloch–Let’s Start a Riot: How a Young Drunk Punk Became a Hollywood Dad (2014)

Posted in Bruce McCullough, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Cancer as plot device, Dave Foley, Deep Purple, Drinking, Eminem, Funny (ha ha), Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Memoirs, Memory, Mott the Hoople, Parenting, Paul Feig, People From Earth, Radiohead, Rheostatics, Scott Thompson, Sex, Slade, The Kids in the Hall, Uriah Heep, tagged on January 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS–Humanities Theatre Waterloo ON (January 24, 1997).

Just as I was finishing up all of the newest live Rheostatics recordings, Daron posted a dozen or so more.

This is a pretty awesome soundboard recorded show just following the Rheos tour with The Tragically Hip and about 4 months after the release of The Blue Hysteria. One of the best versions of A Mid Winter Night’s Dream I’ve ever heard. As you can see on the DAT it used to be called Winter’s Tale. People From Earth opened the show. NB both First Rock Concert and RBC are incomplete recordings.

People from Earth opened.

After listening to all of those new recordings, it’s fun to go back to 1997 before they had broken up, while they were touring The Blue Hysteria.  It’s also a little surreal to not really hear the crowd (because this is a soundboard).

This recording is 90 minutes (which means either they were playing shorter shows back then or a lot of it was cut off (which seem more likely).

Martin sounds great, playing a rather slow and hushed version of “California Dreamline.”  I like the way the washes of guitar noise segue in to the acoustic guitar of “Claire.”  Throughout the show I couldn’t help noticing how young Tim sounds (far more so than the other guys).

After a trippy “Digital Beach,” they segue into “Earth/Monstrous Hummingbirds.”  It’s one of their weirder songs with lots of different parts.  It sounds great–certainly a peak time for this kind of song.

There’s a fun boppy version of “Introducing Happiness”–Tim seems to be having a lot of fun with the song.

Dave Bidini says that last night, Martin talked the longest on stage ever in his life before introducing this next song.  “You probably read about it on the internet or something.”  Martin says, “I enjoyed it so much I can’t do it tonight.”  He says that the recording of “Motorino” features the host of channel 47 show Jump cut for young Italian Canadians.  That’s Felicia.  She spoke (rapidly) in Italian for the record.

It’s interesting that this is the first song they’re playing off of the new album and they don’t mention it as such.

“Four Little Songs” is still new so they don;t get too crazy with it, although Martin has fun singing his part.   Dave would like to dedicate his fourth little song to our backdrop the newest member of the Rheostatics.  It’s the angry chickadee or two fish kissing.  Dave asks Tim, “who would win in a fight?  Angry Chickadee or Monstrous Hummingbird?”  Tim: “How big is monstrous?”  Martin: “Like Mothra.”

After not playing anything from Blue Hysteria, the play six new songs in a row.  Martin introduces “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine” as a song “about trying to help someone that you’re in love with….stop killing themselves.  Sorry.”  It’s wonderfully intense and the harmonies are outstanding.  The sound of the guitar taking off half way through is tremendous and Martin hitting those falsetto notes gives me goose bumps.

“Fat” “is as song about having a best friend” (Dave says). It opens with a great slinky bass and Martin saying more drama on the lights–get rid of those white ones.   More great backing vocals from Martin.  It’s followed by Tim’s delicate “An Offer.”  Tim;s voice seems to be much higher than in 2017.

The band loves talking about playing in Kitchener (they are still doing it in 2017).  In 1982/1983 they played there at the Kent Hotel which was a strip joint.

“A Midwinter Nights Dream” is an absolutely stunning flawless performance.  The crowd is great, the band is on fire and it sounds amazing.  This has become one of my favorite Rheos songs and I love hearing it live (even if Dave doesn’t know what it’s called).

This song “Bad Time to Be Poor” is getting played on rock n’ roll radio (but it’s not its commercial radio).   We get invited to radio stations named after animals: The Bear, The Lizard, The Fox, The Marmot (that’s in St. John).  Now we’re getting a lot of guys dressed in denim coming to our shows.  So we’re broadening our horizons.   If someone sparks up a joint, don’t blame the song, blame commercial radio.

There is a rocking and fun “Dope Fiends” to end the set.

They come back for the encore and this recording cuts off the opening of “My First Rock Concert.”  But Dave has fun explaining a lyric.  When his friend was “on his back” it was a popular dance of the time called the worm.  Then they talk about people swan diving to them when they get famous.

The recording ends with “Record Body Count.”  It ends early, but has a nice fade at least.

This is, indeed a great show.

[READ: December 2018] Let’s Start a Riot

I just have to look at Bruce McCulloch on the cover of this book and it makes me laugh.  McCulloch has played some of my favorite characters on Kids in the Hall (although I could never pick a favorite).  But he is especially good at being an asshole.   A very funny asshole.

And what better sums up Bruce than this:

Ever feel like you were once young and cool and then you woke up in the middle of your life, emptying the dishwasher?

What could this book be about (and how did I not even hear of it when it came out?).  Well the answer to the first question is in the subtitle.  There’s no answer for the second one.  But there is an introduction to the book by Paul Feig (which has nothing to do with either of these questions).

Bruce says he always dreamed of writing a book.  “One day.  When I was old.  Luckily, and unluckily, that day had come.”  When he told his family his wife and children Roscoe and Heidi (five and seven, he thinks), they wonder what he’ll write about.  He tells them that he will write about how he was once a young angry punk who crawled out of a crappy family, had this silly show on TV then somehow became a happy man with a pretty good family.  “Why would anyone want to read that?” Heidi asks. (more…)

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Carl Broemel (Boot and Saddle, Philadelphia, PA, December 7, 2018) [STRAND OF OAKS Winter Classic IV, Night 2]

Posted in Boot & Saddle, Carl Broemel, Joe Pug, My Morning Jacket, Philadelphia, PA, Radiohead, Strand of Oaks on December 7, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: December 7, 2018] Carl Broemel

In 2016, I went to see the second Strand of Oaks Winter Classic at Boot and Saddle.  It was a wonderful night  I wasn’t even that big of a Strand of Oaks fan–I liked the latest album, but that’s all I knew.  The show was terrific and the whole night had a wonderful feeling of warmth and kindness.  Timothy Showalter is a super nice guy and very grateful for his success.

I didn’t think I needed to go again this year, but then I saw that one of the opening acts was Carl Broemel, guitarist for My Morning Jacket.  MMJ have been on my “must see again” list, but they haven’t played anywhere near us for a while.  So this seemed like the next best thing.

I was running late that night and assumed that Joe Pug was the first opener (from the way it was listed).  But when I got there I discovered that Carl was up first and had started already!  Gadzooks. (more…)

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Radiohead (Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA, August 1, 2018)

Posted in Full show video, Jonny Greenwood, Junun, Madison Square Garden, New York City, Philadelphia, PA, Phish, Radiohead, Shye Ben Tzur, The Rajasthan Express, Wells Fargo Center on August 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: August 1, 2018] Radiohead

I have never really seen a band two times close together.  Sometimes with smaller bands if they are playing two clubs, but never a stadium show.

But I had already gotten my Radiohead ticket for WellsFargo, so I was sure as heck not giving it up.

I saw Phish twice on the Baker’s Dozen run–two shows 16 days apart.  Now here was Radiohead 21 days apart.  For some reason their tour didn’t go NY to Philly, it went NY to Canada, to Ohio to Boston and then to Philly.  This was a cool way to see the band twice with some decompression time in between gigs.

Strangely enough, these tickets which were literally at the side of the stage–I was parallel with the gap between the stage and the crowd and 23 rows back–and they actually cost more than the General Admission floor seats at Madison Square Garden (although the fees at MSG were more, so these tickets were technically cheaper when all was said and done).

Since I had trouble getting to the arena for Pearl Jam, I decided to leave work a bit early, drive in and beat the inevitable traffic.  Which meant I arrived 45 minutes before the gates opened.  Duh.  So I sat in the car and continued my book.

Then I went in and got some merch that hadn’t been available at MSG and found my seat.  As with the MSG show I was surprised at how uncrowded it was.  I guess many people didn’t care about Junun.  But when the lights went down for Radiohead, my section (and everywhere else) seemed full.

I had a pretty great view of the stage (except for one lighting pole which was directly in my view of whomever was up front (usually Thom).  I also couldn’t really see the screen in the back (which was ok) and the lights are obviously very different from off to the side instead of head on.

But what was most important was the music.  And despite what I thought was a terrible sound for Junun, Radiohead sounded amazing once more   The music was crystal clear and powerful without being too loud. (more…)

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Junun (Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA, August 1, 2018) [RADIOHEAD]

Posted in Jonny Greenwood, Junun, Madison Square Garden, New York City, Radiohead, Shye Ben Tzur, The Rajasthan Express on August 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 11, 2018] Junun

I thought traffic might be out of hand getting to the Wells Fargo Center (I had a bad experience parking when we saw Pearl Jam there).  Plus the show started at 7:30, which is pretty much heart of rush hour if you’re trying to get there at a reasonable hour.

So I left straight from work and wound up an hour earlier than when the doors opened.  I thought here was a chance I’d miss Junun if I got there late, but here I was super early again.  So I had a nice parking lot chat with Sarah while I waited.  Then I continued with my book (same book as the previous show–it’s a pocket-sized paperback (Terry Pratchett), perfect for this sort of thing).

I had a seat this time, so I wasn’t in a hurry.  I bought some small merch (socks!) and took my seat.

Unlike last time when I was on the floor, for this show I was stage left almost exactly parallel with the stage.  It wasn’t a great location for seeing the light show, but Junun doesn’t have one.  The main gripe for me was that the lighting pole was in the worst spot for me to see the front of the stage.

For my post from a few weeks ago, click here. (more…)

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Radiohead (Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, July 11, 2018) [Night #2 of 4]

Posted in Jonny Greenwood, Junun, Madison Square Garden, New York City, Radiohead, Shye Ben Tzur, The Rajasthan Express, Thom Yorke on July 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 11, 2018] Radiohead

I remember hearing “Creep” when it first came out and really liking it.  And I remember thinking that Radiohead would be a fun grunge band to follow.  Well, that changed pretty quickly and soon enough Radiohead released “Paranoid Android,” and I couldn’t stop listening to the song and the album.

Then, by making deliberately quirky and somewhat hard to fathom albums, Radiohead became the biggest band in the world.

Their live shows were supposed to be spectacular.  But I had never managed to go.  They played Madison Square Garden in 2016 and the tickets sold out so fast it was a trending topic.   Previously, they had played NY and Philly back in 2012, but I wasn’t as fully cognizant of concerts then like I am now.

So, when they announced a brief tour of the States, I tried, once again, to get tickets through the proper channels (with the understanding that they were trying to control bots and scalpers).

Tickets for Philly went on sale first and I couldn’t believe that I got one!  The seat was close but on the side of the stage.  But who cared?  It was Radiohead.

When MSG tickets went on sale I wanted to see if I could do better.  And I scored a floor seat, general admission!  I nearly passed out. (more…)

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Junun (Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, July 11, 2018) [RADIOHEAD]

Posted in Jonny Greenwood, Junun, Madison Square Garden, New York City, Radiohead, Shye Ben Tzur, The Rajasthan Express on July 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: July 11, 2018] Junun

I was so excited to get tickets to see Radiohead that I didn’t even consider that there would be an opening band.

I was so excited to get General Admission floor spaces that I didn’t really think about anything else.  I took off from work that day, drove to the City and did not heed the advice of crazy fans who were going to camping out all day.  Rather, I arrived sometime around 5PM.  The line wasn’t that bad, I was able to get a snack and a drink and I had my book with me, so I didn’t mind waiting the 90 minutes until the doors opened.

And when I got in and saw that there weren’t even that many people on the floor, I bought a poster and a water and then I stood in a cluster and waited (with my book).

Eventually the lights dimmed and Junun came on stage.

Even after seeing their performance I didn’t quite understand what was going on with this melding of minds.  So what I’ve learned is that Junun is actually the name of an album.  But the performers and composers go by the unwieldy moniker Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express.  So I get why they were called Junun.

I found the creation of the album to be rather interesting: (more…)

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Alain Mabanckou–“Credit Gone Away” (Harper’s, May 2009)

Posted in Alain Mabanckou, Drinking, Half Moon Run, Harper's, Helen Stevenson, Huh?, Live at Massey Hall, Politicians, Quatuor Esca, Radiohead, Religion on July 7, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HALF MOON RUN-Live at Massey Hall (December 1, 2016).

I hadn’t heard of Half Moon Run before this show.  They are a Canadian band who put out their second album a year or so before this show.

So it’s pretty impressive to have gotten a gig at Massey Hall and to have the crowd be that crazy about you after just two records.

There’s a lot to like about the music–great moody sounds, and spectacular drumming, but there’s also something really “pretty” about the singer that makes me wonder if they are too commercial.  Or if I should even care.

The band consists of four guys and they each play a multitude of instruments.  Devon Portielje is lead vocalist.  He plays guitar and on one particular song a smashing drum. Conner Molander plays keys mostly but also guitar and he sings too.  Dylan Phillips is the drummer but he also plays keys and Isaac Symonds plays percussion as well as mandolin guitar and keys.

I love the old-sounding keyboards of “21 Gun Salute.”  There’s a latter-period Radiohead vibe on this song with the eerie backing vocals and the ringing guitar.  I’m not sure if the guitar solo actually works with the song, though.

“Call Me in the Afternoon” starts with Portielje taking of his shirt (to whoops of course).  He has an undershirt on at least.  Rather than playing the guitar, he plays a small drum and throws the sticks into the audience.  There’s some nice harmonies on this song but again, it’s the drums that are very cool.  I also like the unexpected bass line that runs through the song.

“Everybody Wants” is from the newer album.  It introduces a resonator guitar which brings a whole new sound ( I thought it was a banjo at first).  This is a ballad but it builds slowly over the song with great backing vocals–soaring notes–and then it takes off at the end with some more tremendous drums (I love that one of the drummers (can’t tell them apart) is playing one-handed while paying keys with the other).

“Give Up” is an older song which also has a Radiohead kind of feel in the guitar/piano pattern.  It’s a slower moodier song and the strings come out for this song.  String are provided by Quatuor Esca:  Sarah Martineau, Camille Paquette-Roy, Edith Firzgerald, Amelie Lamontagne.

“Consider Yourself” opens with thumping drums and feedback before shifting to an almost gothy-dancey keyboard melody.  It’s cool and even moodier when the piano is added but the chorus is big and brash with a big noisy ending.  It’s a pretty great song and sounds quite different from their other ones.  It’s on the second album where I guess they diversified their sound more.

“She Wants to Know” opens with staccato note and voices and “Full Circle” has a nice interplay of acoustic guitar and electric lead with more of those thumping drums and the audience is right there to sing the chorus–it was their first single.

It’s interesting that the majority of this show is songs from their first album.  Is that editing or did they just want to play their earlier stuff?

I’m going to have to check out their studio recordings to see what they sound like.

[READ: January 25, 2018] “Credit Gone Away”

This is an excerpt from the novel Broken Glass, translated by Helen Stevenson.

This excerpt is listed as a monologue and it is just that–a full-page and a half of unbroken text.  I found it more than a little confusing because it seems to be a tirade against a bar. And I assume the bar is called Credit Gone Away (at least something is called that–it’s a weird name for a bar).  The Church people opposed the bar right away.  Saying it would be the end of Sunday mass, slippery slope until everyone is gong straight to Hell

Then the weekend and bank holiday cuckolds waded in saying that it was Credit Gone Away’s fault that their wives no longer cooked for them.   And another group of complaints from ex-alcoholics. (more…)

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