Month: May 2012

SHOW REVIEW: Caveman w/ New Villager

Much like the Beaux-Arts facade of the Brooklyn Museum coming to meet the modern, sheer glass enclosure of the Rubin Pavilion & Lobby, there are grand forces coming together to bring Brooklyn’s Audiophile series to the masses. The three-part series, in its second year, was created by L Magazine and showcases up-and-coming and innovative Brooklyn-based musicians – once in April, then again in May and June. This year’s festivities are curated by MTV’s Weird Vibes host Shirley Braha, formerly of New York Noise. Say what you will about MTV, but Braha’s taste is impeccable and her radar finely tuned; if all of MTV’s programming was left up to her I’d be as glued to the tube as I was leading up to 1996 (before Total Request Live mentality took over/when the Jersey Shore kids were just fist-pumping toddlers).

Though I’d missed April’s installment (Oneohtrix Point Never and Body Language) I was not about to miss New Villager and Caveman. That particular Thursday was one of those nights where there are a handful of awesome events taking place on the same evening – a presentation of the ultra-rare Rock and Roll Hotel at Spectacle Theater was a close second – but the museum is within walking distance of my house and I was hoping that New Villager would do something crazy in the space. We reviewed a live performance of the band at Mercury Lounge in January, where they’d let their performance art leanings shine despite the artistically cramped setting. I figured that the glass ceiling would be the limit when they played the Brooklyn Museum.

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NewVillager at the Brooklyn Museum

As it turned out, New Villager was reserving their “A” game for Bushwick Open Studios the following weekend, in which they incorporated musical performance, dance, costumes, gameplay, and mystery into a multi-location scavenger hunt. The performance at the museum was spot-on but low-key in comparison; there were some costumed performers swaying beneath the scorching spotlights, and the set was similar to the one they played back in January, though infused with some promising new tracks and certainly no less enthusiastic. Though they didn’t take full advantage of the gorgeous, multi-level sheer glass enclosure, the grandness of the lobby took advantage of the band. While I was watching New Villager, I was also watching Brooklyn – kids dancing on the steps of the plaza, splashing in the fountains, or dashing across the elevated promenade, jets swooping toward LaGuardia against an ultrablue sky, traffic inching its way around bright orange construction fencing. This element not only seems to be what the architects had in mind, but hopefully the curators and sponsors behind Audiophile embraced as well.

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Cavemen at the Brooklyn Museum

By the time Caveman took the stage the sun had gone down, the night falling like a curtain behind the performers, their shimmering brand of psych pop sounding like it could have been played by the dancing reflections on the glass as opposed to the real, live band before it. Despite their rough and prehistoric sounding name, these five guys mostly wore button ups and were more clean-shaven than I’d hoped they’d be, but their set was totally rewarding otherwise. Unlike so many bands that come from elsewhere to Brooklyn to make a name for themselves, several of Caveman’s members actually grew up here, and given the setting, lead vocalist Matthew Iwanusa was really stoked on reminiscing about the days when he was meeting guitarist Jimmy Carbonetti in school. Standouts “Old Friend” “Decide” and “A Country’s King of Dreams” from 2011’s Coco Beware rolled over marble floors bounced through columns and rolled around steel beams like a one of those gargantuan prehistoric serpents. They also debuted some great new material. Iwanusa employed the use of a floor tom, front and center stage, to punctuate rollicking choruses with next-level immediacy, never replacing the rhythms of Stefan Marolachakis’ drumming behind him but accentuating certain passages, catapulting the songs into a different realm. While Caveman’s sounds are not new territory, they are skillfully pulled off with an enthusiasm and authenticity that’s hard to come by, and there’s a level of artistry that goes on behind the scenes; Carbonetti makes all the bands guitars. They’re playing several shows in Brooklyn over the next few months and are definitely worth checking out.

Additionally, The Brooklyn Museum will be hosting the next installment of Audiophile on Thursday June 21st, and it’s a doozy – Lemonade opens for Small Black. As always, the shows are free and the museum stays open late on these nights; the permanent collection is the inspiring answer to the questions that the Guerrilla Girls have posed since 1985 by including a wide array of women artists and artists of color. There’s also a stellar Keith Haring exhibition in the Morris A. and Meyer Shapiro Wing on the 5th Floor that’s must-see and closes July 8th.

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The Most Musical Diner in Manhattan

We here at AudioFemme recognize that music isn’t necessarily something everyone seeks out, and we certainly believe that everyone experiences it in their own way. We try to be as inclusive as possible, though our own proclivities certainly skew the genres we cover here. There’s a whole segment of the population we rarely come into contact with while show-hopping at CMJ or partying at SXSW. In fact, after living here for three plus years, I’ve never been to a Broadway show (with the exception of seeing Cats on a field trip in 9th grade) so I’ve only ever come into contact with one particular segment whilst doing karaoke, and even then, I admit, I usually meet these types of music enthusiasts with a bit of eye-rolling skepticism. I hope my honesty here will be appreciated and an apology for my gut reactions rendered unnecessary. The type of which I speak is the musical theater hopeful, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed iteration of music fan willing to belt out a tune from Fiddler on the Roof with a moment’s notice. It’s not that I have a particular disdain for the showy-ness of this action, rather for the showy-ness of showtunes themselves. And yet somehow, I found myself in Ellen’s Stardust Diner, renowned for a singing waitstaff who idolizes Adele, and between her repertoire, a back catalogue of jazz standards, and songs from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, showtunes were the best way to showcase the raw talent of these struggling artists (quotation marks around raw talent and struggling artists are implied, but excluded because I don’t want to seem like too much of a snob).

After my roommate’s commencement (she’d just gotten a masters from SVA’s DCRIT program), we stumbled into this Midtown tourist trap based on the fact that they served the shitty diner food we craved and also the fact that the graduate’s mom’s name is also Ellen (though in our house she’s also known as Optimist Prime). What transpired upon entry was less dining experience and more like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. First, denial: I’d sort of glossed over the fact that Yelp reviews of Ellen’s Stardust Diner made mention of a singing waitstaff, and I straight up ignored the banner emblazoned across the entrance announcing the same. I figured that, at worst, the staff would assemble en masse once every hour or so to perform a song or two 1950’s barbershop quartet style (which has potential to actually be kind of nice). At best, I thought maybe our waiter would improvise all ordering conversation in a sing-song manner, rattling off the specials to the tune of Frere Jacques and providing updates on our orders metal-style the way Domino’s online service does when you get a pizza.

Sadly, neither scenario turned out to have a basis in reality. The waitstaff here do not just sing, they are all trying really really hard to impress both the customers and each other. They remind you of the fact that they are trying to “make it” every fifteen minutes by passing around a bucket asking for additional tips (besides the ones you’re gonna give them for bringing you food and boozy shakes) and expressing their deepest Broadway desires between ditties. Denial quickly turned to Anger. We considered walking out, unable to handle the onslaught. But then I saw a fellow diner’s plate, which included a hefty portion of golden waffle fries. Everyone knows waffle fries are the most delicious and under-rated type of french fry. Plus, there was booze in my shake, even if it wasn’t much booze and carried an 11$ Midtown-inflated pricetag.

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this guy’s star is rising so fast his face is blurry, but I’m sure he’s got a headshot somewhere

Lots of show choirs from the Midwest come here as an addendum to their Big Apple field trips and while it’s all in the spirit of fun, I secretly hope it serves as more of a sobering realization. Who better to emphasize to these kids that coming here and hitting it big on Broadway doesn’t just happen – that they’ll be lucky to perform their shitty showtunes while also carrying around a tray of overpriced entrees, and most of the time they’ll just be waiting regular old tables and struggling to pay rent and wondering why they ever left the safety of Iowa. It was kind of a reflection of my own struggles as a writer, and the food had yet to arrive, so Depression set in.

That Depression deepened when the food arrived because besides the waffle fries, everything was abysmal. But here’s the thing – eating at Ellen’s was somehow still hilarious. Though we could barely believe where we’d ended up there that afternoon it’s one of those places that can only exist in New York City. It’s so outrageously over-the-top that you are helpless to write it off totally, and even if you can’t actually enjoy yourself, there’s ample opportunity for ironic enjoyment of the kitsch factor. The staff wants you to have a good time, and you can sit there like a snobby asshole or you can fucking request a song and get into it. We passed into Acceptance while gnawing our overcooked burgers, and even cracked some jokes about how this would be a great place to take someone coming down off hallucinogens, but only if you didn’t tell them what was about to happen, and/or pretended no one was singing at all.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

SHOW REVIEW: Zammuto w/ Lymbyc Systym

It must be difficult to emerge from the shadow of a ten-year-long, critically acclaimed project as prolific as The Books. Few solo projects reach the heights of the acts that begot them, and in Nick Zammuto’s case, the hope here is that his new output – creatively titled “Zammuto” – will somehow be comparable to one of the most innovative and beloved projects in experimental pop and sound collage in the last decade. It would be nice if it was possible to separate the two acts and evaluate this new venture on its own individual terms, but the reality is that there’s probably no one who will write about Zammuto (the band) without mentioning Zammuto (the musician’s) resume, and in this case especially, it’s extremely difficult to avoid.

 Nick Zammuto has a lot going for his first self-titled album. Some of the elements and ideas that made The Books’ recordings so compelling make appearances here from time to time – the curated snippets of bizarre audio from anonymous sources, carefully constructed but sometimes chaotic sounding progression, digitally processed vocals, exacting wit and clever wordplay. There are a few songs (“Too Late Topologize” “Harlequin” “The Shape Of Things To Come”) which would be right at home on any Books record, and then there are those that would somehow not. These contain a kind of straight-forwardness that obliterates the mystery, beauty, precision, and whimsy that made The Books what it is. At best, the indignant, driving undertones of “F U C-3PO” improve on the ambiguity that marked Zammuto’s prior work (though what he has against beloved the Star Wars character is not made apparent). But at its most cloying, the jam-band tendencies of “Groan Man, Don’t Cry” might make some Books fans want to groan and cry, and the disembodied female androids “rapping” through the entirety of “Zebra Butt” seem, well, asinine. Overall, however, the record is a triumphant experiment in the same spirited vein as the music Zammuto made as one half of The Books, yet sets itself apart just enough for these explorations and new additions to remain interesting (stream it below via the band’s soundcloud).

Nick Zammuto met Paul de Jong in 1999 as tenants in the same New York City apartment building, but it wasn’t until six years and two and half albums later that they finally started touring, screening unique and often hilarious video collages of found material during the shows. For Zammuto, Nick’s wasted no time in assembling a group of considerably talented band members and embarking on a proper tour, borrowing some elements from his former musical project but creating something that is wholly different. That tour culminated at Glasslands last Monday, with Lymbyc Systym opening.

Lymbyc Systym is a two piece that sounds like a band five times its size. Hailing from Tempe, Arizona (but now based in Brooklyn), brothers Jared and Michael Bell make earnest, transcendent post rock. Their intricate compositions are thought out to the most minute detail and replicated live with stunning exactness. Having not released an album since 2009, this particular set featured plenty of new material, much of it tinged R&B beats and influences. Though there’s very little to see onstage – Jared hunches over some electronic equipment, while Michael drums beneath a swath of dark curls – the sounds they make take on a breathing, seething life of their own, instantly occupying every inch of space from floor to ceiling. While the nostalgic undertones are at some points crushing, there is no room for pretentiousness and it never really has a chance to rear its head. For having played with so many huge names in indie rock, the pair have remained humble, and that nonchalance somehow makes their music seem that much more potent. They were joined on stage for a few songs by a friend with a violin, the strings adding sweetness and drama in just the right amounts.

When Zammuto took the stage it was not Nick as soloist, but Zammuto as a full band, joined by brother Mikey on bass, Sean Dixon on drums, and Gene Back (who had also played intermittently with The Books) on keys and additional guitars. Like an actual extension of the mood introduced by album’s first track (entitled “Yay”) there was a collective, ecstatic enthusiasm so apparent it could have been a fifth band member. The sense that it gave me was so different from having seen The Books; whereas The Books wanted to tickle at thought processes, Zammuto’s live show is all about the act of playing. Nick in particular seems so motivated by desire to expand on a live sound and share it with anyone willing to bear witness that it’s hard not to respect – though it is slightly ironic when you consider that he manufactures most of these sounds by himself, holed up in a shed behind the eco-house which he inhabits with his wife and children in the sprawling countryside of rural Vermont.

In terms of visual stimuli, Zammuto also had something to offer, though the projections here were less choreographed and a bit more random that the video pairings I’d seen at Books shows. A bit more akin to Found Footage Fest or Everything is Terrible, the first projection was a chopped and screwed how-to for finger skateboarding, while another took stock photos of actors “experiencing” back pains, headaches, and otherwise twisting their faces and contorting their bodies into unpleasant shapes. But the most intriguing video was one that actually formed a song – for “The Greatest Autoharp Solo of All Time”, Zammuto took the sights and sounds of a Bob Bowers-led instructional video for the autoharp player, editing the song “Battle Hymn of the Republic” until it was all but unrecognizable. The band played alongside the video, drawing on its unique rhythms to form a cohesive, moving piece with just a hint of a clever smirk.

The only real low-point of the show, for me, was a crunchy version of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” that fell flat mostly because it lacked imagination and also because in Paul Simon’s oeuvre “50 Ways” has got to be one of the weakest, most trite tunes.
The encore of Zammuto’s set was the big payoff for fans expecting another Books show. In attempting to present “Zebra Butt” live, there had been some unexplained technical difficulties. Nick had promised to come back to it, even offering to hook up another computer that supposedly would have had the necessary files. For whatever reason, these plans were to no avail and resulted in one of the most awkward interstices between set and encore I’ve ever observed. But out of that wreckage came the first twangs of “Smells Like Content”, the seminal philosophical love-letter to living from 2005’s Lost And Safe. I’ve been trying to decide whether this was a cheap shot – if picking out the most instantly recognizable and moving track that you’ve built your musical career on as an encore to one of your new band’s first shows is somehow a weak move. Would I have felt more gratified if he’d chosen a “deep cut” as opposed to a “hit”? Did I feel slightly pandered to, being reminded in such an obvious way of one of the greatest contributions The Books made to independent music? Yes, but also no.
There’s this beautiful and sort of tragically funny truism that appears as a sound-byte at the end of the recorded version of “Smells Like Content” (Expectation leads to disappointment. If you don’t expect something big, huge, and exciting…. usually uhhhh… I don’t know… you’re just not as… yeah) and though Zammuto didn’t roll the clip at the end of playing the song, its unforgettable to anyone who’s listened to that song as much as I have. Thinking of it served almost as a caution not to expect Books-caliber output from only half of the band, that it would by its nature be the same in some ways, different in others, and there was simply no reason to obsess over the particulars when you should just try to enjoy it. While the high-minded creativity that propelled The Books is present in some aspects of this project and absent in others, Zammuto (as a band) is a new iteration in that direction. Even if in the end Zammuto doesn’t feel as wholly imagined as its predecessor (because one half of it is literally missing), there’s plenty of merit and beauty in the music that Nick Zammuto is still more than willing to create. And whether its fair or not to evaluate this album against The Books’ releases will stop being a question the longer he continues to produce work and come into his own, shedding those expectations and freeing himself for further sonic exploration.

SHOW REVIEW: Here We Go Magic w/ Glass Ghost

Here We Go Magic are crowd pleasers. When they released the video for “Make Up Your Mind” (in which a variety of women suffer seizures instigated by frontman Luke Temple’s mystical musical powers), they unwittingly unleashed a maelstrom of indignation from a some overly sensitive viewers. Rather than embrace the controversy or use the subtle sexual undertones (some YouTube commenters noted that the “seizures” were rather orgasmic) to generate buzz for their third album, A Different Ship, out May 8th on Secretly Canadian, they shelved the video entirely. This decision seems baffling for a band whose video projects often skew a bit bizarre and push some boundaries, but the choice was made to avoid any conflict that might take attention away from the music. That music was front and center on Thursday when the band played its sold-out record release party at The Knitting Factory. And once again, their crowd-pleasing nature came into play, with a nicely rendered set that showcased the newest album and offered surprising takes on old favorites.
Openers Glass Ghost, a Brooklyn-based band who have cultivated a creative friendship with Temple, were a nice compliment to the set. Offering a contemplative batch of eerily unspooling tunes, Eliot Krimsky’s otherworldly falsetto swirled through Mike Johnson’s ephemeral synths and diffused beats, then over an unusually reverent audience. The power of Glass Ghost lies in moody disconnect, which they achieve through an elevated sense of fragility and a slightly autistic manner of delivery. Both players were stoic to the point of coming off as robotic, interacting with the audience and each other minimally, while retro video projections flashed on the screen behind them. Though the subdued nature of the set was unusual for an opening band, whose typical responsibility is revving up an audience for the headliners, this wasn’t necessarily a detractor. As testament to how powerful ambivalence and alienation can be, the tragically gorgeous “Like A Diamond” served a perfect thesis statement, and somehow television talk-show host Marc Summers (of all people) became the poster child for that lost feeling.
Marc Summers is famously known as the wise-cracking host of Nickelodeon’sDouble Dare, which ran from the mid-eighties into the early nineties and pitted kid contestants against the likes of a giant ice cream sundae and some water balloons filled with tomato sauce; if they failed to answer trivia questions correctly they had to take a “Physical Challenge,” the end result of which often involved getting covered in some sort of goo. There were a bunch of spin-offs, including “Super Sloppy” and “Family” editions of Double Dare, which caused my parents to buy a second television when I threw a fit because the evening news theywanted to watch aired at the same time. Summers also hosted What Would You Do? in which guests were regularly doused with slime.
What does this have to do with Glass Ghost? Well, the irony in the fact that Summers spent the better part of his adulthood getting slimed and sliming others is that he suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a mental illness which can manifest itself in a frantic need to stay immaculately clean. That dichotomy – the disjointed sensation of wanting to participate, be involved, stay there, to feelversus the failure to do so despite having these emotions and knowing what is normal, even doing what is normal but remaining out of place – is at the crux of it of Glass Ghost’s music, a lá seminal Radiohead track “Fake Plastic Trees”. So when the projections shifted to a distorted video recording of Double Dare(including many shots of Marc Summers grinning through his despair) it brought not just a wave of nostalgia, but also served as a peculiar illustration of a much deeper theme.
the beguiling Jen Turner

For all the removed grandeur of Glass Ghost’s set, Here We Go Magic brought just as much intensity to the stage, though it was of a different variety. Backed by bandmates Jen Turner (bass & keyboards), Michael Bloch (guitar), and Peter Hale (drums), Temple’s enigmatic voice soared through renditions of “How Do I Know” “Hard To Be Close” and old favorites like “Fangela” and “Casual”. The new record was produced by Radiohead’s Nigel Godrich, who became interested in the band after seeing them play at Glastonbury. For most of the tracks Godrich employed a live recording technique with few digital flourishes meant to enhance but not perfect the recordings. It’s hard to say whether that emphasis came from his initial, inspiring exposure to the band, or if the in-the-moment improvisational methods utilized in the studio have infused their latest performances with a newfound go-for-broke energy. But something magical indeed happens when the band is playing together as a cohesive whole.

It was not uncommon to see the band extend normally unassuming musical breaks into spiraling, extravagant jam sessions more apropos of arena rock bands, or hair metal even. But instead of cock rock, the audience was treated to the plaintive, dreamy “Over The Ocean” rendered epically, in all its shimmering glory. Even if it seems overwrought for more a genre of pop that is typically more humble, make no mistake: this is exactly how these songs are meant to be experienced, with all their dormant power front-and-center. It’s a bold move in these times; as the influence of technology on indie pop becomes more and more ubiquitous, it’s become increasingly uncommon to see a band who can actually rock out but that’s exactly what Here We Go Magic do, and do well. Though Temple started this project as a solo one, he’s found some tremendously talented players whose skill is so assured that they make each other look even better. And their confidence in the new material truly gives these tunes a worthy showcase. So maybe they don’t need a gimmick or a controversy to propel their own hype. No one at the show went into seismic convulsions, but the crowd was very, very pleased indeed.

SHOW REVIEW: The Horrors, live at MHOW

Given the infrequency with which these guys tour, I had no idea what exactly to expect from them as a live act. I got into Primary Colours when it came out in 2009, because of the song “Three Decades”, which starts out seeming like disjointed a-harmonious chaos, and becomes, at the exact moment you feel you’re going to lose your mind, melodious and really quite beautiful. It’s like being handed a glass of cold water when you didn’t even know you needed it.

To me, they are what Joy Division would have become had Ian Curtis decided not to give the ghost up. However, after I listened to more, I realized I like them for one pretty obvious reason: if all the best aspects of shoegaze and 80’s new wave were to have a love child, it would be the Horrors. You could say that the former progressed naturally out of the latter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the two sound good together.The Horrors do pull it off though, pretty brilliantly. Playing into their new-wave aesthetic, they cultivate a louder-than-life persona on stage, with Faris Badwan’s freakishly tall frame in the forefront, towering over the audience, his faced obscured by a mop of disheveled hair. The rock star ethos he works pretty hard to achieve (he prefaces each song with a slur of incoherent mumblings, for example) is tempered by the spacier lo-fi, effect of all the distortion and synth they employ. This contrast alone, adds a compelling ingredient to what could otherwise be thought of as a pretty formulaic recipe.Anyway, I’m happy to say that their songs sound as good live as they do on their albums–which I find is often a conventional indicator of any band’s ability to walk the talk.

They opened with “I Can See Through You”–an angry, incredibly loud love song, that combines post-punk lead guitar lines with various iconic, 80’s-esque synthy arpeggios (think “Bizarre Love Triangle”).  The evening progressed from there, with most of the work off their newest album Skying including “Still Life”, which I think is the track that best (and perhaps singularly) captures the above-described conceit with which they began making albums, as well as “You Said”, which to me, points to where they may be venturing next: a bigger, more ethereal and instrumentally complex sound that still maintains its basic foundations as music that induces profound nostalgia. For what? Who knows. Most of us–including these guys– weren’t around then…

The Horrors: Still Life