Portishead: Roseland NYC Live

I’ve been trying to return Portishead’s Roseland NYC Live to Yoichi for weeks but it refuses to leave my CD player, or my head. It’s hard to try and describe without sounding pretentious, but there’s an incredibly palpable extra dimension the tracks take on when played live that makes the studio versions (which I’ve loved for years) seem sterile in comparison. There’s a sense of weight and texture, of empty cold cavernous spaces the songs inhabit and move through. Feels perfect these winter nights.

Moments I love:

Somewhere around the fourth minute of Mysterons: quietly menacing lower strings, reverberating warped walls of sound, upper strings clawing their way up, up, up to climax, and then? Soft. Shadowy. Tiptoe to a close.

In Over, when the drums first kick in. They really put the whammy on you.

Spiralling claustrophobia in Glory Box starting from “This is the beginning of forever”. A feeling of eyes rolling back in your head and flashing lights behind your eyelids until the return to “I’m so tired” leaves you paradoxically gasping both to catch up and slow down.

The vocals in Roads. One moment eerily ethereal and perfect the way they echo through the air, the next moment plaintive and pleading and quaveringly imperfect, every moment of this song just feels imbued with poignance and longing and regret and I never ever want to listen to it when depressed, but for now it’s amazing.

All Mine is the only track that feels vastly inferior here from its album incarnation. The horns just don’t feel as sexy and imperious and James Bondy. In general the song just seems to lack that whole “fuck with me and I’ll beat the shit out of you and you’ll love every minute of it” vibe. Which is quite a pity.

Great album. I hope Yoichi’s a patient man.

Christmas/New Year 2002

It’s been two weeks of unprecedents.

Unprecedented bicep pain from clinging on to the rope pull before I was good enough to go down chairlift-served slopes (just one day, thank God). Unprecedented cccccold on chair lifts at 4.30 pm, trying for one last run after the sun had gone down. Unprecedented amount of disgust at the gaudy ski suit I’d borrowed – didn’t feel like incurring expenses for an activity I wasn’t sure I’d like enough to do again, but now I wish I’d gone ahead and bought one, given the twin factors of that suit’s grossness and my reasonably high fun-levels while skiing. (Many thanks to Russ for yet another stint as personal communications assistant/general tech support to Michelledom in my absence.)

Unprecedented girliness: sharing a room with four girly girls, going mad shopping in Andorra la Veille, massive stripping session in said room with said girls after said shopping trip while gleefully showing each other our purchases and trying on other people’s.

Unprecedented loss of restraint at post-Christmas CD sales back in London. From Virgin: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (Yo La Tengo), Carboot Soul (Nightmares On Wax), Black Sunday (Cypress Hill), Suzuki (Tosca), USSR: Life From The Other Side (DJ Vadim). From HMV: Trompe Le Monde, Pixies At The BBC, Complete B-Sides (Pixies), Endtroducing (DJ Shadow), Things We Lost In The Fire (Low), Red House Painters’ self-titled, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Kid Koala). I so have to return some of these for the sake of my financial sustainability.

Unprecedented amount of missing another person. Unprecedented amount of unhappiness I have caused another person. (Two different people.)

Unprecedented amount of time away from this site. Unprecedented amount of stuff I’ve wanted to write about during that time away now simmering in various headspaces while I try to muster the time and skill (skill more than time, it has to be said) to do it all justice.

I’ll keep trying. I hope you keep reading. Happy New Year.

Out To Ski, Back Soon

In typical Michellian style Michelle has left the country letting only the bare minimum number of people know about it. She asked me to do her a favour of letting you guys know that she’s gone skiing for the week; she’ll be back this sunday.

Happy Holidays.
—
Russ     russ@btopenworld.com
Personal communications assistant to Michelle. :-)

Tori Amos (Hammersmith Apollo) / Rent (Prince Of Wales Theatre)

Tori on Friday. Rent on Saturday. Hence broke, grouchy and essay crisis-ridden on Sunday.

Tori:

Was objectively good, but not what I waited seven years to see. As a performer she gave all the charm and musicianship I’d expected from her, but managed to choose a setlist with very few songs from her repertoire that I love, which is quite an achievement given how much I do like most of it. It could be argued that some songs weren’t possible because she wasn’t playing with her band – Hello Mr Zebra comes to mind as a song that might suffer from the loss of those jaunty horns, but you could also say that someone like her who adapts things like Smells Like Teen Spirit for solo piano could probably find a way round that.

There were songs that simply left me cold – Juarez, Honey, Suede, Not The Red Baron. There were songs I don’t “enjoy” per se, but still had to hear live, and was glad to have experienced – ’97 Bonnie And Clyde, Me And A Gun. Then there were songs I do quite like but which still fall short of the ones I truly love – Putting The Damage On, Little Amsterdam, Upside Down, I Don’t Like Mondays, Leather, Time, Cruel, Only Women Bleed, I’m On Fire, Landslide. Then there was one song I love – Playboy Mommy. This is why I ultimately left a little disappointed, not with her, I guess, but just by chance.

Songs I’d have liked to hear: Silent All These Years, Precious Things, Pretty Good Year, Past The Mission, Cornflake Girl, God, Professional Widow, Blood Roses, Hello Mr Zebra, Marianne, Jackie’s Strength, 1000 Oceans, Real Men.

Oh well. Just my view, others saw it differently, and I still left the concert no less of a fan than I was before it.

Rent:

If you’re in London, and you’re considering going to the production currently running at the Prince of Wales Theatre, don’t. Adam Rickett is a terrible, terrible Mark: camp acting, reedy singing voice; whoever acted Roger seemed to think he was a member of Spinal Tap instead of a struggling indie musician and felt the need to strut everywhere crotch-first and generally just act very cock rock, had an accent that seemed to waver wildly between Geordie, vague American and comically stereotypical New Yorker, and a singing voice that couldn’t hack the high notes in One Song Glory.

Light My Candle was either directed by an utter moron, or the actors completely screwed it up. Either way, I don’t understand how anyone who’d ever seen a good production of Rent, listened to the soundtrack, or even just read the fucking libretto, for crying out loud, could have butchered it so completely. Musicals don’t tend to lend themselves to gradual development of relationships or characters. You’re expected to accept that he loves her and she loves him, truly madly deeply, usually to the death; why and how this is so is superficially explained at best, and just imposed at worst. The reason I’ve always loved Light My Candle is that it seems to convey, better than most, some feel of how people interact before the sweeping heartfelt declarations of undying love. The flickerings of attraction. The banter, sometimes shy, sometimes daring, the wondering, the hoping, finally the confirmation. We got none of this. No Mimi bending to search for her stash on the flood and Roger sneaking a look, Mimi noticing:

M: They say I have the best ass below 14th street – is it true?
R: What?
M: You’re staring again.

Just Mimi getting down on the floor and deliberately arching her booty up at him like a slapper right from the start.

No understanding of Mimi’s response to Roger’s quip about Spike Lee shooting down the street – first “bah humbug” because she’s laughing at the joke, second “bah humbug” at him, tenderly, a little awkward, their hands finding each other. We got two careless “bah humbugs” from the couch, then Mimi shooting across the stage and grabbing at him.

I realize I sound like a complete obsessive to anyone who isn’t familiar with the musical, and probably even to most people who are. I could go on, but I’m too tired and pissed off. Just be glad I haven’t seen a bad production of Les Miserables yet.

MC Krakow / James Iha / YLT’s Tom Courtenay

More Onion genius:
Polish Rapper Under Fire For Use Of The Word ‘Polack’
DETROIT — MC Krakow, a popular Detroit-based rapper of Polish descent, came under fire Tuesday for his use of the word ‘Polack’ on his new album “World Warsaw III…In an official statement, MC Krakow defended his use of the word: “When I say, ‘Y’all be my Polacks,’ or ‘Yo, what up, Polack?,’ it’s my way of taking the word back. Our people need to re-claim and embrace ‘Polack’ with pride, just like Eminem did with the word ‘faggot.'”

Given that I think Ryan Schreiber’s description of James Iha’s solo album (borrowed off Yoichi on Tuesday along with some Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, the Rent soundtrack and the new Pulp) as sounding “like the Gin Blossoms and Matthew Sweet soundtracking an early ’70s film about young hippies in love, minus the drugs” is incredibly spot-on, and given that I find the album as a whole remarkably uninspiring, Sound Of Love really shouldn’t have been in my head all of last night and this morning, but it is.

While we’re on the subject of happy happy jangly layered harmony poppy sounds, you might as well also read about Yo La Tengo’s gem Tom Courtenay at Rebellious Jukebox, which is a recent addition to my list of dailyish reads.

Earlier I described the riffing in Sonic Youth’s Drunken Butterfly as “seductive”, which I meant in the predatory, skulking sort of way rather than the “let me slip into something more comfortable” way. Just to clarify.

Sonic Youth: Documentary and Dirty notes

Crept downstairs last night during an extended break from jurisprudence to watch 4Music’s Pioneers feature on Sonic Youth, which reassured me that my marked inability to evoke the sheer joy this band’s music gives me in any sort of articulate way is shared by lots of other people, including the band themselves (although we didn’t even hear from Kim and Steve at all, boo, C4). There was Butch Vig using the tired old (but still frustratingly spot-on IMO) “glorious noise”, Brian Molko talking about getting chucked into volcanos and swimming around in magma (also quite apt, really), and Sonic Youth themselves (grovel, worship) sounding very art-rock and cliched and saying how everything is about the music, blah blah blah.

But be not deceived by this flippance. Truth be told, I sat in front of the TV for those precious 20 minutes like a 14 year old girl watching a Westlife porn video.

I was then, unfortunately, forced to stay downstairs trying to wolf the rest of my supper down while David Gray sang what felt like the same song for half an hour, after which I staggered back up to my room and put Dirty on very loud, because I was in the mood for it (yes, I know it’s supposed to be the sell-out album and lots of people hate it but I like it anyway), and here are random notes:

Does anyone else find the riffing in Drunken Butterfly incredibly seductive?

I think the best part of this album for me is the three song sequence in the middle. Sugar Kane initially sounds like another one of those exceptionally accessible Thurston-vocal SY songs like Teenage Riot and Sunday , but the minute you hear that intro you just know this song isn’t just going to be about catchiness, and that they’re not going to be able to resist some sort of descent into chaos later in the song. You can’t wait, but you also sense some return to order will follow, this is a song they’ll taper to a close. They do…and then they launch into the rollicking riot of dissonance and attitudinal Kim that is Orange Rolls, Angel’s Spit. And after this you get Youth Against Fascism, which is one of those songs which SY detractors probably jeer at as aging rockers’ attempting to keep in touch with the Ghostworld crowd, but which to me feels exuberant and brash and something I could mosh to without getting killed, and hey, sometimes that’s all I’m asking for. No one ever said they were political philosophers, after all, and yeah the president sucks/he’s a war pig fuck is fun to yell.

Beta Saxophone

It probably says something about the Beta Band when you’ve been listening to The Three E.P.’s, which you’ve owned for a while but somehow never listened to very much, and vaguely wonder why they’ve chosen to end the album with several renditions of the Ave Maria on unaccompanied saxophone, but you shrug your shoulders figuring hey, it’s the Beta Band, this is the sort of thing they’d do, and then you realize the album ended long ago, and it’s been your neighbour practising all along.

April March / Sue Garner + Rick Brown

Recent arrivals from Django:

April March: Chrominance Decoder

Right now I find myself incapable of saying more about this album other than that it is incredibly boring. Nothing of the rambunctious tweeness that made Chick Habit such a romp. The liner notes are amusingly pretentious and say things like “So April is a child. But nothing is quite what it seems. Could it be that she really loved you, Mr Clever? And what, or who, does she think of when the end-credits dissolve from the TV screen and the murmur of radio parasites wraps her in electrical snow?”, but I can write nothing about the music, because each of the four times I have tried playing it, it fades into the background within minutes, and believe me, when you have a very bored Michelle ploughing through the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters 1968 and longing for distraction, something has to be very boring indeed if it doesn’t distract. And this album is very boring. Please talk to me if you have heard this album and like it. I would like to stop being bored.

Sue Garner & Rick Brown: Still

Earlier this year I described them (inadequately) as “Sarah McLachlan’s voice singing with Ani DiFranco’s attitude accompanied by Sonic Youth remixed by Tortoise”, and I am unfortunately unable to come up with a better description, but they really do deserve better than my fumbling reductive comparisons. Different feels to the songs depending on who’s singing: her tones are as dulcet as anything the Lilith Fairies can warble, and his are as nondescript as most of indie-rock’s finest, but in every song you feel this is a band that likes the subtleties of sound – in a lot of the second track (I Like The Name Alice) the sound we hear with the most clarity and detail are the steely plucks of the guitar, with her voice farther away, and each note’s got a twang, a twist, an emphasis of its own that the other notes don’t have. A note of its own in the wider scheme of notes. This appeals to me. I’m a believer in the individuality of notes.

(Still eagerly awaiting Leaves Turn Inside You, which has yet to arrive.)

(Elsewhere in the convenient world of online music reviews, Pitchfork likes the new Silver Jews, Flak reviews the Piano Magic compilation, and I really wish I could rave about MJ’s latest as much as PopMatters does.)

(Did I mention Chrominance Decoder is boring?)

Poem: After RM Rilke (Primo Levi)

Just like that, a week gone and nothing written here about it. Cue inevitable cliche (time, fly, fun, blah).

Get thee behind me, Real Life.

For now, have some Primo Levi, who I’ve been enjoying these days in rare moments of solitude:

After R.M. Rilke

Lord, it’s time; the wine is already fermenting.
The time has come to have a home,
Or to remain for a long time without one.
The time has come not to be alone,
Or else we will stay alone for a long time.
We will consume the hours over books,
Or in writing letters to distant places,
Long letters from our solitude.
And we will go back and forth through the streets,
Restless, while the leaves fall.

(You might also want to read Rilke’s Autumn Day, which the above poem was written in response to.)

Climbing Up The Walls

Currently playing, probably too loudly, on my speakers:

  • Our Lady Peace and Headswim albums (loans from Tay)
  • Hopelessly Devoted To You, a punk sampler (loan from Yoichi)
  • Who’s In The House? (answer: Jesus), by Father Brian featuring the Fun Loving Cardinals (loan from Alec, who swears almost convincingly that he “borrowed it from a friend”)

My neighbours are possibly feeling less than Christian love for me right now.