MP3 Mondays

Imaad Wasif – “Priestess”
The last release by this rail-thin wonder had all the dials turned up to Sabbath, letting blazing, tar pit thick riffs dominate the proceedings. Here, we find Wasif (pictured) reining his attack in and pulling back the curtains to let some sun in the room. It is a more psychedelic sound, one that befits the LSD-inspired imagery that he pulls out for the lyrics. I want to get this guy in a room with Kurt Heasley of Lilys and let the sparks fly. Until then, we’ll let Wasif play our third eyes to sleep.

Laminated Cat – “Aquamarine”
This young outfit has been anointed by the good folks behind the Elephant 6 phenomenon. Their debut is about to be released on the label run by the wife of lead Apple In Stereo, Robert Schneider, and the cover art was inked up by Olivia Tremor Control members Bill Doss and W. Cullen Hart. A worthy endorsement, if I’ve ever heard one. But do they come by these commendations honestly? I should say so. This fine track rumbles behind a multi-colored light show of slinky guitars, rambling piano chords and well-apportioned bits of tambourine. And the mid-song collapse/breakdown section doesn’t kill the momentum of the song one iota. Not bad for a bunch of gents barely out of their teens.

Black Wine – “Belong”
Why is it becoming harder and harder to find bands like this in our cluttered marketplace; bands that play an unambiguous version of what we used to call “college rock”? This New Jersey trio hearkens back to the days when Antietam and Blake Babies ruled a certain sector of the indie scene. They play unencumbered by dull trends or unnecessary genre tags. It is simple and raw emotional rock music.

Videosyncrasy: Jon Spencer

Lanky and dark-haired and with a stage persona that is part revivalist preacher and part punk rock aggressor, Jon Spencer has cut quite a striking figure in the world of music. Starting with his first group, Pussy Galore, Spencer has stuck with a singular noisy blues-punk aesthetic, though systematically stripping it down during subsequent stints in The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (now known simply as Blues Explosion) and as a member of his wife Cristina’s band, Boss Hog. These days, he is delving further into the core of his musical being, playing raw rockabilly alongside former Speedball Baby member Matt Verta-Ray in the band Heavy Trash. The band is gearing up for the release of their upcoming album Midnight Soul Serenade (out October 13th on Big Legal Mess) with a tour through Europe and the U.S. that starts tomorrow in Portugal. Before he boarding the band’s flight overseas, Spencer spoke with The Voice of Energy from his home in New York City.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion performing “2 Kindsa Love” on the Australian TV program Recovery (original track can be found on the 1996 album Now I Got Worry)

That was back in ‘97 maybe, around the time of Now I Got Worry. For a long long time, it was only seen by Australian people. For a long time, we didn’t even have a copy of it. We always could get on TV programs out of this country, but we never could seem to get a booking here at home. So when we trying to put together a reel to try and get a booking, we tried to get a copy of it. But we couldn’t even get a clip of this thing. It was 10 years before I saw it.

What do you remember about filming this?

I remember it was in the middle of a tour of Australia. The show went out in the morning on one of the national stations.  They would play music videos all night and then in the morning, they would also have a program with music videos. It was called Recovery. It was live, and we taped in the morning sometime. I don’t remember when but we had to get there kind of early. We probably had a show the night before, so we may have been buzzing on a little bit of nerves and a lack of sleep. I remember the person doing the audio mix was Tony Cohen. He helped record and mix The Birthday Party record Junkyard. So, for me, that was a thrill. He was mixing in a truck outside the studio. Our tour engineer was with him but he wasn’t allowed to touch any of the equipment. He was standing there making suggestions and he said that Tony was having a good hearty laugh the whole time. So, at least we did that. I mean, they were really nice and they didn’t try and stop us. But it wasn’t a planned thing at all. The thing that set it off was that the vocal mic was cutting out. We were going to do the song “Flavor” and it turned into a free form exploration.

How did the people filming the show react to it?

They were great. Nobody yelled at us and we weren’t in any kind of trouble. I don’t remember it too well, but I don’t think anybody had to come down to talk to us. We weren’t fined or anything. We appeared on Later…with Jools Holland and Jools sat in with us on piano. In that song, we tore it up a little bit and I jumped on top of his piano to encourage him to cut loose. They seemed quite happy about it, but then our record company got sent a bill for a piano cleaning.

Do you have any plans to do more work with the Blues Explosion?

I’m doing a lot of stuff preparing reissues for next year. We did play a festival gig this past year that was great, but we don’t have any plans to do anything together. I don’t have any plans at all really.

DVD Review: The Willie Nelson Special

Seeing the lineup of this 1985 special, it wouldn’t be strange to dismiss the inclusion of Ray Charles into a Willie Nelson program as an attention grabbing idea. But listening to the two play music together and generally enjoying the hell out of each other’s respective presence, it is obvious that Nelson even at this point in his long career was trying to push himself and stretch his abilities. And the songs with Charles and guitarist Jackie King do that marvelously. Hearing Nelson stretch his craggy vocal cords around a jazz standard like “Angel Eyes” and jazz up the iconic country classic “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (a song that Ray Charles already pulled apart beautifully) is heartwarming and thrilling.

Although Nelson does allow himself to stretch comfortably in new directions, he’s doesn’t fail to play to his audience by packing the rest of the set list for this special with the songs that put him in the spotlight: “On The Road Again”, “Always On My Mind” and “Whiskey River”. Like watching any old workhorse of a musician, it never ceases to bring a smile to the face as he settles into these well worn grooves and melodies. Because as much fun as it is to see a great musician enjoying himself, it’s even better when you’re lost in the moment as well.

Interview: The Corner Laughers

They’ve never played outside their native California, but the twee-pop outfit known as The Corner Laughers are already attracting a great deal of attention from folks outside their borders, including singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding who signed the band to his fledgling label, Popover Corps. Harding is funding the release of the group’s second full-length Ultraviolet Garden. The sunny, breezy album moves from winsome pop to shuffling country to glistening shoegaze tunes with deceptive ease and smarts. The Voice of Energy spoke with vocalist/ukulele player Karla Kane, bassist/keyboardist Khoi Hunyh, and drummer Charlie Crabtree.

How did the band get started?

Karla Kane: It started with me and Angela [Silletto, guitars]. We became friends in high school and I guess we always said that we would have a band even though we didn’t know how to play instruments or anything. She got a guitar her freshman year of college, so we spent a lot of time making up songs on a Casio keyboard. It was just us in our room making up stupid songs.

What were you listening to at that time?

KK: At that time, a lot of new wave. Talking Heads, Crowded House, They Might Be Giants, a lot of ’80s stuff.

So many of the songs on your album take on different musical styles. Is this a reflection of stuff you’re listening to or you trying to write in a particular style?

KK: We listen to a lot of different music and we all have a very short attention span for doing the same kinds of songs. I mean, we don’t usually start out trying to do things in a particular way. We just sort of embrace it.

How do you write your songs then? Do you have a musical or lyrical idea that blossoms into a song or do they happen together?

KK: It really depends. Most of the songs are by me or Angela or both of us. Sometimes the music’s written and we write words around that. For me, usually I have lyrics in my head that I try to build the music around. But when I play it with the full band, it can change a lot.

Do they change when you get into the studio as well?

Charlie Crabtree: The songs are pretty structured, but with some, Angela and Karla write them with looped beats from GarageBand. So, when we put real drums on them, that can change the structure around a bit. In the studio, it was kind of a free-for-all. Alan [Clapp], the producer, had lots of ideas for harmonies and restructuring songs, and he played guitar on a lot of them as well. But with some material, we had been playing them enough at shows that they were pretty concrete. No need to really elaborate on them.

You are the first band to get signed to John Wesley Harding’s label. How did that come about?

Khoi Hunyh: I’ve known him for several years. I play keyboards for Chris von Sneidern who produced a record for John Wesley Harding. So, I would see him like once a year. And, one day I found out that he had  a really big label of his own and decided to bug him and say, “Hey, would you like to listen to my band?” And luckily he liked it.

I have to ask: where did the band name come from?

KK: That came from right when Angela and I were becoming friends. We took this 11th or 10th grade trip to Italy. The bus we were on was stuck in a traffic jam and we saw some people on the corner who were just laughing at the whole traffic situation. That was really impressive to us. We aspired to be that carefree, so we coined that phrase and we decided then when we had a band that’s what we’d call it.

Do you feel like you’ve reached that point of being as carefree as those people?

KK: We aspire to that still but I don’t think we’re there yet. We do tend to spend a lot of time in the corner laughing, though. We’re really the shy kids in the back of the class, giggling and making comments.

Album Review: Joe Morris – Colorfield

Joe Morris – Colorfield (ESP Disk)

The title of this album is taken from a school of painting that burst into the NY art scene in the ’40s and ’50s, one that embraced bold unbroken swathes of solid color. It created some humble, yet bold works of art that were hard to ignore, especially when the painters stuck to bright primaries. Guitarist Joe Morris echoes this approach from the start of his latest album. Working in an improvised setting, Morris doesn’t jump into the first track with spiraling runs or a blast of noise. Instead, he eases in after a minute and a half of Luther Gray’s twitching drums and piano lines that sound like Steve Lantner is swatting gnats away with one hand as he plays with the other. And when he does it is with slow, single notes plucked and left to ring out. It’s an unusual way to begin an album of free jazz improv, but Morris is not your usual guitarist. He’s the least showy player you’re like to come across in the jazz world, refusing to let his obvious abilities with his instrument overshadow the need to create texture and mood within a given song. On this album’s riveting “Silver Sun”, his fingers stay constantly on the move, drizzling out bits of tone onto the canvas, but to the end of filling in the crevices that appear around Lantner’s splashes and Gray’s subtle outlines. And Morris knows when to simply stop and let his musical comrades take center stage. For an album where his name is top billing, Morris would prefer klieg lights in place of a spotlight.

MP3 Mondays

Tempo No Tempo – “The Rat (Part One)” “Tribal?” “I suppose…” “Wirey?” “You could say that.” “Post-punk?” “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” “Pre-punk?” “Now you’re just being silly.” “Angular?” “More like a steady incline.” “Good?” “Damn good.” (pictured)

Jump Clubb – “A Frozen Hug” “So..” “Oh, it’s you again.” “Yeah. Say, you like disco?” “To a point.” “How about modern takes on disco?” “That all depends, doesn’t it?” “Depends on what, exactly?” “Are they disco to be coy or are they disco to be disco?” “I’ll take the latter for 500, Wink.” “What else they got?” “A sincere lack of attitude and very few baubles and bangles to get in the way.” “Solid.”

railcars – “Castles” “OK. How about a little noise?” “Yes, please.” “This one might burn a little bit going down.” ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.” “Some people take umbrage to a little acidity.” “Stings a bit, yes, but nothing I can’t handle.” “Vocals too scary for you?” “That shit is the porridge Goldilocks chose, my friend.” “Short tune, though, eh?” “It’s what the good Lord gave us the repeat button for.”

(with apologies to Henry Owings)

Live Reviews

Chris Brokaw @ The Crocodile, September 18th

Chris Brokaw doesn’t have walk a straight line when he has a guitar in his hand. He can flash his skills admirably with raw, bluesy runs (see his work as a member of the band Come) or with fluttering acoustic mood pieces. But, Brokaw is also a veteran, and likely knows how to read the temper and tone of a room he’s about to perform in. So, picking up on the rather restless vibe of the crowd at the Crocodile, this guitar wizard chose to pull material from his solo albums that played with the linear form of a pop song, allowing him to stick to slashing chords augmented with the occasional effects pedal. It suited the vibe of the crowd perfectly, allowing him to chug through the set in a workmanlike fashion, though still engaging those who tuned in with his evocative lyrics that choose quick snippets of imagery that lock together into a large landscape picture by the song’s end. Taken as whole like this, his work was reminiscent of the solo work of Thurston Moore, whom Brokaw toured with following the release of Trees Outside The Academy. Like that album, Brokaw chose songs that were economic in structure and lyricism, but still packed a healthy wallop. By using these chunks of descriptors – usually of a location – he gave listeners plenty with which to find corollary in their own lives. There was something in this set for everybody. All they had to was pay attention.

Pet Shop Boys @ The Moore Theatre, September 20th

The music of this long-running pop duo has long been matched up with some incredible graphic design, and in a live setting, impressive sets and stagings that do as they should: amplifying the drama and romanticism that Neil Tennant’s lyrics are steeped in. The Pandemonium tour was no exception, using a set that referenced their latest album’s cover art (Tennant and his musical partner Chris Lowe appeared on stage wearing colored squares over their heads, as were the dancers/backup singers that joined them) as well as giving nods to the staging used by Pink Floyd when touring for The Wall and Rachel Whiteread’s installation Embankment at the Tate Modern. Their 90-minute performance started with two 10 foot high stacks of white blocks on stage onto which were projected images. These eventually toppled forward (after the song “Building a Wall”, natch) revealing a larger wall of blocks and small platforms that were shifted visibly throughout the set with the aid of lab coat wearing roadies. Amid this controlled chaos, Tennant and Lowe stuck to their positions, center stage behind a mic stand and behind a computer monitor and keyboard setup slightly hidden behind a white box, respectively. And like the seasoned stage performers they are, they stuck to their roles superbly. Tennant, in fine voice throughout the set, let his singing convey any and all necessary emotion, with just a few hand gestures and costume changes as augmentation. Or it was the work of the dancers/singers who went from acting out the troubled relationship of a song like “Jealousy” or found themselves in wacky skyscraper costumes (for the song “New York City Boy”). The highly choreographed performance left nothing to chance, and no room for ad libs, but that suits the clean lines and primary colors of Pet Shop Boys’ material best.

The Slew @ Nectar, Thursday September 24th

Hip-hop has long looked to the groove and boogie of rock music for inspiration (see: Kid Rock, Run DMC, Jay Z, and many many others). But few have tied the two genres in together as artfully as Kid Koala. For this latest project, the Canadian turntablist scratched together samples of fevered riffs and bluesy vocal samples amid the thudding grooves taken from rock records. It is a masterpiece of theory and practice, and one that is equally suited for the hip-hop heads and the heshers alike. Live, Koala amplified these ideas quite literally, bringing on tour the former rhythm section of Wolfmother to help lay these thick rhythms down deeper, while he and another turntablist (whose name I didn’t catch) moved between three decks each cutting in samples and squirrelly bits of noise. It was obvious just how locked into this project Kid is, thanks to the goofy grin that stayed on his face throughout the loud, pounding set. And you could tell he relished having the live bass and drums on stage with him, as the sweaty attack of Chris Ross and Myles Haskett only egged him into more flamboyant scratching and head bobbing. The concept, unfortunately, was lost on a small segment of the audience, including one gent who spent much of the set yelling between songs, “Less guitar, more turntable!” 

Videosyncrasy: Mike Doughty

Mike Doughty started gathering his cadre of fans as the front man for Soul Coughing, from 1992 until the band’s break up in 2000. During that time, the quartet released out three albums featuring their unique hybrid of funk, jazz and electronica, over which Doughty rattled off a rhythmic mix of pop culture references and his own Beat poetry-style visions. His fan base has only grown since going solo. He has released a series of albums that have seen Doughty streamline and expand on his arch lyrical visions while adding a acoustic pop with hints of jam band feel to his musical endeavors. He has also earned a well-deserved reputation as a dynamic live performer, especially during his Question Jar tours that feature Doughty responding to audience questions submitted in the aforementioned question jar. His latest Sad Man Happy Man comes out on October 6th on Dave Matthew’s ATO Records.

Promotional video for “Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well” (track taken from his 2005 album Haughty Melodic)

Who came up with the concept for this video?

It was the video’s director, Danny Clinch.

How did the locations to use to have you lying down at get chosen?

Hmmm, not really sure. It was all around Washington Square. None of the locations were, for instance, “on a verdant, comfy patch of grass.”

I imagine that the majority of the people who are caught in the POV shots were folks cast for the video – but were there some folks that just found their way into the video while you were filming?

Actually, most of the people in the video were plucked out of the crowd and asked to participate. Not the guy in the blue bunny suit, or the glittered-up dancers, naturally. Although that would’ve been fun.

How hard was it to lay on your back and play guitar and lip sync? You looked a little uncomfortable at those points of the video…

It wasn’t uncomfortable–I think I just look that way because I’m always half-squinting. It’s my Nordic eyes. They do not take well to the sunlight in these balmy Southern climes.

DVD Review: Rock Of Ages – An Unauthorized Story On The Rolling Stones

The title of this disc should give you the clear idea that this is hardly going to be a comprehensive look at the career of the Rolling Stones. The running time – a tidy 76 minutes – should be your next clue. What this unauthorized work does is shunt out a quick and dirty run through the ups and downs of their musical lives, giving a wealth of detail instead to their personal lives and romantic travails.

In spite of the inclusion of some charming clips from ’60s British newsreel stories on the band, the whole thing plays like a Wikipedia entry, hitting the highlights without bringing to light any new revelations. It’s all material that you’ve heard before, but explained in much sharper detail. The filmmakers do their best to pepper it with what they think is valuable insight, such as the to-go order put in by Mick Jagger and his lawyer following a 1967 court date, but it adds nothing to the band’s legacy or their infamy. It only serves to let the true fan down and hopefully send those with an interest in the band’s history to the bookstore for a more thorough – and authorized – biography of the group.

Interview: Sonya Cotton

Sonya Cotton plays folk music with a delicacy and poise that perfectly complements her indelible singing voice. The songs on her second album Red River float along, as if bobbing along the titular waterway. But they are also weighed down with a sorrowful spirit, one exemplified most strongly by the album’s striking cover art. Cotton sounds at once joyous to be alive but horrified at what is happening the world around her. Much of this comes directly from the singer-songwriter’s life, as many songs on the album were inspired by watching her relationship and those of some close friends end. She speaks to it directly but also uses metaphor to also speak to the disintegrating relationship that humans have with nature. It’s an album you don’t walk away from easily, but the best records tend to have that effect on listeners. Cotton spoke with The Voice of Energy about her creative spirit, the inspirations behind the album, and her efforts to help positively impact the environment.

You started off studying visual arts, when did you become interested in writing and performing music? Or has this always be an interest of yours?

Growing up, my family often took trips to New York City to see Broadway musicals and dance performances and concerts. From a young age I was taken with the whole concept of stage performance. I loved the energy and the immediacy of it. I loved the exchange between the performers and the audience. Watching people express themselves creatively in that way really resonated in me. I remember sitting on the edge of my seat during Les Miserables, wishing so intensely that I was on stage too. So my intrigue with performance started young, and I pursued musical theater and dance through grade school and high school, and a little bit in college. But getting on stage and performing my own personal compositions, sharing my own words and melodies, I didn’t start exploring that until college. That sort of performance, for me, was (and still is) much more terrifying in a way, because I am putting my truest self out there, as opposed to a character or an interpreter of someone else’s work. But it also has the potential to be deeply rewarding.