Iva Bittová and the Bang On a Can All-Stars - Elida
This is a pretty cool album which sits comfortably between Eastern European folk music and the music of Wim Mertens, or a George Crumb vocal piece like Ancient Voices of Children. Bittová seems to take about as much from Roma music as Ástor Piazzolla does from Tango - so, she is always referring to folk elements but never quite gets all the way there, but for a moment. Her voice is like Diamanda Galás’s, but as if Galás was a cheery kindergarten teacher, rather than a vicious hellhound; they each sing sideways across genres, as if flipping through a Rolodex of genres crossreferenced with emotions, matching vocal technique as they go.
The Can-Bangers have always impressed me. They have fantastic versions of tunes by Louis Andriessen, Brian Eno, and Terry Riley, and their own compositions are sometimes just as successful. Here, leaving that comfort zone of precise structures and witty concepts, they at times have to actually tackle performance music, where technique is less valuable than spirit. They are no Turkish cafe band, but they manage to keep from embarrassing themselves long enough to get back to something more fingery/thinky, less possessedy.
I get stuck, because I want to ask why these straddly folk/avant-classical musics never quite make it, while I recognize that plenty of rock/avant things succeed. I think it’s a question of structure - in a music where the essential act is kick-snare on one chord for two minutes, kickety-snarety on another for a half-minute, and back to the beginning for the fade out, someone can pretty much record the sound of wringing cats and slide it into the interstices with out changing anything (see Derek Bailey’s Guitar Drums and Bass for an extreme example). On the other hand, the folk and classical worlds thrive on large-form structure, having radically different ideas about how to achieve it, and every sqwauk and groan added to it must be relentlessly justified within those structural aims. I don’t know.
I’d love to hear this woman do an album with Tom Ze.
Probably the best two guitars and drums album. Sleater-Kinney deserves respect as a band which masters a certain set of possibilities. Each of the three plays a real part at all times, which is harder than it sounds. Bands are often tempted simply to “play at” the song, learn the chords, the basic rhythm, and apply some basic strummy noodly plucking or smacking, varying the dynamics along with the singer. Here Janet Weiss, Carrie Brownstein, and Corin Tucker instead develop a listenable piece of music for each instrument at every section of every song. As a result, you can hook your ears into all sorts of little places in the music, well after the words are memorized or ignored and you have developed a tolerance against the feeling of the swells of loud and soft.
The overwhelming density of information leaves me wondering, as the last track groans away, where the rest of the album went. Mania feels like it’s always changing, always new, but in fact it’s a black puddle of goo as thick as a car crash. If S-K gave us a little more river, the rock would be that much tougher to climb.
Maybe I should just listen to it again, though. It’s not that I’m used up. It’s like they turned on a faucet, and after I filled up a cup, a certain amount of water went down the drain before I could stick a new cup under.
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast (hear “Fitz & Dizzyspells”)
This guy reminds me of HanneHukkelberg. He does a good looping thing live - I saw him open for Smog several years ago - and it really comes through on record. His layers aren’t structural as much as textural. The structure is really determined by one part, and the other parts just add detail.
This is a “leak” of an album which will be released in early 2009. I have to admit that I am starting to allow myself to have things to which I have no right, strictly speaking. I doubt I will buy this album. I also listen to all kinds of things on Lala which I will probably not buy - which, to be honest I intend not to buy.
On the other hand, in the past around half the CDs I bought were things I listened to less than five times - I was just too curious about what they sounded like. Some of those risks payed off: D’Gary, Tom Ze, Gastr Del Sol, Lisa Germano, Smog, Bang On A Can. Now, I will be giving money to Times New Viking, and probably to Migala, and I even bought a few mp3s specifically to post here on the Daily Listen, or even just to hear again for fun. So I am still experimenting, and still paying when the experiment works, but I am not funding failed experiments.
In general, that is a serious consequence of the new music marketplace. Without some sort of payment to failures, do we risk losing the successes?
This album essentially consists of repeated grooves without harmonic or structural progression. Even the texture of each song stays relatively stable. The occasional guitar solo and the generally alternating vocal melody fragments are the only things really dividing each song into recognizable parts.
It’s not just a typical dance album approach. Dance music tends to depend on structural elements to give revelers the feeling that the night is continuously getting more awesome. Here, the Talking Heads just turn on the awesomeness and let it roll. Words, melodies, bits and pieces are all just so many pine needles floating on the water.
In the player presented here you can hear some sort of studio jam session on the theme of “Once in a Lifetime”. It succeeds completely. The trappings of popular music on the album proper are entirely unnecessary, musically speaking.
So what do the lyrics, melodies, and guitar solos do? They place the music in its culture. They say, “hey you, lovers of Pop, of Frank Zappa and DNA, of punk and apple pie, check this out.”
The Evens - The Evens part 2 (read part one below first)
…hmm - MacKaye obviously has a voice which carries conviction, which is a prime cause of his success… but anyway…
“Shelter Two”
went out route seven, stopped at samadi sweets we stood at shelter two and listened to the trees went to arlington hardware to buy some electrical tape you went to tulsa and I’m going to wait it’s all downhill from here we keep on climbing but we never find the top it’s all downhill from here
Attaining normality is seen as goal of being together. Do we care about the particular actions the Evens write about, driving, getting candy, waiting at the bus stop and paying attention, buying something, waiting for the other? Maybe not, but we would care if those were the things we remembered about ourselves.
One thing that bothers me about these lyrics is the line “we keep on climbing but we never find the top.” It doesn’t really express calm stasis like the rest of the song. I mean, this line means it is specifically not all downhill from here. So are we to throw it away, or to conclude that the authors want to hold on to this motive contradiction as some sort of engine of living?
Structurally, the song benefits from the energy of this section. The Evens frequently have songs full of contrasts and just odd movement in general. It’s common for them to have an ABCA structure, which is very unpop.
OK, I completely hate this song and I love the video. The lyrics go “what do I do, whaddueyedo, whaddueyedo” and the singer thinks he is a chipper Nick Drake and the melody, chords and song structure are totally average, but I nonetheless hold onto my Received Idea that the Mountain Goats is a good band.
The video is really cool, and everyone who didn’t think of it is joined in the corner by everyone who wouldn’t be able to pull it off.
