Heart on a Stick
Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
Under Locomotive Breath (CMJ Day 3 – Nicole Atkins/Malajube/Benjy Ferree/Archie Bronson Outfit/¡Forward, Russia!, Mercury Lounge)
posted 11/04/2006
After catching bits of Snowden and Apples in Stereo at the Gothamist House, settled in at the big buzzy bill at the Merc.
Nicole Atkins (myspace) has a Columbia Records contract, a mention as a Rolling Stone “artist to watch,” and tunes that need a major overhaul.
Hey, she’s from Neptune City, NJ. Exit 100, holla. I lived off Bruno’s cheesesteaks for a little while, myself.
I like Atkins’ voice – it’s clear but unaffected by trilly bullshit, she’s got good instincts with emphasis (maybe a bit heavy with the vibrato, sometimes, and I’d prefer a few more growls than she gave) – but her set had me wondering if she, or anyone in her band, did. Her bio lists Orbison, Cline and Julee Cruise as influences – yes, she’s a crooner – but instead of listening to those folks’ singing she probably needs to listen to the space around them. Or someone does. She calls her band “The Sea” and she’s drowning in it.
She had six other people up there with her, including guests on violin and cello, and of them only Daniel Chen – simultaneously playing keys and glock, occasionally adding vocals – seemed to be supporting her. The lead guitarist occasionally had a nice solo, but generally suffered from too much delay; the bassist was all smoov jazz. The playing was less a problem – someone told me the band’s had some recent turnover – than the arrangements themselves, which were simultaneously dull and unfocused. And if Atkins pursues her girl-group tendencies there’ll someday be back-up singers, too. Which’ll be fine if she razes those songs back to their foundation – the vocals – and slowly rebuilds everything with respect to them. “Nicole Atkins and the Sea” has potential; “The Sea,” by itself, is little more than a sloppy bar band (and a Jethro Tull cover, more fun for its randomness than its competence, worked as evidence).
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She’s also a bit awkward on stage (and I’m sure my saying this, here, will help). She was self-conscious about her image – admitting that she played blind throughout the set because she didn’t want to look like Lisa Loeb – and once she put down her own guitar, was a bit stiff. She climbed into the audience during the silence before her last song, and started singing with her back to the crowd; she climbed back up, without having made the move make any sense.
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Richard Lloyd apparently plays guitar on her EP Bleeding Diamonds (which you can buy here). So there’s that.
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Malajube (myspace) is a Montreal band (and we pay lots of attention to anything from Montreal, right?) that (oh, nevermind) sings only in French.
They’re good enough, though, to have cleared the first linguistic hurdle and get some small notice outside Francophile circles. The first time the name caught my eye was on Canadian music blog I (Heart) Music (another band made mention in October of 2005, and now they’re #4 – between Sunset Rubdown and Cadence Weapon – on I(H)M's now-annual “Hottest Bands in Canada” survey); their CD Trompe-l’œil was the only French-language album nominated for the premiere edition of the Polaris prize, both Pitchfork and Stereogum have written them up.
It doesn’t matter much that you don’t understand what they’re singing – God, wouldn’t it be great if you couldn’t understand what Jon Bon Jovi was saying? – and, in this case, I don’t think it really matters what they’re playing, either. Malajube – which means “ambidextrous” in French(*) – are a band totally about the how. And the how was tight. Parts of songs’ll stick, melodically, others won’t, but the delivery is engaging enough; the song structures aren’t conveniently circular, they’re tangential in a sort of proggy/mathy way... but instead of sounding fractured and weird it sounds clever, almost devious.
The music’s very well plotted. There was a slow build in one song so accomplished that, halfway through it, I got this rush like I’d woken while clicking up the incline of a roller coaster. The same song ended with a perfectly graduated slowdown; again, you only realized it was happening halfway into it but still enjoyed the rest of the ride.
For their first U.S. gig, they were energetic, professional, humble. They don’t have the anthemic stuff for which we’ve embraced other Quebecois, but there are catchy bits, and bits to bang your head to. Mostly, Malajube’s music is great storytelling, even if you wind up forgetting the stories themselves.
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Nothing clears a room like the sight of a guy with a harmonica around his neck.
Benjy Ferree (myspace) – that last name is pronounced kam-EHR-oh(**) – is a Yeti favorite, but his record Leaving the Nest (rootsy blues and alt-country, mostly) does next to nothing for me. There’s some back-porch intimacy in the music, as well as a lot of back-porch urgency... that is to say, none.
Live he was aloof, which was unfortunate. Though his set got a lot better at the end (when he switched to a cherry red Fender, when the cellist became a third guitarist, when things started to rock a bit), I enjoyed the few times he addressed the crowd more than anything he played. Hails from Washington D.C., but speaks in this (adopted?) spacey creole-hepster-hippie manner. He needs some anecdotes over which to bond with his audience.
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Members of The Archie Bronson Outfit (myspace) – the best band of the night – should never, ever talk at all.
Not that they did a lot of it... but what little they did shattered my hopes and dreams. Until I heard the accent, I thought they were from Mississippi... but they’re from London; I wanted them to be on Fat Possum, they’re on Domino.
No matter. This is swampy, stompy, minimalist blues. If that sounds dull, just remember: It only takes one chord to strangle you. This music is old, violent, evil, the sort of stuff where the set’s not made up of songs so much as threats. It gets in your bones, lasts long after you’ve died, attacks whomever’s unfortunate enough to dig you up.
There’s three of them. Singer/guitarist Sam Windett is short, balding, with reddish hair and a full beard. Maybe a bit Sam Beamish. Dor Hobday – Dor Hobday? – looks like Windett’s elongated twin, and switches between bass and guitar. Arp Cleveland plays drums exactly like you’d imagine someone who calls himself Arp would. The sound was all sludgy, fuzzy, percussive. You couldn’t hear anything of Windett’s vocals but their intent (they’re clearer on their CD, derdang derdang, if that’s your thing); a guest spot by Ferree’s cellist seemed to be about how much you couldn’t hear what she was playing. Sometimes it was “Iron Man” without the wheezing and noodling; one song, that ended with Windett screaming “It’s only love!” fasterandfaster, was like “White Room” with a gun to its head.
It was pretty much perfect. The only thing was missing was a mosh pit.
I have no idea who “Archie Bronson” is, but I hope it’s someone these guys murdered. Their first record, Fur, was produced by The Kills’ Jamie Hince – which makes total sense, though this band doesn’t have the tension or drama of that one. And though Hince is British, too, and there’s the slight psychedelia and full-on blues-worship of 60’s Brit bands, this isn’t what we’ve gotten used to getting from the UK. But happy times are here if the English are going to start shipping over bands that’ve been too busy listening to Junior Kimbrough and Steve Albini bands to turn into douchey Go4 knock-offs.
Speaking of which...
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...I wanted to like ¡Forward, Russia! (¡myspace!) so much, but ¡Ay, Caramba!
That’s not fair: I think they’re infinitely better than most of the post-punk wankers we’ve gotten the past couple years because they really up the thrashy edge. Their CD Give Me a Wall is a lot more interesting than, say, Bloc Parzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. And holy crap, with the energy. Lead singer Tom Woodhead does things with his microphone wire Michael Hutchence only dreamed of, whirling and seizuring about until he’s a tangled, gnashing mess.
But no matter how much they work to punch it up, this is a brand of post-punk I don’t really care for, and most of the melodies ride strong currents of the sort of Cure-ishness I don’t like, either. So no matter how much fun I had bopping my head about, for the most part I just didn’t enjoy what I was listening to. Not my thing.
One song – I think it was “Sixteen” – was absofabulously epic.
They’re back at the Bowery, later this month, with Snowden and Meneguar. Tix are here.
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And no, no one shouted “Bingo!”
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I’ve had twelve bands with “Cassettes” in their name enthusiastically recommended to me over the past two days. I’m pretty sure “120 Cassettes” isn’t really a band, but I’m definitely going to hit up that “Cassettes Cassettes Duran.”
(*) This is totally untrue.
(**) It’s actually pronounced “fah-REE.” Sort of like that Marlo Thomas record.
YES? YOU THERE IN THE BACK? (1)
1. mjrc left...
11/05/2006 7:29 am :: http://lostinyourinbox.blog-city.com
ah, to read one of your reviews is to almost be there. hope you write up
cloud cult's show. i missed them last week when they were in town, and i
feel almost guilty (gulp).