Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
The Worst is Over (Saddle Creek Showcase, Bowery Ballroom) [EDIT]
...And joining Cursive during their encore at Friday night's label showcase at the Bowery Ballrom? "Special Guest" DAVID BOWIE!!!
But I kid. Cursive's appearance was hardly secret by the time they took the stage; the band even had T-shirts for sale at the merch booth. I was far more surprised by Orenda Fink, who more than earned her late spot on the bill. With an amazing backing ensemble (including the woman pictured above), the former Azure Ray frontwoman turned in a set that easily put her lukewarm solo CD to shame.
More about all this, and the other shows, later. I may only do the Sub Poppers, tomorrow, though I still haven't seen Voxtrot. I'm tired, and haven't written anything for a whole week. Am kind of itching to see New Buffalo, but don't have a pass for the CMJ Day Stage (Anyone go to the Hiro, Friday? Anyone? How were they?)... and would actually like to sleep.
For more photos, go to my Flickr account.
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Saddle Creek is, like, so 2003.
It seems that way, no? SC was a good story, back then, a bunch of can-do Omaha’ns who slapped a label together with love and talent and... well, corn, because that’s what you got in Nebraska. But you can only pay attention to any single flyover state for so long; they’re nice places to visit... but even aging wünderkind Conor Oberst moved to Brooklyn.
This is an interesting time for the little label. I was intrigued to see who they’d tout now that their biggest successes (Bright Eyes, The Faint) have either ballooned past showcase level or gone to major labels (Rilo Kiley). Will there be an SC: The Next Generation? For now – other than San Franciscans Two Gallants (whom I missed; both Central Village and Daily Refill raved about them) – it looks like the label’s just reshuffling its hand.
Arrived a little into Maria Taylor’s performance, and shrugged. It was a Very Saddle Creek Set, with the native Alabaman giggling and telling stories about her family – her brother and sister were on stage with her; mostly straightforward singer-songwriter stuff, her back-up group providing a touch of C&W bar band. Taylor’s one half of Azure Ray (her partner Orenda Fink performed later), and her solo material doesn’t stray far from that territory.
The crowd – which, during her set, was significantly older than the other CMJ events I attended – enjoyed it. When she covered the old Davis/Diamond nugget “Tell it Like it Is,” it even seemed like she was playing for the adult contemporary market. Vonda Shepard, watch your back. During “Song Beneath the Song,” I was wishing Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis was up there; she’d know how to best a line like “It’s not a love-, it’s not a love-, it’s not a love song” out of the park.
Criteria is the label’s new hard rock band, founded by former Cursive member Stephen Pedersen... and it sounds quite a bit like Cursive. Only not, y’know, psychotic. It’s solid and straightforward and surprisingly diverting, and the group’s sound is full (bassist A. J. Mogis is a madman, despite looking like the band’s uncle). But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there’s a band just like this one in every single town in the United States; luckily for these Omaha guys, there’s a hometown label.
There could not have been a better way to highlight Orenda Fink than to sandwich her between two harder acts. Not that the Saddle-Creek folk had to come up with some sort of contrivance to make her seem different. Fink came out in a cut-off, Sunday-best white frock, threads trailing from the hem. Her keyboardist looked like she’d trucked up from her day gig at Colonial Williamsburg, and an African-American back-up singer wore a striking full-length all-white choir dress.
The band – which also included the usual bass-drums-guitar – took her material at half-speed and what, on CD, comes off as tepid, minimalist pop now oozed a gospel-tinged Mazzy Star vibe. It shocked the room to reverent silence. Her music, live, has an overwhelming intensity and purpose. Haunting.
The only thing that didn’t work all that well was the Flaming Lips cover (“Do You Realize?”) that ended her set.
She’ll be back opening for Mike Doughty’s Band at Webster Hall (ugh) on 10/22; tickets are here. Other tour dates at her site.
I thought Cursive gained a lot when it added cellist Gretta Cohn to its roster, and now that she’s gone, I think they’ve lost a lot. The band is so choppy and spare and abrupt, and Kasher’s voice (live, especially) is so ridiculously erratic; the cello brought a smoothness and continuity to the sound that made it whole. Especially on something like The Ugly Organ, where the semblance of a throughline is underlined. Now everything’s back to fractured and fucked up, and Kasher & Co. seem OK with that.
They certainly sounded good, considering Kasher’s been doing time with his folky side-project The Good Life for the past couple of years. New songs sounded solid and not unmelodic. While the Ugly Organ material sounded different without the cello, it fit in squarely with the rest of the band’s stuff; when “Gentleman Caller” has to transmogrify from a purposely nasty lump of sound into something soothing, the crowd took over, doo-do doo-do’ing over the rough parts. And the encore – “Art is Hard” and something I didn’t recognize (“big shot” and “shooting blanks” were in the lyrics) – was explosive.