Muscular!

October 23, 2009 at 10:15 pm | In Gigs, Neumo's, Record Release, Seattle | Leave a Comment
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Boat Fell

It’s not really a review, but if you head on over to my Flickr page there are some photos from last night’s BOAT record release show at Neumos with longer than normal captions.  Think of it as the new style review.  In case you can’t be arsed to click over, just know it was a blast: giant cardboard art, shakers, confetti, Jeff Fell masks and songs from one of the best bands in Seattle.  ‘Nuff said.

Gothic Horrors

October 8, 2009 at 10:48 pm | In Gigs, Goth, Neumo's, Seattle | Leave a Comment
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The Horrors at Neumo’s, Seattle | 6 September 2009

Horrors not Whores

The fact that it’s nearly a month before Halloween didn’t seem to deter the hard core goths from making a night of it at the Horrors’s gig last night. There was lots of white face paint, fake blood, black tights with rips, a few wild whigs and even a guy with some weird mannequin like mask and a head wrap. Based on the press photos for the Horrors I was guessing that the band would be made up in their finest goth, but thankfully they dressed a bit down for the occasion. So the white makeup was missing from their faces, but they definitely brought along their dark moody attitudes. Singer Faris Badwan draped a trench coat over his tall lanky frame and hung on the mic stand like a young Ian McCulloch, and guitarist Joshua Von Grimm (obviously not their real names) looked very dark period Cure with his big hair and boots. It’s kind of amazing how UK bands have this knack for plucking from the past to conjure the ghosts of bands from the 80’s that should have been huge. In the Horrors’s case they’ve done their homework and have built their sound on some impeccable cornerstones. If you remember Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, the Sound or the Chameleons then you know exactly where the Horrors are coming from. Bands get knocked a lot for being derivative, but when you derive from such unknown greats, then you tend to get cut a little slack.

The band all but ignored their first album Strange House and concentrated on the much superior new one Primary Colours.  Badwan we easily the center of attention with his imposing figure and moody visage, he paced the stage like a wolf circling prey, looking part Joey Ramone part Alice Cooper. He’s got a deep foreboding baritone that is reminiscent of Mark Burgess of the Chameleons or Chris Reed of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and a sense for the dramatic.  At the big moments of a song he would cast up his arms to the air like a wizard conjuring a spell, making songs like Three Decades, Who Can Say and their cover of Suicide’s Ghost Rider seem even bigger than they already are.  The rest of the band were dressed in the obligatory black and kept with the program of looking dour, while at the same time rocking out. Bands like the Horrors suffer a lot of licks for being a bit too contrived, but if this gig is the norm, these guys don’t need the posturing because they’ve got the chops to deliver.  Badwan’s voice was amazing and the rhythm section added a nimbleness to the songs that doesn’t come across on the record.  If you’re looking to relive a few moments of the 80’s glory days or if you missed them and wonder what they were all about, go see the Horrors.  They’re like a history lesson of 80’s atmospheric, goth post punk bands. If you’re looking for super tight pair of skinny black trousers, they can probably point you in the right direction for acquiring a pair of those as well.

mp3: Horrors – Who Can Say (from Primary Colours, buy from XL/Beggars)


A bit of background, in case you were wondering…

mp3: Suicide – Ghost Rider (from Suicide)


mp3: Chameleons – Don’t Fall (from Script of the Bridge)


mp3: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Regenerate (from The Singles 82-87)


mp3: The Sound – The Fire (from From the Lions Mouth)


mp3: Echo & The Bunnymen – All That Jazz (from Crocodiles)


Horrors Setlist

Here are the rest of the North American tour dates:
10 October – Turf Club, St. Paul
11 October – Double Door, Chicago
12 October – Magic Stick, Detroit
14 October – Lee’s Palace, Toronto
15 October – Petit Campus, Montreal
16 October – Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
18 October – Teatro Estudio Cavaret, Guadalajara
19 October – Jose Cuervo Salon, Mexico City

The Pains of Being Indiepop

September 17, 2009 at 10:18 pm | In Gigs, Neumo's, Seattle | Leave a Comment
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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart & Depreciation Guild at Neumo’s, Seattle | 15 September 2009
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Photo from Joshc’s flickr stream

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are currently riding a relative wave of popularity.  I say relative for a few reasons. With the exception of maybe the Vivian Girls they are by far the most popular band today that plays Sarah, C-86, and (early) Creation influenced indiepop, a genre of music that has always had cult following, but never much more than that.  The only band that I can think of that was as popular doing the same thing was Velocity Girl in the early 90’s (Archie Moore of Velocity Girl mixed the POBPAH album).  Their gig at Neumo’s last night was well attended, but by no means sold out, but just the idea of The Pains getting booked at larger venues, playing summer festivals and getting people genuinely excited about music is one that redeems my faith in pop culture. Usually fans of indiepop are relegated to the dive bars, basements and ad hoc house venues to see their favorite bands play.

The opportunity to see a band like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart headline a big-time venue is one that doesn’t happen very often, so I should enjoy it right? Well, that’s what I did, and so did everyone else at Neumo’s last night.  The kids (and old folks) danced and pogo’d to the likes of Come Saturday, Young Adult Friction, Everything With You and This Love Is Fucking Right.  Front guy Kip Berman seems like kind of a sweet, sly guy.  He looks like someone you’d want your teenage daughter to bring home, but when you started reading his lyrics you begin to have second thoughts.  He greeted everyone with a shy How’s It Goin’ and then joked about stealing Mudhoney’s effects pedal, either superfuzz or bigmuff.  The band stopped mid-set when Kip said he couldn’t believe that they had forgotten to play their song Kurt Cobain’s Cardigan.  They remedied that immediately and then went straight into their self-titled theme song.  In my perfect world every band would a self-titled theme song, and the Pains’ theme song easily puts them in my perfect world with its anthem like refrain “we will never die, no no we will never die”. We all went crazy in our own sedated, elated and introverted indiepop ways.  It was a time.

mp3: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Higher Than The Stars


mp3: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Curt Cobain’s Cardigan


mp3: The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart


buy: some The Pains of Being Pure at Heart records

Opening the night was the Depreciation Guild (Cymbals Eat Guitars who were also on the bill were hit with a bad case of food poisoning, a burrito apparently, and had to cancel).  Depreciation Guild are two fifths of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.  Pains’ drummer Kurt Feldman plays guitar and sings while Pains’ second guitarist Christoph Hochheim plays guitar and his twin brother  Anton Hochheim drums.  The Depreciation Guild are shoegazers true and blue, and on record their songs are blissed out fuzz fests with Feldman possessing a voice that reminds me a little of the late Keith Girdler of Blueboy.  Their set was good, but the songs came off sounding like they were the same song again and again.  I think this may be their first time playing live extensively, so I’ll chalk it up to growing pains because their 7 inch single that’s currently available from Kanine records is pretty nice.

mp3: Depreciation Guild – Dream About Me (7″ on Kanine, but sold out.  You can pre-order their album In Her Gentle Jaws though)

Definitely Not Dead: Obits at Neumo’s

May 18, 2009 at 10:43 pm | In Gigs, Neumo's, Seattle | Leave a Comment
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Obits | Lights | Unnatural Helpers at Neumo’s | 16 May 2009

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Neumo’s felt like a greenhouse Saturday night, partly from the 75 degree day we had and partly from the blistering sets from all three bands which kept the temperature quite tropical throughout the night. I arrived mid-way through Unnatural Helpers‘ sweaty opening set. The band just singed to Sub Pop spin-off label Hardly Art but have released an album and single on Seattle label Dirty Knobby. The band do post punk/hard core that reminds me of bands like Holy Rollers and Candy Machine from back in the 90’s DC/Baltimore scene. Guitarists Leo Gebhardt and Brian Standeford do time in Idle Times and bassist Kimberly Morrison has another gig in the Dutchess and the Duke, leaving drummer/singer Dean Whitmore the defacto head helper.

The Lights were very good, so good, I wondered as they steamed through Victims of the Pleasure of the Sense of Hearing from their first album if the Obits could match the intensity of  these Seattle angular noise-nicks. The Lights played mostly all new songs, with a few old favorites thrown in to string us along.  The old songs weren’t really necessary to keep me interested, but everyone, myself included certainly appreciated hearing the afore mentioned Victims, probably their most straightforward pop song.   I shouldn’t have really doubted the Obits’ ability to rock.  Their pedigree for rocking is unmistakable considering Rick Froberg’s former face blistering bands Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes.  I mentioned how it was hot, well at least hot for Seattle. During the Lights’ set there was a woman at the front with a hand fan that she waved the entire set. The Lights played faster, she danced and waved the fan faster. I don’t think it was doing much good, and she was probably making herself hotter as fast as she was waving it. I lost track of her during the Obits set, but I’m guessing she may have passed out sometime during their ripping, heat inducing set. The Obits started off a bit wobbly with the first two songs not really hitting on all cylinders, but they owned the room by third song. Oddly it was the only one in which former Edsel front-man Sohrab Habibion sings lead. Something seemed to click with the band at this point, whether it as them just taking a couple songs to get warmed up, or if it was the first song in which Froberg and Habibion combine not only guitar but voices as well for the chorus.  From then on the band were on it with lightening hot Pine On, the tense eeriness of Light Sweet Crude, and the just plane fun Back and Forth.   Now that the album has been out for a few months I had a better familiarity with the songs that I was missing last summer at SP20 and earlier this year down in the ID.   My familiarity also made the way Froberg’s and Habibion’s intertwined guitar riffs play off each other become much more apparent. Their styles are different, Froeberg delivers his surf-punk licks juxtaposed with Habibion’s post-punk, but they combine to create a tense wallop. The other half of the band are no slouches either, bassist Greg Simpson drummer Scott Gursky laid down some pretty amazing riffs as well, the best being the intro to Two-headed Coin which starts with Simpson’s bouncing bass line over Gursky’s shaker’s and drums. The way these guys play together you can tell that they’re totally digging and exploring their sound, It seems like a simple straightforward formula, but the Obits add an experienced complexity to it that is easy to miss because they make it look so easy.  It’s almost as if they rock without even trying.

mp3: Obits – Military Madness (Graham Nash cover found on their Record Store day 7″)

Here are the rest of the Obits’ west coast dates with the Lights:

May 19 – Blue Lamp, Sacramento CA w/ The Lights
May 20 – Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco CA w/ The Lights
May 21 – Cellar Door (CA), Visalia CA w/ The Lights
May 22 – Spaceland, Los Angeles CA w/ The Lights
May 23 – Casbah, San Diego CA w/ The Lights

The Vaselines: All This Suff and More

May 13, 2009 at 11:37 pm | In Gigs, Music, Neumo's, Seattle | 2 Comments
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Vaselines at Neumo’s, Seattle | 12 May 2009

Son of a Gun! The Vaselines.

Seeing the Vaselines last night was like sex on the second date. The first date was last summer at Sub Pop 20 festival where there was heavy petting and even some dry humping. Their set at Marymoor Park last July was just about perfect with Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee’s sexually tinged funny stage banter and even better harmonies, they were easily the highlight of that perfect summer afternoon. After a first date that goes so well, you always kind of prepare yourself for a letdown on date number two. You start to see the imperfections, maybe a few wrinkles or a bald spot.  The Vaselines may have their imperfections, but I’m still blinded by lust to really notice any of them.  Francis joked saying that you may think you’re at the wrong gig if you’re looking for the people on the poster, referring to the much younger looking Vaselines that adorned the advertising for the show.  They also tried to explain their long absence with wild stories of Eugene becoming a Hare Krishna, explaining his lack of hair, and Frances’s time in prison for allegedly getting facials from underage boys.

With the Vaselines,it’s all about sex and god, and they did not disappoint in either department.  Eugene introduced Monster Pussy with a few double entendres, about Frances’s cat and then went on to call Jesus a cunt for not giving him a bike for Christmas. Teenage Jesus Superstar was a role playing song with Eugene playing the part of the teenage kid reading comic books in his room and masturbating.  Francis played the roll of his mother.  The Vaselines are kind of like the dirty version of Billy Bragg or Robyn Hitchcock, where the between song banter is sometimes as good as the songs.

They were backed again by Belle & Sebastian members Stevie Jackson on guitar and Bobby Kildea on bass, and the songs had a smoother polish to them than the recorded versions that I’m so familiar with from Way of the Vaselines.  The better sounding Vaselines is probably due to the band being better musicians than they were 20 years ago.  Even though they sounded less ragged, they still have the attitude and humor that made them so special in the first place.  There is no way that anyone at this gig went home disappointed from this gig, besides sounding great, they played every single one of their songs and even graced us with two brand new ones.    Both new ones employ generous amounts of harmony, I think I liked the first one which they’re calling Picked a Cherry best.  The other new one is so new it doesn’t even have a name yet, referred to on the set list as New New Song.  The classics sounded, well classic.  They started the set with Son of  a Gun, their fist single which appeared on Stephen Pastel’s 53rd & 3rd label back in 1987, and then Monster Pussy and The Day I was a Horse, which got a funny intro from Eugene telling about how it was written about the experience of taking acid and thinking you’re a horse.   Frances had the boys swooning when she mentioned that she was looking for a second husband so that she could live in America.  Never mind the impossibility of it all, there were takers everywhere to join here harem.  With three songs from their discography that they had yet to play, wouldn’t you know it, they came back for a three song encore, of Rory Rides Me Raw, their danc-y Divine cover You Think You’re a Man and then Dum Dum.  Before Dum Dum, Eugene said that this would be their last song because they didn’t have any more to play.  Just like last summer, the Vaselines were just about perfect playing their timeless songs like it was 1989 and Dum Dum just came out, only this time a lot more people were paying attention.

Video I shot of the as yet to be titled New New Song:

The Stranger, Seattle Weekly , Seattle Subsonic and Seattle Metblog were also there.  Here’s the set list in case you’re the type that’s interested in the exact order of how everything went down. (No I’m not the one who pinched the setlist before the encore, it was the guy in front of me)
vaselines setlist

A.C. Newman, Dent May and Scott Bakula

February 22, 2009 at 11:10 pm | In Gigs, Music, Neumo's, Seattle, mp3 | Leave a Comment
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A C Newman + Dent May at Neumo’s, Seattle | 21 February 2008
AC Newman's Quantum Leap

One might wonder why Carl Newman needs to make solo records, when he’s pretty much the boss of his band the New Pornographers.  Actually I’m on of those wonderers, especially with his second solo record Get Guilty.  It has the Neko Case harmonies and of course Newman’s songs and voice and it’s not a whole lot different from a New Pornographers records except there are no Dan Bejar or Neko Case songs.  The gig was billed as A.C. Newman, but Newman’s band had as many people in his band as if he was traveling with New Pornographers, with violinist and bassist providing harmonies.  His second solo record Get Guilty has a more mellow Zombies feel to it where his first one The Slow Wonder had a more early Elvis Costello new wave feel to it.  Last night he gave both albums equal attention, interspersing songs from the Slow Wonder to pep up the set with the slower more harmony centric songs from Get Guilty.

Though he currently resides in Brooklyn, Newman is from just up the road in Vancouver, BC.   He also has more than just a geographical connection to Seattle, his former band Zumpano put out two very good records on Sub Pop back in the 90’s. So it’s very likely he’s spent a fair amount of time in Seattle, and he charmed the Neumo’s crowd reminiscing back to when the place was simply called Mo’s.  He also had a funny story about the song Come Crash, telling how it is coincidentally about a girl with the same name as his wife, and then divulging how his mother-in-law is a huge Scott Bakula fan.  This got a big laugh, which makes me wonder if there is some connection between A.C. Newman fans and Quantum Leap. It wasn’t a quantum leap from New Pornographers, but Newman and his band sounded tight, lighting up the songs from the new record making them really crack.   Though the Get Guilty songs sounded great, it was the Slow Wonder ones that were the highlights of the night for me, putting me in the camp of still being a bigger fan of his first solo record.

Set List: There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve | Miracle Drug | Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer | Prophets | Secretarial |The Heartbreak Rides | The Cloud Prayer | The Palace at 4 am | All of My Days and All of My Days Off |Young Atlantis | Drink to Me, Babe, Then | The Collected Works | Come Crash | The Changeling (Get Guilty) | Submarines of Stockholm | On the Table | -encore- The Town Halo

mp3: A.C. Newman – Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer (buy Get Guilty)


Dent May with his new magnificent ukulele

Dent May was sporting a brand new magnificent ukulele last night at Neumo’s.  He told us he had just purchased here in the emerald city and it required much tuning.  Dent tunes his ukulele without the aid of electronic tuners, he prefers his own voice and the age old ukulele tuning tune of My Dog Has Flees.  May and his band played a solid, fun-filled set.  After getting a look at Dent and his big oval spectacles, one might think what he’s doing is sort of tongue and cheek, but Dent and his band played a very un-ironic set.  Dent band consisted of guitar, bass and drums, but I found myself missing the pedal steel, tin pan alley horns in places, but his guitarist and bassist provided the wonderful yesteryear harmonies which are the most essential to his sound.  And of course Dent didn’t put down his uke once.  Like on his record, May is a crooner with a voice that transports his songs to another time.  He made Prince’s When You Were Mine sound as if he had written it, and his own songs like Howard, College Town Boy and You Can’t Start a Dance Party had the place dancing.  It was a great set, only it was missing my favorite Dent song, God Loves You, Michael Chang.  It was on the set list, but for one reason or another he decided to skip it.  Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele will be back in a few months to play Sasquatch, maybe he’ll play Michael Change there?

Set List: Oh Paris! | Howard | 26 Miles (Santa Catalina) | College Town Boy | Eastover Wivez | You Can’t Force a Dance Party | I’m an Alcoholic | When You Were Mine | Love Song 2009 | Meet Me In the Garden

mp3: Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele – God Loves You, Michael Chang (buy his record)

Here are the remaining AC Newman and Dent May dates:
2/24 Sacramento, CA Harlow’s
2/25 San Diego, CA Casbah
2/26 Los Angeles, CA Troubadour
2/27 Santa Barbara, CA SOho Restaurant and Music Club
2/28 San Francisco, CA The Independent (Noise Pop)
3/01 Eugene, OR John Henry’s
3/10 Ithaca, NY Castaways
3/11 Toronto, ONT Lee’s Palace
3/12 Montreal, QC Il Motore
3/13 Providence, RI Club Hell
3/14 Boston, MA Paradise
3/15 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom

Nothing’s Shocking

November 24, 2008 at 9:27 pm | In Gigs, Music, Neumo's, Noise Rock, Seattle, Shoegaze, mp3 | Leave a Comment
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Deerhunter and Times New Viking at Neumo’s, Seattle | 21 November 2008

deerhunter...rocking back into your heart

It’s good to see that some shoegaze is still popular. Neumo’s was sold out Friday night for Deerhunter, it just goes to show if you have a flamboyant front man, one that is in your face gay, accidentally leaks his own albums, and regularly post songs and other stuff on his own blog, everyone is more apt to sit up and pay attention.   And pay attention is what everyone did at Neumo’s this night.  The band came on stage to the sounds of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, no words uttered an no irony invoked even though one could have mistaken this for the Hold Steady gig down the road at the Showbox the same night.  With their third album Microcastle just released last month, but leaked all the way back in May of this year, the band seem to be gaining popularity with each release.  Microcastle is more straightforward and hook laden than it’s predecessors offering up pop jems like Never Stops, Agoraphobia, and Little Kids, while retaining it’s blissful haze of guitar effects and general feel of drone and haze that can easily hypnotize you into some kind of ethereal netherworld.

Cox and his band offered few words, actually none, but let their music do the talking.  Starting with their epic Cryptograms, the band sounded great, with three guitars going at once, it was pretty much a shoegazer dream show.  There were the lengthy epics like the afore mentioned Cryptograms the short sharp pop of Never Stops and lullabies like the Julie Cruise like Microcastle.  After every song I was expecting Cox to begin one of his funny stories or just shock us with something, but he uttered nothing.  He smiled graciously and the band continued to build their hazy, beautifully spell upon the crowd.  Bassist Josh Fauver, who plays with a permanent grin and looks like he’s having a better time than anyone else once uttered hello Seattle, but that was it.  The band continued their magic even including Vox Celest and Calvary Scars from the Microcastle bonus disc.

When I saw the Bradford Cox offshoot Atlas Sound back in March, he seemed to relish the between song banter, often to hilarious effect, but last night it was all business.  Or at least that’s what I thought.  As the band came back out for their encore Cox finally grabbed the mic to say a few words.  And like the first time I found out that Liz Frasier talks like sailor, Cox juxtaposed Deerhunter’s dreamlike music with his blunt funny words.  Someone yelled out a high school in Georgia, and Cox responded that he went to a rival school and that his school’s football team kicked their ass a few times.  Then he deadpans that he didn’t have much interest in football back then, he was more interested in sucking dicks and doing LSD.  No spells were broken though, how could they be when they played Agoraphobia, Heatherwood and Twilight at Carbon Lake for the encore?

mp3: Deerhunter – Never Stops (from Microcastle)


Columbus, Ohio noisnicks, Times New Viking who graced this same stage as headliners back in June, albeit to a much smaller crowd are opening for Deerhunter  on the current tour.  The beginning of their set was complicated by what seemed like their attempt to build a brick house on stage.  A number of bricks were ported up to the stage in unsuccessful attempts to secure Adam Elliot’s drums.  Once they got enough bricks up there, the band seemed to settle into their noisy whiteout rock.  Call and Respond, anew song off their latest single on Matador especially stood out with an almost Stereolab-like drone, but much noisier.

mp3: Times New Viking – Call and Respond (from the Stay Awake single)


More photos from the evening including Deerhunter’s setlist can be found over at my flickr.

Punk’s Not Dead

October 3, 2008 at 11:27 pm | In Gigs, Live Music, Music, Neumo's, Seattle, mp3 | 3 Comments
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Silver Jews at Neumo’s, Seattle | 2 October 2008

A few things struck me while I was watching the Silver Jews last night at Neumo’s:

1. I would never be considered a real fan by the diehards that surrounded me.  I wouldn’t say that I was dragged to the show.  I willingly volunteered when my friend Mike said he was going.   I remember liking Starlight Walker back in my days as music director at WCDB in Albany, NY, but I must admit that Dave Berman’s band initially got my interest because of his guitarist, Steve Malkmus.  Over the years I’ve been an on again, off again with them, but after last night’s show I think it’s safe to say I’m now a bona fide fan.

2. Dave Berman, who is really the main Jew kind of stalks the stage like Mark E Smith of the Fall.  Throughout the night I kept being reminded of MES. For one thing, Berman’s delivery is kind of a talk-sing style, though Berman is much easier to understand than Smith.  He’s also what you might call an eccentric guy, it’s nothing you can really put your finger on, but carrying around a 9v battery throughout the night, muttering about losing his set list which he had written on a tiny note card and his map and easil all made for a stage presence you don’t see every day.  Berman’s wife is also a member of the band like Smith who’s wife is also in the Fall.

3. Berman is a tall, lanky fellow and many times he seemed to get lost in the moment of the performance, knocking over his easil, getting tangled in his mic chord, and losing his set list.  He was kind of like the absent minded professor, but a professor for sure.  His dark western style suit and big dark glasses lent to his eccentric flair, and his birch stick that he used to point out on his hand drawn map, flailed around nearly poking band members.  I flinched a couple times as the long stick wished through the air.

4.  The map seemed to be very important to Berman, when the easil it was on got smashed, he took the time to break each of the easil legs to the same length so that we could all still see the map.  A few times he looked at the set list and announced, ‘ahh a map song!’ Then he’d grab his stick and point to a city or state he’d drawn on it.  He would even continue the geography lesson mid song, often times routing us between cities and states and looking up as if to make sure we were all getting it.  Safe to say, a lot the crowd had studied hard for this class in the Silver Jews and knew all the answers.  Constant requests and professions of love were coming out of the audience all night.

5. The two guitarists, alternating leads provided a beefier sound to the Silver Jews.  Silver Jews records have always been excercises in lo-fi with the emphasis on Berman’s lyrics.  Not that the guitars were ever neglected on the records, but last night they just took a front seat comfortably beside Berman.  I thought this was great, opening up the sound and taking the focus off of the Berman at times.  My friend Mike thought that the guitars were a bit loud making Berman’s singing hard to hear at times. A valid complaint, since Berman’s lyrics are pretty damn amazing minus music of any kind. (I heard everything fine, I think you’re going deaf Mike)

6. Bassist Cassie Berman, who as I mentioned is married to Dave Berman, also sings. Mostly singing small parts or backing vocals.  On Tennessee from the Bright Flight Album, she takes a more prominent roll and I thought it was one the highlights of the night.  She has a sweet, dulcete voice  that makes a great foil to Berman’s rustic twang. 

7. It has been said that the latest Jews album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is not as good as previous releases.  It may not be as consistent, but it contains some of the best Silver Jews songs to date and that was made more evident hearing them played live.  Songs like What is Not But Could Be If, Strange Victory Strange Defeat and my favorite of the night, San Francisco, BC were as good as anything else in the set. 

8. Berman seems to keep track of how many shows the Silver Jews have played.  Mid set, he announced that this was in fact only their 95th show.  I guess it must be pretty easy to keep track since he’s notoriously shyed away from touring.  In fact this is only the second time he’s brought the band on the road in their nearly 20 years of existence.

9. There are more photos from the show including the Silver Jews map and the set list over at my Flickr page.

mp3: Silver Jews – San Francisco, B.C. (buy Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea)


mp3: Silver Jews – Tennesee (buy Bright Flight)

Seattle, Los Angeles, Whatever…

September 25, 2008 at 10:56 pm | In Gigs, Live Music, Music, Neumo's, Seattle, mp3 | 4 Comments
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The Wedding Present at Neumo’s, Seattle | 24 September 2008


Some bands have what you might call rabid followings. People that devote a lot of their lives to a band, they collect everything that is released, make matching band t-shirts and follow the band around when they tour. The Wedding Present is certainly one of those bands. Last night there were quite a few super-fans there with Scopitones West Coast Tour shirts who were following the band on their west coast leg of their US tour. Gedge seemed to be on a first name basis with more than a few of them, carrying on conversations with them between songs.

This was sort of a homecoming for David Gedge who lived in Seattle for a year while he wrote songs for Take Fountain. He’s since moved on to Los Angeles where he wrote songs for the new album El Rey. Mid set Gedge asked if anyone had any questions. I wanted to ask him what city he was moving to for the next album, but failed to blurt it out. I predict either Miami or Chicago, time will tell.

The set was a blast with the Weddos starting it off with the jangling rush of Kennedy and then immediately into It’s for You. The songs came in rapid fire succession with one song ending, and the next coming without even a breath. They played about half of their new album El Rey and those songs sounded stronger in their live context with them getting that little extra rapid Wedding Pesentesque jangle treatment. Gedge and company did not neglect their extensive back catalog, going back as far as You Should Always Keep in Touch With Your Friends. After playing it, Gedge remarked that anyone remembering that song was too old to be there. If that were the case, I think most of us should have left. The old songs were what I was there for and I was not disappointed with the band pulling from George Best, Bizarro, and Seamonsters and both the Hit Parades.  This Wedding Present gig was pretty much everything a fan, or super-fan, could have asked for with a lot of the old mixed in the with the new.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Spider-Man on Hollywood (buy a copy of El Rey)


Set List: Kennedy (Bizarro) |It’s For You (TakeFountain) | Gone (Bizarro) | Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Drunk (ElRey) | You Should Always Keep in Touch With Your Friends (Tommy) | Lovenest (Seamonsters) | Blue Eyes (HP 1) | Palisades (El Rey) | Snake Eyes (Saturnalia) | Sports Car (Mini) |Spiderman on Hollywood (ElRey) | Crawl (Seamonsters) | You Turn Me On (Cinerama) | Granadaland (Bizarro) | My Favourite Dress (GB) | Interstate 5 (Take Fountain) | Model, Actress, Whatever (El Rey) | The Thing I Like Best About Him is His Girlfriend (El Rey) | Dalliance (Seamonsters) | Dare (Seamonsters) | Flying Saucer (HP 2) | Boo Boo (ElRey)

The Wombats’ Tickle

August 28, 2008 at 10:05 pm | In Gigs, Grebo, Live Music, Music, Neumo's, Seattle, mp3 | 1 Comment
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Seattle radio station the End has this thing where they put on free shows under the moniker Are You On the List? Apparently you need to get on the the list to get in the show. Not knowing any of this I just showed up at Neumo’s thinking it was just a free show. List? What List? Lucky for me the list wasn’t full so the End graciously let me into the show. In the, erm, end it wasn’t entirely free, because I had to endure a set by San Francisco band Immigrant which seem to pull off the not so envious trifecta of bad Journey, commercial 90’s alternative and faux emo.

I wasn’t sure the Wombats would be able to pull me out the malaise that Immigrant put me in, but all those thoughts were allayed when the Wombats came on and gathered around a single microphone and did there acapella song Tales of Boys, Girls and Marsupials. Singer Mathew Murphy kind of looks like a jolly Robert Smith of the Cure, wisecracking at every opportunity between songs. He and drummer Dan Haggis make a great Laurel and Hardy with their between song banter. Banter aside, the Wombats and their songs are nothing short of entertaining, with their dance, punk songs enticing the all ages crowd to mosh, pogo and crowd surf for nearly the entire set.

The Wombats sound to me like they could have been part of the UK Grebo scene from the early 90’s that included bands like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and the Wonder Stuff, but they also have a lot in common with current UK bands like Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs. No matter your point of reference, the Wombats music is packed tight with pop hooks and lots of dour adrenaline. The lyrics can be a bit goofy at times, as evidenced in their novelty hit Let’s Dance to Joy Division, but the kids didn’t seem to mind, going even crazier for it. A drawback of such immediate music for me tends to be that it gets played out pretty fast in my house. I burned out on the Wombats months ago, I hadn’t listened to them for about as long. Having gone on Wombats hiatus made the show pretty fun, like seeing a band you used to listen to years ago. So songs like Kill the Director, Moving to New York and Lost In the Post all sounded fresh again. To paraphrase one of their songs, the Wombats’ tickle can easily become a scratch from too much exposure, but last night the scratch was gone, and most certainly never there for everyone at Neumo’s last night.

mp3: The Wombats – Derail and Crash (from Boys, Girls and Marsupials)

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