Musicalia: World's Best Band at World's Shittiest Venue?

Perhaps a bit of hyperbole was employed in the title of this entry, but The National might just be the best band out there right now.

With seemingly every occasion to see The National occurring during SXSW, Fun Fun Fun, or ACL Festival, this has made it hard for Austinites to see them outside of the undesirable festival setting. In fact, since the last time I had tickets to see The National and foolishly elected to squeeze an Architecture in Helsinki show in rather than sticking around after Clap Your Hands Say Yeah opened, The National have not rolled through Austin outside of a festival weekend. During only one of those stops did they play a show in which one could actually buy tickets and that was during ACL weekend of 2008. Tickets for that Emo's show with Blonde Redhead and School of Seven Bells were extremely hard to come by, makiing this the first time they rolled through town without a festival bringing them here since 2005.

Unfortunately, this stop through town brought them to Austin Music Hall. While there may be worse venues in the world, I've not been to one. I saw Wilco at the Cedar Park Center. I saw Radiohead at Alpine Valley Outdoor Amphitheater. I saw Nick Cave at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. These were absolutely worthless venues to be sure, but Austin Music Hall puts them to shame. Cursed with the acoustics so bad that an airplane hangar would be a marked improvement and a redesign that--having been clearly motivated by little other than greed--renders a full two-thirds of the balcony obstructed-view seating, Austin Music Hall is a wretched shithole that only a band of The National's ilk could succeed in drawing me through those fucking doors.

It appears to me that a visual aid may be helpful to demonstrate what I mean by obstructed view, so I took a photo. For those who don't know me, I stand 6'3". The photo I have uploaded is taken from the vantage point of someone who would have been taller than me by roughly half a foot (or a sixth of a meter, for you metric sons of bitches).

I am well aware that this is a shitty photo. It is really just a reference point.

From this vantage point, that is roughly 35% of the stage that is visible. If you are my height. TSLF was unable to see a fucking thing. For the entire show. It doesn't matter if you are closer to the front on the right or left side of the General Admission section of the balcony. It doesn't matter if you move farther towards the stage. The grade of the bleachers/risers is simply not steep enough for anyone to see.

Now, you may be wondering from where exactly did that greed line three paragraphs ago come, and I can answer that for you. Rather than have those bleacher seats extend to reasonable edge of the overhanging balcony they begin at least 15' back from the edge because there is a VIP section of seating that actually extends the balcony without maintaining a grade of stage visibility. For those keeping track at home, a conservative estimate would be roughly 500 people in the house who can see virtually none of the concert that they paid to see because an extension to a balcony gives them VIP seating at $20 more a ticket. If you were on the stage-left side of the venue, you saw the touring trumpeter, the touring trombonist, half of the Dessner Brothers (Bryce, I think), and half of Matt Derninger. That leaves half of Matt, an entire Dessner twin, and both Devendorf Brothers out of view.

Fuck you very much Austin Music Hall.

You are the worst venue in this town. By. Far.

Just sink into the ground and go back to your home in Hell. You can even get the entrance/exit right (you cannot walk straight up to the main entrance, you have to walk away from the nearest corner only to double back to that very corner). Were you designed by the same assholes who designed Austin's broke-ass highway system?

Rant over.

Sorry.

As for the music, once getting beyond the terrible acoustics in that godforsaken shithole, it had a lot to offer. I'll refrain from talking about Local Natives for the most part. I'm sure they're great guys, and I've been negative  for five paragraphs now, which is surely tiresome for all of y'all who are still reading. I know it's reductive, but they share many likenesses with Fleet Foxes, a band whose allure wore off for me. I can see why people like Fleet Foxes. I can see why people would like Local Natives, as well. For the most part, Local Natives were simply a little too psych folk for my liking.

The one exception to that, however, was their set closer "Sun Hands," which struck me as an ideal musical fit for Sons of Anarchy if 85% of the music on Sons of Anarchy didn't suck. In the live setting, it succeeded in channeling a propulsive Western feel that was genuinely interesting, especially at it built to a huge climax. Here's a video from SXSW of them performing it live to give you a sense of what I'm talking about. Once they hit the three-minute mark everything explodes, and it's transcendent. It's just that "Sun Hands" was the only song that grabbed me.

Luckily, The National were great. With only one exception, they sounded great. The one exception was not even remotely their fault, but during "Runaway," the show opener, there was a sound issue where the mic on the floor tom was mixed too loud and when combined with the higher bass line notes in the chorus were blaring over the top of everything else. It was odd and perhaps isolated to the area we were standing in, but it seems like whoever the sound engineer was at least got the issue fixed by the time the third song kicked off.

Aside from "Runaway" having that weird sound issue, everything sounded great. The somewhat reasonable concern that some of the slightly more low-key songs off of High Violet was completely unfounded. "Terrible Love" settled in shockingly well into the encore. "Bloodbuzz, Ohio," which I expected to play well live, far exceeded expectations and was much bigger than I had anticipated. "Anyone's Ghost" was sped up ever so slightly but played better for it. The percussion drove "Conversation 16"* much more than I could have thought likely.

*Does anyone else feel like the 

It's a Hollywood summer
You never believe the shitty thoughts I think
Meet our friends out for dinner
When I said what I said I didn't mean anything
We belong in a movie
Try to hold it together 'til our friends are gone 

section of the song evokes that scene in I'm Not There with Heath Ledger out to dinner with Charlotte Gainsbourg and their friends Grace and Martin where he opines that "chicks can't be poets," or is that just me?

As for the material off of Boxer, Alligator, etc., it was rock solid. "Apartment Story" and "Mistaken for Strangers" both played very much like the singles that they were and could have drawn in even the casual listener. "Squalor Victoria" and "Fake Empire" were every last bit of what I had hoped they would be. "Mr. November" was the huge rocker I'd heard it was, and it sure as hell appeared as though Matt Derninger went into the crowd during that one (in the encore), but no one upstairs could see this.

The most transcendent moment of the night definitely lied in the encore closer: "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks." Perhaps having taken a cue from their pals, Bon Iver and Megafaun, Matt, the two sets of brothers, and their two man brass section stepped out to the front of the stage sans amplification and belted out the closing track from High Violet. Every time I've seen a band do this it has fucking killed, and this was no exception. They walk up to the line marked 'earnest,' line their toes up just before the line, and it worked like a charm.

Between that and the legitimately funny between song banter, it was hard not to love the show. That is saying a lot because that venue is fucking godawful. The National were outstanding and solidified my growing belief that they may just be the best rock band out there. If ever there were someone capable of taking that title without squandering their talent and potential on deviating from their artistic ambitions in favor of chasing commercial success, it is The National. They are one of the few bands recording today whose albums get better with each release, and unlike much of what I hear these days, their albums don't release their hold on the listener. Ever.

Hopefully that praise made up for the rather lengthy rant I went off on at the beginning of this post. I'll leave you with the two following things: An Open Letter to Touring Acts Considering Venues In Austin, and an entire embedded concert.

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Dear bands rolling through Austin, 


Please do not book your shows at Austin Music Hall. If you are big enough to play that fucking abomination of a venue, hold out for the Long Center, the Moody Theater, or the Paramount. 


Sincerely,
The Citizens of Austin

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If you didn't get to see the show last night, I did find a video of a full concert from Oakland in 2010. It was part of a graduate research project and was shot by a fella who cryptically goes by J. Flynn. More information on the recording can be found here. I know it wasn't easy to get tickets, since it sold out quickly, so I guess this is the next best thing. And unlike if you'd been to the show and been in the balcony, you can actually see this concert.

Guten tag.

Musicalia: Bill Callahan Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

Over the past three years or so, there has not been an album that I have listened to as much as A River Ain't Too Much To Love despite the fact that Bill Callahan has put out a record since last recording under the moniker of Smog. While Woke on a Whaleheart was not bad by any means, there was something about A River Ain't Too Much To Love that resonated with me on a basic level that the first proper Bill Callahan LP failed to do.

Well, River, I think you've been unseated. On his newest record, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, Bill Callahan has concocted a perfect blend of the darker themes of A River Ain't Too Much To Love and the lusher arrangements and richer production of Woke on a Whaleheart. This merging has meant that I have been virtually unable to listen to anything else when reaching for an album to throw on.

From the opener "Jim Cain"--a shortening of James M. Cain (whose work Double Indemnity I recently blogged about), who had always bristled at the label of a hard-boiled crime novelist and held a passion for being a singer that never worked out--to the closer "Faith/Void"--in which he suggests that "it's time to put God away"--Callahan takes us on a rambling ride through his world, one filled with horses, birds, and wind. Guiding the listener by hand is his voice, the irregular cadence of which allows it to act as an instrument different than most. Fleshing out the entire album are tasteful, unimposing strings arranged by Brian Beattie, and in songs like "All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beasts" and "Eid Ma Clack Shaw" (I've checked and have yet to find out what the chorus means) the rhythm section adds a dimension of propulsion not entirely common in Callahan's work.

What I'm really saying, though, is that I love this new album. When I reach for a Smog/Bill Callahan release, this will be the first one I grab, and that's saying a lot.

Musicalia: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Austin, TX

Seeing The Boss is a slightly different experience than seeing Leonard Cohen to be sure.

Jackie and I arrived at the doors about fifteen minutes before they were done giving out lottery numbers for the floor at the Frank Erwin Center. When the winning number was drawn, we ended up 250 people back in the queue. Upon finally being let in, we found ourselves standing about five people removed from the center of the stage, and unlike what people had told us about previous shows they'd attended at the Erwin Center there were no chairs set out on the floor.

Ho. Ly. Shit.

How this happened, I'll never be sure. But it did, and neither of us will ever complain about our vantage point for the show.

Seeing Springsteen that close, I can safely say that if ever a man were to claim the title of The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz now that James Brown is gone, it's Bruce. For two hours and forty-five minutes of rock bliss, Bruce Springsteen belted out every song with so much vigor that it's hard to imagine him not having had a stroke on stage twenty-five years ago.

Earlier in the day, I had thrown in Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River on a lark, which was a good thing because the set was marked with "Badlands", "The Promised Land", "Prove It All Night", "Sherry Darling", "Out In The Street" and "I'm A Rocker", and they are weirdly the two albums I am least familiar with (I don't have them in a portable format, just LP).

They blasted out "She's The One", "Born To Run", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Jungleland", during which I nearly shat myself out of amazement. He gave me chills with his rendition of "The Wrestler". They killed with a rocked-out rearrangement of "Youngstown" and a rollicking "Johnny 99". I'm a perfect two-for-two on seeing "Because The Night", as well, which is fine by me because it plays really well. "The Rising" roused my spirits, and completed the feel of a recession-tinged show.

Even "Outlaw Pete" played all right, despite my general dislike of the song.

Moreover, he took requests three times, with "Sherry Darling" and "I'm A Rocker" having been taken early on ("Rocker" didn't get in until the encore, though), and "Glory Days" serving as an addendum to the encore after they were all ready to leave the stage. One of the best parts was that they clearly did not have a strong grasp on "Sherry Darling" and "I'm A Rocker", but they played them anyway, adding a good dose of unpredictability, especially when Bruce acknowledged as they started into "Rocker" that he didn't remember how it started. With the three requests, it meant we ended up getting two more songs than those jackoffs in Arizona.

Now, before the show, I asked Jackie what song she wanted to hear most, and she said "I'm On Fire" to which I (kind of dickishly) told her not to get her hopes up. Well, as soon as we got back home, I got a call from Mark (who was also at the show but was seated with Chad) to tell me that he looked at the hand-written setlist and "Sherry Darling" took the place of "I'm On Fire". Who's the jackass now, Jack?

Regardless, the show was outstanding, probably even better than the Dallas show Chad, Mark, and I went to last year. It sure as hell didn't hurt that I was often standing a mere 10-to-15 feet away from The Boss as the veins popped out of his head and neck.

Musicalia: Leonard Cohen - Austin, TX (2nd Show)

I will gladly admit that immediately after having seen a much anticipated musical act in concert that I perhaps heave praise in their direction that can go well past effusive. Having proffered that qualification, Leonard Cohen was amazing Thursday night.

As many know, Leonard Cohen is not one for touring. If not for his former business manager basically robbing him, he probably wouldn't have to begin with. A lesser man would surely bear a noticeable resentment for having been thrust back into touring as a victim of circumstance, but Leonard Cohen is clearly greater than that.

What he gave the audience at the Long Center was a three-plus hour masterpiece. There was not a single moment in the show where you felt like you were watching anything less than a living legend who seemed to show no ill effects of being 74 years old. He was nimble on stage, dancing on-and-off stage during his shockingly energetic encore, and worked the audience like a consummate showman.

They went on pretty promptly at around 8:00 pm, broke for a twenty minute intermission at 9:20, and then played until 11:30. Three hours covers a lot of material to be sure, and barring a song or two that I really wanted to hear off of New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Cohen & Co. played just about any song I could have asked for. The setlist was pretty much without a flaw, and each song's rendering was marked with a command that was nothing short of arresting. As the show became more and more epic, the amazement at their ceaseless showmanship became more and more overwhelming, each song becoming marked with that feeling you get towards the end of a transcendent show where you simply cannot fathom that this song is going to be the last song, only at this show you were greeted with another and another and another.

It is difficult for me to objectively look at a show that I have seen so recently without being a little over-excited, but I can't imagine my personal concert-going history bearing out that this was easily one of the five best shows I have ever been to, and in the past year alone I've seen Bruce Springsteen (who I'm seeing again tonight), Tom Waits (three times), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Wilco to name a few.

As we got up to leave, the Rangers fan next to me (who I'll refrain from naming in the interest of preserving his privacy) turned and said, "I've never cried at a concert, and I cried twice tonight." That pretty well sums it up.

Do what you can to see this. You may not get another chance to be overwhelmed by the vitality of Leonard Cohen.

Musicalia: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band "Working On a Dream"

Clearly, this is not the most timely of reviews. Over the past month-plus, I have had plenty of opportunity to listen to Working on a Dream, and that opportunity has led to a mixed feeling about the record. 2007's Magic was an altogether enjoyable record for me. When I go back to it, I never feel the urge to skip a track, at least not as the result of not liking a song.

The same cannot be said of my listening experiences with Working on a Dream.

To kick things off, the listener is assailed by "Outlaw Pete", a song which I really think could work on a different project but strikes me as more of a solo Springsteen song than an E Street song. Instrumentally, it works (as just about the entire album does), but it really feels out of place on this record and with this band. The song is not done any favors by its somewhat lame title.

After that, though, there are two rock-solid E Street songs, "My Lucky Day"--which is an unabashed rollick imbued with just enough recklessness to endear itself to the listener--and the campaign trail title track, "Working on a Dream". Its ever-presence in support of Obama probably warms me to it more than the song may have in another time and place, but no listener really goes into any song without any personal baggage. Appreciation of music is largely informed by our relationship to the music and what we associate songs with, for better or worse.

Speaking of worse, the album goes from a great two-three punch to "Queen of the Supermarket". I am not really sure how to put this kindly and, as such, have been rendered impotent for a month, at least insofar as being able to write about this album is concerned. The weird thing is the first three lines of the song along with the intro could trick you into thinking you might be in for a pretty good song, and musically it has its moments (its coda is particularly striking), but lyrically it is preposterous. You get what he is trying to do, but the song is just off, and it also has the shocking beginning of the final verse that is as follows: "As I lift my groceries into my cart / I turn back for a moment and catch a smile / That blows this whole fucking place apart." What the fuck?

Luckily, the album regains its balance with "What Love Can Do". Of course, it falters again with the next track, "This Life", which errs to far into the realm of schmaltz and simply never comes back.

Now if Working on a Dream ended there, the album would likely have been an abject failure with two of the first six songs being bad and another seeming out of place entirely (although it is not without its merits). Luckily, much of the best is saved for tracks seven and beyond.

While "Good Eye" is not the most complex song ever written, it really works as kind of a dirty electric blues song that makes me look back fondly at some of the strongest parts of Tunnel of Love. That song rolls into the simple country-western track "Tomorrow Never Knows", which bides the albums time until "Life Itself", Working on a Dream's first inarguably accomplished song both lyrically and instrumentally. It works on every level and has complexity that early tracks that work like "My Lucky Day" for all their strengths lack.

From their the album takes a two-song detour into the inoffensive but ultimately forgettable in "Kingdom of Days"--a nice enough song but is not done any favors by being placed after "Life Itself"--and the poppy but bordering on being gratingly repetitive "Surprise, Surprise", which at my count says the word 'surprise' 42 times.

Again, if the album ended on that note there may be some issues, but the last proper album track "The Last Carnival" the supremely moving elegy to Danny Federici. It's really fucking powerful, and the choir singing as the music comes down on the carnival is devastating.

And of course, there is the bonus track, "The Wrestler", which--having seen the film it was written for--makes for an album with back-to-back elegies that punches to the gut that leave you gasping for air by the time you have made your way through them.

Any doubt as to whether or not he still has it is dispensed with by the last two songs. Working on a Dream is not an album without its shortcomings, but it is quite a bit more adventurous sonically than its predecessor and has three songs that stand up to anything in his catalogue and another handful that you certainly wouldn't be upset with having seen in concert.

The Baseball Project "Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails"

Hearing that Peter Buck was involved with an album entirely devoted to my favorite sport on KUT was a bit of a surprise to me. As an R.E.M. fan, my interests were piqued. As a baseball fan, the deal was sealed.

The Baseball Project is the fifteen-years-in-the-making love-child of Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey, who discovered one another's love for the game all the way back in 1992 but were never able to get around to recording until last year. Fifteen years must have given them plenty of time to think about what they wanted to record because the subject matter ranges from unjust statistical requirements for perfect games to the mysterious death of Ed Delahanty to reminiscence of a childhood trip to a pennant race game between the Dodgers and the Giants to Black Jack McDowell's middle finger.

Honestly, the subject matter is particularly appealing to me. There's no point in glossing over the fact that my fandom of baseball will largely affect my feelings on this album. A unique point-of-view is given to the McDowell finger-incident at Yankee Stadium, as Scott McCaughey and Mike Mills had actually been partying together within days of the incident. The importance of Fernandomania to the Mexican population of Los Angeles is illustrated in a Spanish language ode to Fernando Valenzuela by a displaced former resident of Chavez Ravine. Harvey Haddix's lost perfect game in the 13th inning and the frustration in the pursuit of perfection encapsulated by the preposterousness of having pitched 12 perfect innings only to have your team not score a single run for their cause is the stuff that makes baseball's lore so rich and endearing. Each song is complete with liner note introductions to each song detailing what informed them.

A rock album about these things will more than likely appeal to me. That being said, I have The Minus 5 "Down with Wilco" and have listened to it twice in the five or six years I've owned it, and I'm no longer the insane R.E.M fan I once was. Me liking this album was no sure thing. But songs like "Ted Fucking Williams" with its Bolan-y rollick or the deft exploration of baseball's duplicitous villification of Mark McGwire of "Broken Man" or the country rock stomp "Harvey Haddix" are good songs, regardless of subject matter.

So, yes, there's been a good record made about baseball. Bet you never thought you'd see that day. And now you can listen to an album in which David Wells is name-dropped in not one, but two songs, and mentioned in the liner notes to another song.

Sigur Rós "Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust"

On Sigur Rós' latest album (which translates to With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly), the band continues its progression away from the dark climes of ( ), crafting what is probably their most pop-minded album to date. (Remarkably, there are only three songs checking in at over six minutes in length.) When the first track, "Gobbldigook," kicks in, the initial reaction almost must be, "Wait, this is Sigur Rós?"

Oddly, there are quite a few of those moments littered throughout the album, which is probably as close to a pop record as the band will ever be able to get, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, they have made their name on creating music seeming to be both from and for the imagined icy geography of the Iceland of our minds; and while Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust may be lacking a tune as epically moving as "Svefn-G-Englar" or "Glósóli", the album may not need them. It works spectacularly well as is and feels fresh for a Sigur Rós album, which cannot have been expected from a sweeping post-rock band with vocals that act as much as an instrument as anything that conveys any message to the English-speaking listener and signature troughs and crests that take their audience out of their bodies.

Does the album meet the insanely high watermark set by their masterpiece, Ágætis Byrjun? Upon the first fifteen listens, probably not. But I'd be hard pressed to come up with ten albums that have come out since that have, so where does that leave us? Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust is a stellar follow-up to the triumphant recovery that was Takk... There are already songs from this album that I want to see live, and that's got to say something.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!"

Upon having first heard the title track, I wasn't sure how crazy I was about it. It seemed all right. Not great. All right. Now, I have the song stuck in my head. I feel like I walk everywhere to its cadence. My feelings on the record as a whole are very similar. At this point, it's following me around, not loosening its grip on my subconscious. The pounding, primal rhythms of "Dig...", "Night of the Lotus Eaters", and "We Call Upon the Author" are particularly infectious.

Generally speaking, this album is much more a rock album than the last ten years or so of Bad Seeds records--which Cave has attributed largely to Blixa's departure, who apparently hated doing things rock 'n' roll--and seems to have pressed forward in the direction that Cave & Co. seem to have gone with the Grinderman project. That's not a bad thing by any means. This feels like a fresh new album in an already formidable catalog. There is no retreading going on here. The mainstay piano has been jettisoned in favor of the organ, and when grouped with the odd semi-industrial (not NIN industrial, but sounds-of-a-factory industrial) percussive loops, you're given some riveting music. The violin is gone, too, leaving Warren Ellis to do God knows what. While those elements are surprisingly missing, the greatness of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds looks to be ever-present.