i'm from barcelona & thao @ brooklyn masonic temple, 5/1/08

i've been extremely fucking busy as of late, friends. i don't even know if anyone still reads mr. mammoth anymore. i don't blame you if you've gone away, since i haven't been able to offer anything in nearly a month. i am still extremely fucking busy, but i'm going to try hard to find time to balance my working life with my blogging life, though i don't doubt that the scales will continue to tip towards work, since blogging don't pay jack. but it's a labor of love, so forgive me if the lapses between posts remain; i'm doing the best i can.

one reason i've been so busy is that i've taken a couple jobs at live music venues around the city, which rocks for me, because now i get paid to see shows! but since i'm working the bands, i don't have time to really think about whether it's any good or not (hence, no postings about shows i work). but working in concertry has really made me much more aware of how important technical quality is to performances - ultimately, a good soundperson can make or break a set, almost regardless of how good the band is. so i went to brooklyn masonic temple the other night with all this new awareness in my head, a little wary of the promoter's claim that doors were at 7.30, show at 8 (uh duh, show was at 9. masonicboom, you get a C- for honesty), but eager to check out a new space with what seemed to be a lot of promise.

even after the technical abomination that was the i'm from barcelona show, i still think that BMT has serious potential as a concert venue, but only if they fire most of their crew. to fill the (large) floor space, they only had six stage-mounted speakers, and i don't think there was a sweet-sounding spot in the house. adding insult to injury, these speakers (i didn't see the maker) apparently have no mid-range, but LOTS OF TREBLE, so every snare hit was like a painful laser through my eardrum even though i was straining to catch any of thao's vocals. even the between-set music sounded terrible - not that the between-set music really matters a whole ton, but how hard is it to set levels from a CD? (answer: not very). i was right up in front for thao, but she sounded so bad that i moved further back for i'm from barcelona. it did sound a little better, but i don't know if i should give the soundguy more credit, or just assume that it was from the 16 voices bellowing lustily onstage (i'm leaning towards the latter). i wasn't even able to find any comfort in the lighting - the performers were drenched with white front light, and the backlight couldn't compete in the slightest. the best-imagined part of that rig were some well-placed LED bars, but the lighting person had no clue how to use them. the stage had that hasty, sloppy look, and i hope (for their sake) that it was a one-day job, loading in in the morning and out after the show, because that is one fucking sorry house rig, both sound- and lighting-wise. i think there's finally a venue worse than studio b!

this was the third time i've seen thao (and the longest band name ever) this year, and while this wasn't the best of the three (that was the soundfix show - no surprises there), i really relish her onstage dynamism. she's had pretty much the same set each time, but the songs never are. unlike a lot of performers, she and the get down stay down (of whom only 2 were in attendance) freely stray from their recorded melodies and just improvise new ones that fit the tempo. thao's skill on her guitar is unquestionable, and without frank stewart, the band's electric guitarist, there was a lot of space for her to explore. her physical energy is another appealing trait of the get down stay down's live shows - whenever she doesn't sing, she gets down (but stays up).

thao is definitely doing well for herself, having copped support spots for a number of established names (rilo kiley and xiu xiu as well as i'm from barcelona), but i'm curious as to how well the saturation scheme has worked. by the end of next week, she will have played new york five times since february, but many heads weren't bobbing, even for the always-boisterous "swimming pools." then again, even i found myself drifting from time to time; "feet asleep," one of my favorite tunes of hers, was a little stilted, and i'm not sure if thao yet has the personal presence to command the attention of a large room like the BMT. i would prefer to see her headlining smaller shows for the time being. she was also showing off her new guitar (in that photo), but i'm a fan of her older one - i'm not sure if this one had steel strings or not, but the metallic twang of the black one is a part of thao's sound that i've happily embraced.

stymied by fate, i was unable to see either of i'm from barcelona's summertime shows (matt from musicslut saw both), and i was definitely psyched for this event (also, it was my first non-worked show in weeks). i had heard from several people that their live sets are similar to the polyphonic spree's (you know how much i love them), so i was all excited for a joyful night of carousing and un-self-conscious happiness, but i was kind of dismayed by the actual result. trapped behind a solid wall of stoic, unsmiling mid-30s guys, unaffected by emanuel lundgren and his merry band, my night consisted of ducking around them to see the band and taking my earplugs out every so often to doublecheck that yes, it did actually sound that bad. okay, i'm exaggerating a little (not about the sound quality), and i was able to get into the spirit of things, though not as much as i wanted to. that, however, wasn't because of the stoic guys, but because i had really overanticipated i'm from barcelona's stage show. the 'spree sing happy songs and have fun onstage, but their first commitment is to performing their songs well - i'm from barcelona were more interested in the spectacle, rather than the sound. it was fun to watch them (especially the mustachioed "caped crusader" and dueling guitarists perched upon their amps), but i definitely felt like the music suffered as a result.

that being said, there were plenty of highlights, not least of which was the awesome segue into "like a prayer" during "rec and play" and the adapted-for-16 voices version of "meet the mets." there were tons of pink balloons and we were repeatedly showered in confetti, explosions of which accompanied every other song (also punctuated by spontaneous fistfuls from the stage), and the encore of "ola kala" concluded not with the band exiting from the stage, but diving into the crowd for a conga-line to some euro house track. in addition to favorites from let me introduce my friends (show opener "treehouse," "collection of stamps," and "the painter" fucking rocked), i'm from barcelona played a number of new tracks and "britney," their 7" release. the band was playful and exuberant (and generously mustachioed), and i left with a smile on my face, but it didn't match my expectations. as i've made abundantly clear, a lot of the blame for that should be attributed to the venue, but the band themselves were a shambles more often than they were a band, and i was left wanting.

small-time machine

if there's one thing you can bet the farm on (and in these times, even that won't get you real far), it's that when there's a new one man band in town, mr. mammoth is going to have something to say about it. enter jason drake, the mastermind of hypeworthy cassettes won't listen, brooklyn's new buzz boy and savvy merchandising maven (he has a deal with the indiefied fashionistas brooklyn industries: they sell his clothes, he plays at their stores, 6 times last weekend). so, in addition to his rather shrewd business mind (he also self-released and distributed his first "physical" album small-time machine recently - check the "think indie" badge on its cover), what makes cassettes won't listen worthy of a minimum of six listens? well, the more than passing resemblance to the postal service, for one (i heard there's a new album - can anyone back me up on that?). but a lot of people have covered the give up territory since then, and a pale imitation is gonna have a hard time resting on those laurels, leaving cassettes won't listen is definitely subject to some legitimate accusations of copy & paste. he dips into lcd soundsystem territory without lingering too long, and swipes a couple tricks from other knob-twisters, but despite drake's (lengthy) list of influences and imitations, the result is not greater than the sum of its parts. but let's not shut the door on CWL quite yet - sure, drake isn't blazing any trails, but the dude can fucking script some hooks, and i can't get "large radio" out of my head for the life of me (you should know the rules by now - if there's some sweet melodies, mr. mammoth is on that like butter on bread). so let's give CWL the benefit of the doubt, if only momentarily, and give drake some props for the three songs on small-time machine that are more than okay.

small-time machine is, quality-wise, shaped like a valley. it starts high, and ends high, but the middle is lower than the value of the dollar. it took me a couple tries before i made it all the way through, mostly because i'd avoid the bloated, saccharine cesspool of "freeze and explode" - truly abysmal. a song like that is why god invented the fast forward button. fortunately, it's the only real boobytrap on the record.

sometimes, i think about albums in terms of how easily i can ignore them and concentrate on something else, like my book in the subway. the better an album is, the less i can ignore it (FYI: antidotes is presently my most unignorable album). small-time machine is a parabola of interesting-ness. i always tune in for "metronomes" and "large radio," and my attention invariably wanes until "the finish line," the final track. what small-time machines suffers from most is an overabundance of itself. there isn't one song on this record that wouldn't benefit from losing some of those bulky winter minutes - unsurprising, actually, considering drake's self-reliance for his records. other ears should have trimmed that fat. "the broadcast" could have been one of machine's best cuts, but at 6 minutes, its shoegazey climax comes and melts away without any discernible impact.

what makes "metronomes" so instantly appealing is its likeness to "the district sleeps tonight," and not merely in tone, but in expectation. "the district" is a great song, but it's an anticipator - it makes you excited and wanting more. "metronomes" causes more anticipation that small-time machines can deliver. drake's voice is reminiscent of a half-dozen others in indie rock, which gives him an uncomfortably attractive chameleon quality, a hook in itself. "two kids" benefits from his playfulness and danceable electro-bleeps, but CWL's greatest fault is plain repetition, which really doesn't fly, especially for one man bands. the constant build and addition of sounds is an integral part of that experience, and drake has either not learned that yet, or has an overblown sense of his own melodies. "large radio," clearly the album's best song, is enough proof that CWL can make great music. too bad the rest of small-time machines can't live up to it.

"large radio" & "paper float"

use think indie to find a store near you.

marino

"crayon"

all this caribou talk has gotten me hot and bothered, and i've spent the better part of the last hour and a half rewatching the marino videos, all of which are happily found on youtube. the videos, all designed by irish collective delicious 9, were originally backdrop visuals, but were so good (no joke) that they were collection for dvd production, and bundled with 4 songs from the milk of human kindness's sessions.

i think delicious 9 have really captured a beautiful part of caribou's essence - "jacknuggeted" and "pelican narrows" especially capture the music's optimism and naivete, that sense of everything feeling new and rather exciting. one of my favorite features common to most of the videos is their thematic link - the characters all belong in a conjured world with dancing canaries, organ-pounding grandmas, and xylophone-rocking teddy bears, a world i could certainly use a lot more of. the videos, of nearly every song on both the milk of human kindness and up in flames, are almost without fault. "hello hammerheads" and "a final warning" shade in the darker parts of caribou's music, the latter an animated rollercoaster ride to the other side, the former a redemptive, if mischievous, look at sacrifice. "hendrix with ko" is, as one commenter puts it, "muppet slander," and is one of my favorite videos, along with the adorably-animated "skunks."

i feel it's a shame that the best praise i can give marino that it's worth your money. i think these videos are an important part of caribou's overall aesthetic, and super fucking cute at the same time. this feels a lot more like art than just music videos or projections.

watch them all here, and marvel, marvel at their awesomeness!

"marino"
buy marino from the leaf label. (do it, cheapskates!)

"jacknuggeted"

caribou & fuck buttons @ bowery ballroom, 3/28/08

even a casual reader of this blog will be aware of the fact that i am a superhuge caribou fan. they won the inaugural "band i blogged about most" title, clocking in with six individual posts, and though this is their first '08 entry, i've lost none of my rabid fervor for dan snaith's psychedelic electronica, which is why i returned to see them yet again. they have been on tour pretty incessantly since andorra's release last fall, and i've seen them three times since then, so i didn't think they'd have much new work to bring to the table, just their plain old awesomeness. but i was wrong - dead wrong. in their downtime (what downtime?), snaith and one of caribou's touring members have reworked all of their projections, and refashioned many of their songs - necessary changes when you hit the same cities twice in six months, but still pleasantly surprising. but the best change caribou could've made for this tour is the inclusion of the peerless fuck buttons, for whom, i wager, more than a couple people were there to see.

music aside, fuck buttons have been able to wring an extrraordinary amount of press from their name alone, a verbal vortex that no reviewer can resist (myself included). it's good that their name invites such controversy, because they don't offer much in the way of lyrical bones to pick - whatever it is that comes out of benjamin john power's mouth is definitely not distinguishably verbal. their name is as much a part of their enigmatic musical persona as much as their cosmic distorto-jams, and everyone has weighed in on fuck buttons's nomenclature (it sounds almost regal, doesn't it?) without coming to much in the way of concrete conclusions. well, there was no way the twinkly knob-twisters were going to explain themselves, especially without a microphone of their own. yet fuck buttons spoke in volume, creating staggering, deafening swaths of melody and static from itsy-bitsy instruments, subjugating the crowd (and making them dig for their earplugs) right after the first climax of "sweet love for planet earth." as far as i could tell (considering i don't have street horrrsing memorized), they played that album in its entirety, if slightly compacted. no breaks, no stops, all fucking awesome. as their set progressed, power and bandmate andrew hung became more and more involved in their admittedly limited show, their movements taking on a semblance of ritual, fierce and deliberate head-banging and body-waving, the music coursing through their bodies as it did ours. honestly, if you haven't bought a copy of street horrrsing yet, it's really time to do so, and go out and see the band: 40 glorious minutes of cataclysmic triumph in decibels; since mogwai isn't making anyone's ears bleed lately, maybe fuck buttons are taking up the reins. more power (and volume) to them.

caribou: awesome. the surprises (new projections and a couple drastic song reworkings) didn't really affect the show as a whole - they were exciting little morsels, making the show richer as a whole, but not really any different than previous caribou shows. however, that doesn't make it boring - it's not like i've been dragged to see them, caribou fucking rocks live, and they delivered an excellent show once again. the unison drumming is always exciting, and "skunks" especially benefited from it. "bees," as always, blew the place apart, and encore "every time she turns round it's her birthday" was, appropriately, the best part of the night. what set this show apart from previous caribou experiences was twofold, i think. they were blessed with a great soundman who really understood the band's nuances, but i think the most potent element of caribou's set was the influence of fuck buttons. interestingly enough, i felt like caribou was pushing themselves extra hard as a response to fuck buttons's egregious volume, and that energy was overwhelming. it could've also been that dan snaith celebrated his 30th birthday that night (technically, during "every time," as the clock ticked over to 3/29), but caribou were at the most jubilant, their most wildly exuberant, and the show was fantastic.

i went to four concerts last week - why?, crystal castles, del, and caribou - and the one i was least excited about was also, hands down, the best one. i expected the usual from snaith & co., and something cool from fuck buttons, but we were treated to a great night (all the better, from my perspective, with the loss of dan friel. parts & labor = gag). don't ever pass up the chance to see caribou.

"melody day" (from the pink room sessions)
pick up the new she's the one single from merge.

buy street horrrsing from atp.

it's been a long time since i rock and rolled

i just needed to take some time off.

if all goes according to plan, i hope to return to rocking and rolling your lifestyle by the end of the week.





seriously though, will someone please explain what, exactly, is so compelling about noise rock? i so don't get it.

yeasayer's take away show

heads up, y'all.

"2080"

awesome song day! - "back burner"

awesome song day! is a spontaneous feature, when i am moved by a song's singular awesomeosity and feel the urge to share its awesomeness with all of you. the song below is awesome.

isobel campbell & mark lanegan - "back burner"
sunday at devil dirt will be released may 5 on v2 records.

this song makes me want to be a heavy drinker.