Concert Review: Daniel Johnston – Nov. 22, 2008

Daniel Johnston
Nov. 22, 2008
Good Folk Fest – Louisville, KY

What can you write after you’ve seen a legend?

You wouldn’t know very much about Daniel Johnston — underground icon, father of the lo-fi singer-songwriter movement, and outsider artist — by the way he shuffled onto the small stage recently at Louisville’s Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Center. Decked out in a Daniel Johnston T-shirt, dark sweatpants and Converse, Johnston quietly set up a music stand with lyrics and fidgeted briefly with his acoustic guitar, bottle of Mountain Dew always nearby, unassuming in his last-minute preparation. The entourage that helped him cut through the thick crowd of camera-wielding fans, musicians, misfits and well-wishers consisted only of his sister.

The music and the art, then, are left to tell the story.

The set, as many might have anticipated, was short — four songs and less than 15 minutes, all told – but far, far, far from unfulfilling. Like Johnston’s ever-growing catalog, the solo acoustic offerings flashed moments of brilliance from the un- and under-stated: the way a chorus suggested a more elaborate pop-rock refrain, the way an awkwardly strummed guitar stood in for an orchestra, the way one voice spoke for many. (For Johnston completists, here’s the set list that’s been floating around the Internet: “Mean Girls Give Pleasure,” “There Is A Sense of Humor Way Beyond Friendship,” “Mask,” and “Freedom.”)

But there’s something indescribable about seeing Johnston perform live. While his records and the live performances you can catch on YouTube can transmit a kind of isolation and loneliness, he comes off as even more vulnerable and naked in person. His hands shake between songs, causing him to spill the aforementioned Mountain Dew. He nervously fumbles as he tries to tell a dark joke. (Johnston said he was sentenced to death in a dream for attempting suicide.) He keeps the on-stage patter to a minimum, instead choosing to speak through the drawings he sketches for fans before and after the live sets. To sit in an audience and take it in isn’t eavesdropping or idol worship; it’s something closer to voyeurism, the subject somehow unaware they’re being aesthetically picked apart even as they take part in the analysis.

There’s also a magic, a kind of unspoken, communal conversation built around seeing a performer whose audience knows all the words and the chord changes. The cameras flash, the smiles grow wider, the applause is never anything less than exuberant. Since Johnston’s touring schedule is far from hectic, you’re always somehow aware of the magnitude of what you’re seeing. I can’t say what it must have been like to catch a three-song Johnston set in Austin 20-odd years ago but, if his recent sojourn into Louisville is any indication, it must have been fascinating. This was.

Review: National Beekeepers Society – Pawn Shop Etiquette

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Nov. 24, 2008

The record’s title track begins with muted guitar notes, the humming of an organ and the soft, occasional strum of an acoustic guitar. The resulting mood, accumulated near the end of 13 songs and 34 energetic minutes, is one of exhaustion, if not a kind of broken-down resolution, a tired resolve. “Like a sick, sad dog, you’ve been trained/ to an idle happiness/ Hope you change,” the singer offers, his voice a solitary figure. “Pawn shop etiquette is demeaning/ Pawn shop etiquette is demanding.” The songs then builds, accented by semi-soaring electric guitar, the understated shuffle of drums, the creeping insinuation of sliced-up white noise, but it never quite reaches a fever, instead choosing to maintain a somber pulse. The result is emotive, even unsettling.

What’s even stranger about the song, the record’s last, than its apparent attention to melancholy is how much it differs from what surrounds it. You can say plenty of things – and you should – about Pawn Shop Etiquette, the sophomore outing from Madison’s National Beekeepers Society, but one adjective that rarely, rarely, rarely will come to mind is mournful. The record surges and bristles with a startling energy, the kind of enthusiasm and focus of purpose to which one hopes young bands still aspire. This is music played with blood constantly pumping through the veins – exciting, life-affirming stuff – and not some academic exercise in genre mimicry, no matter how much it pledges allegiances to the ghosts and purveyors of pop’s past. This is a record to get excited about.

And where does all that enthusiasm lead us? Well, every song on the disc seems to fall neatly into place, from the choppy guitars and distorted fuzz-bass drive of the album-opening “Look At Me” (“Look at me, look at me/ I’m on a magazine/ Pretty people should be heard/ Pretty people should be seen”) to the bluesy asides of “Suburbanite” to the slacker-revolution Pavement-isms and guitar meltdowns of the incredible “Confidence.” The record seems to far out-span its running time and, let’s cut to the chase, it shows a firm grasp of hooks and melody that should have critics drooling all over themselves.

Nowhere is this more evident than on gems like “So Hardcore,” which buttresses catchy, “My Sharona”-style verses with snarky vocals and psych-rock bridges, or “Given In,” with its rousing guitars and hand-claps, or the too-short romp “Upon The Hills of Georgia.” (Only complaint on “Georgia:” if you’re going to go to the trouble and quote Pushkin, make the vocals a little more audible.)

Elsewhere, the quartet cranks up verses and choruses that exhibit just how tightly wound an outfit they are. For this, turn to the excellently titled “Orange Is For Apathy,” where guitar solos and a background of screamed vocals float above and around electronically assisted percussion, or “Sixty Five,” which, glassy guitars and all, is one of the most danceable tracks in the mix.

“Don’t Go Takin’” could make The Kinks blush. “Fall of Rome,” with its “Where Is My Mind?” intro on acoustic guitar, channels The Pixies. “Lazy” starts as a lazy Sunday blues exercise but, once it kicks into gear, will kick you flat on your back.

Is it a great record? Perhaps. It has a focus, a kind of sonic theme running through the proceedings, that you’re not likely to find in many records this year. In short, it’s composed without sounding as such and that’s no small feat. It’s invigorating. It’s as catchy as the winter flu. And it delivers on all the promise of the group’s jangly-guitared, self-titled debut and then some. What more could you want?

Review: These United States – Crimes

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Nov. 17, 2008

Here’s a short lesson, for the sake of an introduction. The United States, as evidenced by the recent presidential election, has turned blue. These United States, as evidenced by Crimes, its sophomore outing on United Interests, has turned bluesy.

Gone are the more spare, psych-folk platitudes of the group’s debut, A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden. Crimes, recorded by the Washington D.C. act in Lexington, Ky., is a rootsy affair, full of blues-scale stomping, Creedence-tinged choruses, and the whiskey-soaked interplay of alt-country acoustics with grungier electric refrains.

Then there are the lyrics. Songwriter and frontman Jesse Elliott is nothing if not ambitious. The record, as a result, aims at a new kind of blues-rock canon by gazing at the skies and littering the terrain with familiar literary icons, from Cain and Abel and Don Quixote to Samuel Clemens and soothsaying blind men. (Eden, an emblem of the group’s debut, also surfaces.)

The problem, though, is that Crimes suffers from a problem of multiple personalities. Part of it, roughly half, to be fair, is truly great stuff, the kind of songs you anxiously filter into playlists for friends with appropriate enthusiasm. The rest, though, tends to meet expectations instead of surpassing them. It’s not that the songs are weak or half-hearted – far from it. It’s just that, if you’ve spent any time around Southern rock, you may feel like you’ve heard it before.

The group soars on tracks like the subdued “Study The Moon,” where Elliott warbles lines like “I clacked down the cobwebbing city sky crescent/ got cracked at and spat at and branded a peasant … I can’t get no sensations” over pale acoustic guitar, brushed snare and an underlying electric guitar melody that sounds like glass sliding over ice. (The chorus, where the band carefully rolls toward a crescendo, is magical.) On the album-opening “West Won,” Elliott invokes Dionysus over a boozy build-up that would make Uncle Tupelo crack a smile. The elegant ballad “Heaven Can Wait,” where Elliott quotes the aforementioned blind men spitting out lines like “I think this is the way/ Allow me to demonstrate” and “Is it me or is it dark in here/ Or is it getting late?,” effectively grinds the record to a halt for a moment of pause. “We Go Down To That Corner” will break your heart.

Elsewhere, the band falls back on the strut of indie blues-rock, if such a genre has been clearly delineated. The rollicking “Honor Amongst Thieves” hints at rockabilly. Tracks like “Six Fast Bullets (Five Complaints),” the album-closing “When You’re Traveling at the Speed of Light” and “Susie at the Seashore” were cut for dive bar jukeboxes.

But “Those Low Country Girls” stomps out the tenderness of “Study The Moon” or the elegiac “We Go Down To That Corner” with Lynyrd Skynyrd ambitions and some testosterone–laden lyrics about chasing women. And, if you can’t get into the upbeat blues-rock of “Get Yourself Home (In Search of the Mistress Whose Kisses Are Famous)” or the somewhat overcooked call-and-response of “Susie at the Seashore,” you’ll feel like you missed the boat.

These moments, unfortunately for some, define the record as much as the gems. And it’s that sort of inconsistency that makes Crimes an interesting set from a talented young group but not record-of-the-year material. Some will hail these guys, perhaps rightfully, as the latest inheritors of the blues-rock mantle. Others might take more convincing. Both would be well served to file These United States into memory. These guys could have more and better days ahead.

Review: Daniel Martin Moore – Stray Age

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Nov. 11, 2008

“So much of what I pushed out once/ has returned after all these months,” Daniel Martin Moore sings over a strummed guitar on the introductory title track of his full-length debut. “Lines from a stray age/ News comes ‘round from another day’s page.” The sentiment, if not the delivery, is slightly weather-worn, more the expression of a tired man approaching the it-is-what-it-is resolve of mid-life than a bright-eyed, aspiring young one taking early steps out of the gate. But that’s one of the wonderful things about Moore, a Cold Spring, Ky. native whose first Sub Pop outing rears its head this autumn. He doesn’t toy with your expectations. He just quietly, calmly, turns them on their head.

Such is the case with the genre many have assigned to Stray Age. Now, folk has a rich, storied history in American life but Moore, whose modus operandi revolves around an acoustic guitar and beautiful, if sometimes understated, vocals, owes less to Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger or early Bob Dylan than singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen or Nick Drake. The key difference is that, while Cohen’s Songs revels in melancholia and a kind of sonic isolation, the often spare arrangements on Stray Age have an inviting warmth to them, a familiarity that feels something like what you’d call home.

Moore displays this warmth on tracks like the heartbreaking closer “The Hour of Sleep,” where the acoustic guitar is so tenderly strummed you might find yourself listening to the sound of the pick scraping the strings. The words, sung in a near whisper as Moore wavers near falsetto, are equally tender: “In quarters close, the four winds far away/ Where your life and limb you selflessly wage/ This is your reward each day.” The package, which expands far beyond its 3:24 running time, is completed with accents of piano, a brushed snare and swelling violin. The result can feel devastating.

There are other brilliant and near-brilliant moments. Moore’s hushed delivery perfectly suits the Sandy Denny-penned standard “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” and the jazzy ruminations of “It’s You.” The too-short “By Dream,” where Moore’s voice is offset not by guitar but piano, aches in all the right places. “In These Hearts,” “Where We Belong” and the bluesy “Every Colour and Kind” are almost effortlessly delicate. The pseudo-instrumental “Restoration Sketches,” little more than a shuffling acoustic guitar and two breathy voices cooing, is so airy, it floats. It’s difficult to not overuse the word beautiful when describing these songs.

There are other moments that veer into territory better suited for commercial radio but Moore’s heartfelt delivery keeps the proceedings emotive and sincere, as on the upbeat “That’ll Be The Plan” or “The Old Measure.” Here, Moore echoes the ballads of Amos Lee, another contemporary and singer-songwriter – though one who’s clearly more positioned for mainstream ears – careful to extract the maximum emotion out of a well-paced acoustic refrain and a passionate vocal delivery.

Sub Pop is quick to note that Moore, as impossible as it sounds, was picked up by the label after sending in an unsolicited demo. While that will, no doubt at all, inspire and fuel countless unsigned musicians hungering for a break, it begs another question. When are they going to release that demo?

Review: Nonagon – No Sun

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy

Fugazi’s In On The Kill Taker or Repeater or Steady Diet of Nothing weren’t just records. They were heavenly bodies that boasted their own gravitational pulls. Countless lesser planets and bits of interstellar debris were tugged into the orbit, echoing the refrains, mimicking the stances and trying to figure out that bizarre mix of astronomy and alchemy that made it all click right into place.

So, enter Nonagon, the latest trio taken in and transfixed by such documents. The group hails from none other than Chicago — fertile terrain for some other planetary legends, it should be noted — but their hearts and their heads seems to be in Fugazi’s Washington, D.C. Distorted guitars swirl and stagger, seeking a neck to slash. The rhythm section, all light-footed drums and bouncing bass, pops holes in your speakers. The group is fronted by a screaming man who thinks nothing of barking the record’s title as a crazed refrain: “No sun! No sun!”

The astronomical analogy, if you will, also is appropriate (beautiful cover art and hand-assembled packaging aside) because this trio’s too-short debut EP hurtles by with the speed of a passing asteroid. Six songs, 15 minutes, no time for messing around. Tracks like the incredible instrumental “Peterson,” whose beats per minute are clicked and clacked out with thrashing percussion, deliver the band’s message with a velocity bordering on the frenetic. Or really, really good surf rock.

Elsewhere, the group flashes moments of inspiration where dynamism trumps speed.  For that argument, look no further than the album-opening “The Brushback,” where guitar chops – the appropriate phrase for jagged rhythms that seem to stab at listeners’ ears more than strum around them – give way to drum-and-bass breakdowns or crescendos of noise accompanied by shouting. Or breathe in the opening 13 seconds of “Fake Baby Lucius,” where a fluid bit of electric guitar-work is accented with the occasional punch of a snare and a cymbal. (The punching approach comes back later, to exceptional effect, as do some backing vocals that seem more SoCal than D.C.) Or wonder at “N.E. Friend,” at 3:10 the record’s unlikely epic, where the trio gets creative with a 4/4 march and then unleashes vicious off-tempo choruses and bridges that, well, were just itching to be unleashed in the first place.

“N.E. Friend,” which closes the proceedings, actually may one of the record’s best tracks, a piece where the group tries to expand on the full-frontal attack on display throughout the EP. The song begins in mid-explosion, already burst and blown-out at the seams, before crashing into a Fugazi-ish verse of angry guitars and barked refrains. Then, back to the angry thrashing, this time accented with softer backing vocals. The song – and the record – end a minute and change later not with more explosions but a quieter response, a kind of musical reconciliation over (comparably) muted guitars and toned-down rhythms.

Debuts are typically imperfect affairs and No Sun, for all its strengths, is probably no exception. Those hungering for variations on a theme might find the record to be a little redundant and some critics may be turned off by the scant running time. But this a band playing from the heart for people seeking the same and, with No Sun, they’ve started on what will hopefully be a long career of their own path across the skies.

Review: Unknown Component – In Direct Communication

We all know what we mean when we say “lo-fi singer-songwriter,” right?

There’s the obvious checklist: the do-it-yourself recording techniques, the fuzzy or half-amped guitars, the way passion outstrips production when the lone performer belts out a verse or finds a pop hook cleverly hidden in a chorus packed with tape hiss. These outings are typically hit or miss affairs, collections appropriately judged on the strength of songwriting chops or their invention, no matter how clouded those features might be from aesthetic blemishes.

Well, In Direct Communication, the latest offering from Unknown Component – a.k.a Iowa-based singer-songwriter Keith Lynch – is both a hit and miss affair.

There’s plenty to love on this 10-track collection, for which Lynch wrote, recorded and provided cover art. (Word is still out whether he crunched together the polymers to form the jewel cases.) The choppy guitars of “It’s A Fine Line,” which dodge from the listener’s left to right, play perfectly off his vocals, which can hint at pop molds as much as punk’s sneer. The ballad “On Your Mind” offers not only tender acoustic guitars but swelling Faith No More synth washes and a great bridge where Lynch appears to sing, “There’s no survival/ It’s just time and it’s on your mind.” The moody “Somewhere A Light Has Gone Out,” with its piano motifs and whistling, musical saw-style synths, could be a Black Heart Procession outtake. (He even nailed the title.)

But, elsewhere, Lynch falters. Over the course of nearly 38 minutes, he layers harmonies over poppy choruses (“Retrospectively Speaking”), experiments a little with lead-singer reverb (“Between Guilt and Relief”) and tries to crank up the volume with distortion (“Identifying Interpretation”) but much of the record feels monochromatic or one-dimensional. Maybe it’s the recording or the lack of variation — jangly guitars and subtle bass over electronic percussion, rinse, repeat — but it feels wanting. One wishes Lynch, who clearly has some songwriting and performing talent, would really shake up things, get the blood flowing, take more chances.

The record ends not with a somber ballad or a pop pseudo-anthem but with a few rays of sunshine – the upbeat “Never Ceases To Remain Unchanged” and “The Inconsistent System.” On the latter, cascading guitars give way to Lynch’s vocals as he pleads, “So don’t give up/ Don’t give up/ Don’t give up/ Don’t give up.” Let’s hope he heeds his own advice.

Review: Pinataland – Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy

If you don’t consider Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2 one of the most anticipated new records of the year, well, you just haven’t been paying enough attention.

Released a full five years after Pinataland’s majestic full-length debut, the new record owns up to the promise of its predecessor, packing 10 songs and some 48 minutes with 18 contributors on everything from guitar, upright bass and pedal steel to mandolin, cello, dobro and banjo. Like the collection that preceded it, Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2’s ambitions are not small and producer JD Foster, a new set of hands at the studio helm, helps provide a sound and scope to prove it.

But, a penchant for scissored-in audio clips aside, the similarities between Volumes 1 and 2 somewhat end there. The first record was an engaging musical tour of historical fiction whose palette included a one-of-a-kind blend of contemporary folk-pop, Old World balladry, They Might Be Giants-style theatricality and bizarre carnival charm. The new one is a slightly more straight-forward take on Americana and, appropriately, the frontier folk of American memory. (In short, there’s a whole lot more pedal steel.)

That’s not to say Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2 is as spare as some old dustbowl refrain. Far from it. The record combines the studied narratives of David Wechsler and Doug Stone – read the stories behind the songs at www.pinataland.com — with sweeping strings (“If Ice Were Warm”), show-stopping Broadway breakdowns (the epic-sounding “Dream of the New Mary”), mod-rock guitars (“In Old New York”) and vaguely hip-hop beats (the excellent “Centralia”).

Though tracks like “The Settlers” or “Ashland,” with their acoustic shuffles, call to mind alt-country or even Calexico, Wechsler’s piano punctuates and steals the spotlight on tracks like “The Ballad of John Banvard” or the dissonant “In Old New York.” While the closing “El Niño” relies on a mournful drone as much as it does guitar, two of the record’s best tracks — “The Fall of Sam Patch” and “The Sky is Blue, the Highway Wide” – kick into gear with toe-tapping verses that make sure to get the blood flowing. (Dedicated fans will find “The Sky is Blue, the Highway Wide” is the new record’s biggest shout-out to the polka-bounce still on display back on Piñataland’s incredible Songs from Konijn Kok EP.)

But the record’s centerpieces show Wechsler and Stone, the group’s songwriting duo, are a careful study in Americana. The notes of the pedal steel guitar are pitch-perfect in songs like “Ashland.” Throughout, acoustic guitars balance with both hushed narration and plaintive wails. Drummer Bill Gerstel’s steady and understated percussion on tracks like “The Settlers” lends an early rockabilly charm to the proceedings. Banjo musician Curtis Eller, who appears here and there, fits right in. It’s a warm and enveloping record, to be sure.

So, what’s the verdict? Well, Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2 is a gem, more a polished stone than the piece that preceded it, and one that’s sure to age as well as the history these guys yearn to preserve.

Find it.