Essential Elegance

















Various Artists, Just Like Heav-
en: a Tribute to the Cure, Ameri-
can Laundromat Records [1/27/09]

After Dinosaur Jr. sunk their substantial chops into "Just Like
Heaven," they rendered all subsequent Cure covers superfluous. It's not that Robert Smith's lipstick-smeared combo crafted ridi-
culously complex songs. On the contrary, admirers tend to em-
bellish them needlessly, instead of finding a way to preserve their
essential elegance. J. Mascis, Murph, et al got the balance right.



Of the 16 tracks on Just Like Heaven, Dean & Britta and the Wedding Present provide the finest. Respectively: a drowsy "Fri-
day I'm in Love" and rambunctious "High." Other than stripping things down and playing with the pace, they honor the original material. Kitty Karlyle provides the weakest, an overly-emphat-
ic "In Between Days." Though perfectly competent, it's just too
emo (the emotion is already implicit in the words and melody).

Other notable interpreters include Tanya Donnelly, the Rose-
buds, and the Submarines. Overall: neither bad, nor embar-
rassing; the entire enterprise is just largely...extraneous.

Click here for my interview with Dinosaur Jr.



Copper Sails, Hiding Place, self-released [1/13/09]

A lot of bands get compared to U2...because a lot of bands
sound like U2. Virginia's Copper Sails don't sound exactly
like the Irish quartet—they also recall Coldplay—but Boomer
Muth (bass) has a Bono thing going on, while Jonathan Crawley
(guitar) has an Edge thing going on (pianist Kyle Crosby and
drummer Jim Courtney complete the line-up). Even lyrics
like "I'm still lost" recall lyrics like "I still haven't found what
I'm looking for." Similarly, Hiding Place is earnest, melo-
dic, and features mixing by Mitch Easter and master-
ing by Greg Calbi who's done the same for...U2.



Fugitive Kind, You're Being
Watched, Castor + Pollux [1/13/09]

Indie-rock is just a marketing term!!
-- From their MySpace Page

Amen, brothers and sisters. Produced by Ed Stasium (Ramones,
Soul Asylum), Boston's Fugitive Kind grind out hard, danceab-
le rock on You're Being Watched, a throwback to the days of
Heart, Quarterflash, and Alanis Morrisette (Lydia Marsala has a
Morrisette warble to her voice). Like too many indie outfits, they
could pass for a major label act, and this disc is most likely a bid
for a deal, i.e. a demo in all but name. As an independent adher-
ent, it doesn't do much for me, but I wish them the best. Plus,
they give a website shout-out to the underrated Shivaree.



Leopold and His Fiction, Ain't No
Surprise, Native Fiction Records

The important thing is not
to achieve, but to strive.
-- Aldo Leopold (quote
from the CD booklet)

There are no Leopolds in
Leopold and His Fic-
tion, but rather Daniel
James (vocals, guitar, bass, organ, percussion) and Ben Cook (drums, Wurlitzer). To their credit, these San Francisco citizens
don't bring to mind musical images of the Black Keys, the White
Stripes, or any other contemporaneous duos. Instead, they in-
habit the more shadowy, reverb-drenched territory of the Doors,
the Black Angels, and Devendra Banhart. Though the organ and
the tambourine add a pleasingly retro element, Leopold
never enters the living graveyard of '60s revivalists.

Note: the band's bio cites a line-up change. Cook is out;
Micayla Grace (bass) and Jon Sortland (drums) are in.



Sarah Rabdau and Self-Employed Assassins,
self-titled, Say It with Scissors Records [1/20/09]

Alternative pop with a classical swagger.
-- From her MySpace Page

As indicated by the cover—the ivory-complected singer dab-
bled in rose-red blood—Boston's Sarah Rabdau shoots for
the stars. Her method: italicized vocals layered atop cinemat-
ic backdrops (heavy on mournful cello and minor-key piano).

It's pop music as theater; not musical theater mind you, but
Rabdau performs in both the musical and actor-oriented sense
of the word. She modulates carefully, moving methodically from
sotto voce to operatic trill. Truth be told, it isn't my cup of Dar-
jeeling, but I tip my (metaphorical) toque to her talent.



The Refugees, Unbound, Wabuho Records

The veteran musicians in the Refugees pluck, strum, and
harmonize their way through 12 tracks in the country-poli-
tan vein of the Dixie Chicks. No one will mistake Unbound
for a Wilco or Son Volt offshoot. No will they confuse the trio's
full-length debut for any kind of alt-country release, and hip-
sters might not appreciate the way vocalists/multi-instrum-
entalists Cindy Bullens, Deborah Holland, and Wendy Wald-
man reference Boomer acts like the Byrds and the Eag-
les. But I'll be damned if they don't do it well.



Endnote: This year marked the release of the 13th Cure al-
bum and yet another covers compilation called Perfect as Cats:
a Tribute to the Cure (featuring Bat for Lashes and the Dandy War-
hols). For more information about the latter, please click here; for
Copper Sails, here or here; for Fugitive Kind, here; for Leo-
pold and His Fiction, here or here; for Sarah Rabdau, here
or here; and for the Refugees, here or here. Images from
Why Pamper Life's Complexity and Planetary Group.

Read more »

Revved Up

















I first heard Mercury Rev's Yerself Is Steam while volunteering
at KCMU in 1991. My first thought: Wow. Pop-psych nirvana (small
"n"). Tracks like "Chasing a Bee," "Coney Island Cyclone"—I loved 'em
all...even if I had no idea what David Baker was going on about. It
didn't matter. It was the era of the Flaming Lips and the Spacemen 3, and the vibe was king. Even the hazy neon-green packaging was cool.

Click here for the non-LP track video, "Car Wash Hair"

Then came 1993's Boces, and I wondered if I hadn't overeacted to the Buffalo's band's first record. Goofy cover aside, I didn't think their follow-up was bad; just that it was, by comparison, underwhelming.

So I moved on to other mus-
ical space cases, like Spiritual-
ized and Spectrum, and forgot
all about the Rev (I also lost
interest in the post-indie lab-
el Flaming Lips, but that's a
story for another day...).

From time to time, I would hear a Rev track on KCMU as it turn-
ed into KEXP or I would catch a video, like the Anton Corbijn-directed "Goddess on a Hiway."
Line-up changes aside—like Jonathan Donahue taking over from Baker—they still sounded good. But I remained underwhelmed.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to review this year's Snowflake Midnight, and found myself impressed all over again. Since I haven't heard any of their albums since Boces from start to finish, maybe I've been missing out or maybe the group really did lose the plot for a while there. I have no idea, but this record is a stunner. Click here for the short version; read on the full-length review.

"Butterfly's Wings"

Mercury Rev, Snowflake Midnight, Yep Roc

When they emerged from upstate New York
in 1989, pundits proclaimed Mercury Rev
neo-psychedelic guitar gods to rank with the
Flaming Lips (with whom they shared num-
erous ties). On Snowflake Midnight, the
intrepid trio enters the world of the machine.
Rev's seventh full-length, in other words, is an electronic record. Filled with references to forest creatures, it represents more of a change in tools than direction, since the introspective threesome retain their ties to psychedelia and shoegaze. Better yet, longtime associate Dave Fridmann (the 'Lips, Sleater-Kinney) handles the production reins, and the results, though initially surprising, nev-
er sounds like the work of dilettantes. While all nine selections ebb and flow in volume, like a shortwave radio half-heard in a dream, a few maintain a steadier motorik-meets-mutant disco pulse, such as "Snowflake in a Hot World" and "Runaway Raindrop," which re-
call New Order or the Pet Shop Boys after a dose of Thoreau (no, really). With Jonathan Donahue's woozy vocals bobbing along the waves, Snowflake Midnight proves that a veteran band can re-invent themselves without losing the plot. The revitalized Rev issued the disc alongside instrumental download companion Strange Attractor, available through their website.



Endnote: Though Strange Attractor is a free download, us-
ers first need to sign up for the Mercury Rev newsletter (hey,
there's no such thing as a free lunch). And though I normally
try not to judge CDs by their covers, the backlit bunny photo-
graph emblazoned across Snowflake Midnight only makes
me like it more. Images from the band, their label, and Amazon.

Read more »

The Piano Tuners of Strange Imagery:
An Interview with the Brothers Quay

From time to time, I'll be excavating unedited versions of interviews that aren't otherwise available online. To that end, here's the first draft of my conversation with the Brothers Quay. Because I was unable to record our call, there aren't many direct or in-depth quotations, but I took as many notes as I possibly could. The finished edition appears in the 4/07 issue of Resonance, which ceased publication in 2/08.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Welcome to a shadow world where plastic dolls walk, stuffed rab-
bits juggle, and dead opera singers return to life. That description
can only apply to the handiwork of filmmaking twins Stephen and Timothy Quay (born 1947), better known as the Brothers Quay.

Starting in January, a program of their short films will be traveling to select US cities. The British Film Institute has also produced a double-disc set, The Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003, which trumps Kino’s single-disc The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993. Due in April from Zeitgeist, the new set includes 13 re-mastered films plus commentaries, an interview, and promotional spots.



Although many twins like to assert their unique personalities, that
doesn't seem to be the case with the Quays. Mention that their entries at the Internet Movie Database are identical, and they con-
firm that their filmographies are exactly the same. Frankly, they would prefer a single entry, suggesting, "If we write 10 letters, and
your friends write 10 letters, maybe we can get them to change that." (Over the line, it's impossible to tell the difference between the two friendly voices—if only telephones were stereophonic!)

Like Joseph Losey, Richard Lester, and Stanley Kubrick,
the Quays moved to England and never looked back. Born
in Norristown, PA, they left for London in 1969. The lure: The Royal College of Art. So, do they feel an affinity with their cin-
ematic predecessors? "Not really,” they answer, almost sad-
ly. "We're just not in the same league." (Au contraire, mes dears.)

What about fellow expatriate Terry Gilliam? "We know Terry,
but he we know him as a friend rather than a fan," they explain. That said, once Gilliam signed on to executive produce The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005), in which Catherine Breillat favorite Amira Casar (Romance, Anatomy of Hell) plays the doomed opera
singer, financing fell into place. For that, they remain eternally grateful. After all, 10 years have passed since their full-length deb-
ut, the haunting Institute Benjamenta with future Borg Queen Al-
ice Krige, Mark Rylance (Angels & Insects, Intimacy), and Fass-binder fixture Gottfried John, who returns in The Piano Tuner.

With the extensive in-cam-
era effects that populate their
pictures, amongst other fac-
tors, their features tend to
take longer to complete than those of fellow innerspace explorers Michel Gondry and
Guy Maddin. (The latter, in
his Piano Tuner review for Film Comment, proclaims it “absolutely entrancing!!!")

The Quays, however, are in no rush to start in on a third,
though it isn't out of the question. "We have an idea for some-
thing," they hint. For now, they’re focusing on two installations. "One is in a castle in the north of England, outside of Newcastle." Their task is to fill one of the 25 rooms as they see fit, "to respond to
the space itself." The second is for a Leeds opera celebrating
the 400th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi‘s L’orfeo.

Film, however, is always on their minds, and the brothers men-
tion that they're working on a television project, an adaptation
of Bruno Schultz's Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (1937). Throughout their career, the Quays have often turned
to the Polish writer, along with Franz Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Robert Walser, while artistic inspirations include Max Ernst, Francis Bacon, Hieronymus Bosch, and M.C. Escher. For The Street of Crocodiles (1986), their most acclaimed short, they adapted Schultz, and for the B&W Institute Benjamenta (19-
95), they took on Walser's 1909 novel Jakob von Gunten.

In filmmaking terms, the name most often associated with the Brothers Quay is that of Jan Švankmajer, whose latest prov-
ocation is the gleefully wacked Lunacy (2006). Do they remain
in contact with the Czechoslovakian master? "He's a man we made
a documentary about [1984's The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer], and we occasionally meet at film festivals and the like, which is always a pleasure, but we're not in touch. He's just a giant. We
see him more as a teacher and a model." If they had to name one
influence, they insist, it would actually be Polish surrealist-turned-softcore artist Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006).



Like Švankmajer and Borowczyk, did the Quays always intend
to combine animation with live action? (Actors appear in a few shorts, but usually only fleetingly.) "We grew up watching featur-
es and still do," they reply. "It's like a short story writer, who de-
cides he wants to write a novel or a composer who decides he wants to write a symphony. Working in animation allowed both
of us to assemble, to learn all the métiers involved in directing."

Click here to watch the video for His Name Is Alive - "Can't Go Wrong Without You"

The brothers have also directed commercials, MTV promos, and
the 1988-93 "Stille Nacht" video series, featuring the music of Michael Penn and His Name Is Alive (starring a decrepit doll and dexterous bunny). Other efforts of interest: the brothers collab-
orated with Aardman Animations on Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgeham-
mer” video and contributed an un-credited sequence to fellow puppeteer Julie Taymor’s Oscar-nominated Frida biopic (2002).

This brings us to computer-generated effects. Are they using more now than when they started out? "No," they
say. Though they shifted from
35mm to high-def, they es-
chew CGI. "Everything is in-camera." Instead, they do "digital replacements” with blue and green screens. Was The Piano Tuner easier to make,
then, because of their experience with Institute Benjamenta?
"Not at all," they lament. "It was like a nail in our coffin. Because
it was so esoteric, it didn't pave the way for a second feature."
(Zeitgeist plans to release The Piano Tuner on DVD in 2007.)

One of the duo’s finest films, Anamorphosis (1991), a mini-
documentary about perspective in art, features the intrigu-
ing phrase, "An image grasped too quickly might not leave a
lasting impression." That could almost be a description of their work. "Yes," they readily agree. "It's a very good term. We're
trying to create a web of sense." But their favorite moviemak-
ing quote comes from Federico Fellini. They paraphrase: "Our duty as storytellers is to bring people to the station.
There each person will choose his or her own train…but
we must at least take them to the station”…with the help
of a few dolls, a stuffed rabbit, and a reanimated opera singer.



Endnote: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay play
SIFF Cinema on 11/23, as part of Zeitgeist: The Films of Our
Times. The 13-film series, which marks the indie distributor's
20th anniversary, continues through 11/26. SIFF Cinema is located
at 321 Mercer St. in McCaw Hall. For more information, please
call 206-633-7151. While I'm at it, click here for my chat with
Michel Gondry and here for David Lynch. Images from
Time Capsules, Sliced Bread Animation, and Culture Snob.

Read more »

November Reviews












These are the reviews and interviews I'm working on this month.

Amazon CDs: Calexico - Carried to Dust, The Dirtbombs -
We Have You Surrounded, Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight, James Hunter - The Hard Way, Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue, M83 - Saturdays = Youth, Mercury Rev - Snowflake Midnight, Shearwater - Rook, and Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls.

Amazon DVDs: The L Word - The Complete Fifth Season
and Up the Yangtze (excellent doc from Canada's Yung Chang).



Amazon Theatricals: Milk (Gus Van Sant directs Sean Penn),
Breakfast with Scot (gay parenting with Ed's Tom Cavanagh),
and Let the Right One In (preteen Swedish vampires are go).

Still playing or yet to open: Burn
after Reading, I.O.U.S.A., Igor, Lake-
view Terrace, Man on Wire, Nick and
Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Get-
ting Married, and Waltz with Bashir.

Siffblog: More chat with Tia
Lessin (Trouble the Water)
and a tiny tribute to Catherine Deneuve (A Christmas Tale).

Video Librarian: Frontrunner, Hannah's Story, Like a Ship
in the Night, What's Your Point, Honey?, When I Came Home,
The F Word, In the Family, The Legend of Sasquatch, Hair -
Let the Sun Shine In, Shaun the Sheep - Off the Baa!, Wild
Combination - A Portrait of Arthur Russell [click here for
my Siffblog review], and Wrangler - Anatomy of an Icon.



Endnote: I had the pleasure of writing about the Dirt-
bombs several times this year, and their fourth full-leng-
th, We Have You Surrounded, tops my music list for 2008.

Click here for snaps from their Neumo's gig, here for a con-
cert wrap-up, and here for an alternate record review. The
Detroit five-piece returns to Seattle to play Chop Suey on
11/14. Dirtbombs image from their website, Harvey
Milk image from AfterElton. This is my 300th post.

Read more »

R Is for Reviews

H Is for Hellgate, Come for the Peaks, Stay for the Val-
leys, self-released [12/2/08]

It’s a hex, at best, that I’ll never rest / and I don’t have time for
such a pretty, pretty princess.
-- "Pretty, Pretty Princess"

If Laura Veirs were to crank the volume up—way up—she might morph into a parallel-world version of H Is for Hellgate, i.e. front woman Jamie Henkensiefken and band. Before listening
to their second full-length, their publicist informed me that
they put a feminist spin on math-rock (the band's bio contri-
butes the descriptor "indie-prog"), which sounds about right.

And when Henkensiefken talk-sings, they're at their best (the brief male counterpoint on "Be Prepared to Die Alone" sounds out of place). Consider Come for the Peaks, Stay for the Valleys jam rock for the brainy set...or brainy rock for the jam set.



Joel Plaskett Emergency, Ashtray
Rock, MapleMusic Recordings

Like Mott the Hoople, this Canadian trio occupies the sweet spot between David Bowie and the Hold Steady, i.e. they have a glam-pub rock thing going on.

While Plaskett's guitar playing evokes
Spider from Mars Mick Ronson, his—
and guest Ian McLagan's—ivory tick-
ling would fit right in with the the Faces or the E Street Band
(from whom the Hold Steady have borrowed a few moves).

With Dave Marsh on drums and Chris Pennell on bass, Plas-
kett builds a bridge between the '70s and the '00s with ease.



The Kindness Kind, self-titled, Don't Be a Lout [11/18/08]

Imagine that Holland's Shocking Blue emerged in the 2000s
instead of the '60s, and you might conjure up something similar
to Seattle's the Kindness Kind. In other words, euphonious-
ly-named front woman Alessandra Rose recalls Mariska Veres,
and her breathy, yet powerful pipes dominate the proceedings.

If there's nothing as catchy here as the Blue's iconic "Ven-
us" ("She's got it / yeah baby, she's got it"), their sopho-
more release presents a pleasing mix of soaring vocals,
expressive piano playing, and persuasive percussion.



Scarlet Blonde, Bedroom Super-
stars EP, HyperMEDIA Recordings

Sheffield duo DawnyVic (Dawn Firth) and Ditch (Richard
Godbehere) comes across as forward and backward-looking at
the same time. The samplers and sci-fi synths are in full effect,
but the electro-pop/modern rock acts they resemble most—Yaz, Curve, and Garbage—made their bones in the 1980s and '90s
(the twosome augment their beats with bass and guitar). If Firth doesn't have the range of Alison Moyet, she has the attitude of Shirley Manson, which goes a long way with this sort of thing.



TAT, Soho Lights, Sony/Red

TAT: n. rubbish, trash, "an old load of tat" (orig. unkn.)
-- Press kit definition

I can't imagine why anyone would name their band TAT, but
far worse names abound and their lead singer just happens to
bear the name Tatiana DeMaria, so this London trio gets a free pass. (Dogs Die in Hot Cars, however, don't.) On their debut, the
threesome combines alt-rock, metal, and the kind of explicit
language that goes down better on the stage than on the radio,
despite the commercial sheen. Hard rock for the iPod generation.



Endnote: The record release party for H Is for Hellgate
takes place at the High Dive on 12/5; the Kindness Kind
holds theirs at the Tractor Tavern on 11/20. For more infor-
mation about the latter, please click here or here; for the
Joel Plaskett Emergency, here or here; for Scarlet
Blonde, here or here; and for TAT, here. Images from
H Is for Hellgate, Planetary Group, and SummerSet Artists.

Read more »

Reelin' in the Years: Part Five

Chapter Two: It's All Relative
More snaps of the family (click here for Chapter One)

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Above: Dad and Granddad; between high school
and college. In purely cinematic terms, Dad served
in the Army post-M*A*S*H, pre-Apocalypse Now.

Grandma Fennessy. After her death in 1969, my
grandfather moved back to Ireland, never to return.

Mom
wash-
ing the
dishes.
There's
some-
thing
uninten-
tionally
noirish
about
this
photo.

Mom strikes a pose.

Mom and Dad in the Mad Men years.

Mom, me, and a bear.

Mom, me, and some chickens.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Endnote: Click here for Part Four ("Celebs
Invade Seattle"). Cross-posted at Facebook.

Read more »

Cigarettes and Coffee, Cigars and Cognac

Blackmarket, The Elephant in the Room, No Office Records [11/11/08]

Lake Havisu's Blackmarket have produced a perfectly serviceable, but unremarkable debut. I don't doubt their sincerity, but feel like I've heard this CD before, and would argue that working with producers like Sean Slade (Radio-
head) and Matthew Ellard (Weezer) wasn't to their benefit. A few unruly idiosyncrasies would be preferable to such a safe sound.

Click here for my review of their self-titled EP.



The Coral Sea, Firelight, self-released [10/7/08]

Your soul is your true self and cannot be wounded.
-- From their MySpace Page

Like Jeff Hanson, Rey Villalobos wields an androgonous
voice (I thought he was a woman at first), but Villalobos
replaces Hanson's intimacy with layers of keyboards.

On the Coral Sea's second record
(after 2006's Volcano and Heart),
Villalobos and Cali colleagues take
the same kind of quasi-operatic ap-
proach as Mercury Prize winners El-
bow. If that's your scene, Firelight
offers a particularly pillowy variant.

The Singhs, Supersaturated, Redstar

On their third disc, this Boston quintet
produces slick danceable anthems in the mode of U2,
New Order, and Chic. Eighties inspirations aside, the
multi-layered production has a contemporary feel.

Packaged like a precious gift (the gatefold digipak swims in
images of gold wrapping paper) and recorded in the West In-
dies, Supersaturated offers music to background cognac-
and-cigar soirées. In other words: it's above my pay grade.



We Are the Mystery Tramps, self-titled, Queue Records

What do I know anyway? I'm just some dumb kid.
-- "A World Like This"

We Are the Mystery Tramps raise a mighty ruckus on the follow-up
to 2007's Cure for the Common Misconception.

Judging by their photos, this Boston-by-way-of-Lynnfield, MA quartet hasn't left their teens far behind (in "Last in Line," Eric Grava even suggests he has ADD).

That doesn't make their third release immature. On the con-
trary, the foursome sounds wise for their years as they com-
bine introspective lyrics with professional musicianship.



Endnote: For more information about Blackmarket,
please click here; for the Coral Sea, here; for the Singhs,
here or here; and for We Are the Mystery Tramps, here.
Images from the MySpage Pages of Blackmarket (photo by
Bryan Sheffield) and the Coral Sea (poster image). We Are
the Mystery Tramps portrait from their official website.

Read more »