Backseat Sandbar

Photo by Shannon McClean

One of my favorite bands, Silver Jews, are out on the road promoting their new album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (tops my list so far in 2008), and they will be playing a show at Louisville’s Headliner’s on August 27th some time in 2009.  Silver Jews is a Nashville based band and they have been around for a while, starting back in ‘89 by David Berman and Stephen Malkmus.  Malkmus later went on to found Pavement, so Silver Jews are often referred to as a Pavement side project (thought Berman was lead and wasn’t in Pavement).  Berman is the only remaining original member.

I have been a big fan since listening to American Water a few years ago.  With the release of their new album this month, I started listening to their whole discography again and I’m blown away by the subtle nature of their genius.  Every song seems so simple and natural that it is impossible to pick a favorite.  One week a verse or a line from one of their songs will get stuck in your head and the next week there will be another.  Last week it was “I unplug all the neon; Turn the ringer off the phone; I throw my thoughts like a tomahawk into this world which I disown” (from “My Pillow is the Threshold”)  While they don’t have one or two songs that you play over and over, the entire album is something to enjoy.  The delivery is dark and monotone (similar to Leonard Cohen) accompanied by simple chords and occasionally some back-up harmony from female vocals.  They are definitely worth a listen.

I had in the que a post regarding their show in Indy at Birdy’s on October 11th, but we can definately scratch that and plan on this local show!!!  Monotonix will be the opener (they are best described by the reviews below or see our post about their Bloomington, IN show here).  Seems like an odd pairing (although they are labelmates at Drag City), but I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to see either. Tix are $15 bucks and go on sale July 11th.  It is an 18+ show.  Starts at 9pm.

Silver Jews- My Pillow is the Threshold

Monotonix- Lowest Drive

Monotonix-

Dissatisfied with the state of the music scene in their hometown of Tel Aviv, the Israeli trio Monotonix formed in November of 2005 with the mission of redefining the rock show. The band, consisting of singer Ami Shalev, guitarist Yonatan Gat, and drummer Ran Shimoni, channel riff heavy influences Led Zeppelin, the Sonics, and Thin Lizzy to create raw, driving rock & roll. Shortly after forming, they would accomplish their mission in Tel Aviv, defying the expectations of what a rock show should be there. They would set up on the floor among the crowd and proceed to turn every performance into a wild party, wild enough that more often then not they would find the power getting shut off on them or the police called to break up the show. Eventually finding themselves banned from most of the venues in Tel Aviv, the band decided to leave Israel so they could tour the United States and Europe. From 2006 to 2007, Monotonix played over 300 shows around the world, including SXSW and a tour with Silver Jews. These tours furthered their reputation as a band whose shows are not watched, but experienced. Monotonix have become known for setting themselves and their equipment on fire, stealing drinks from audience members to pour on themselves, and generally turning their shows into unabashed, frenzied dance parties. In 2007, the band recorded their first EP, Body Language, with Tim Green of the Fucking Champs – AllMusic.com

“The Israeli garage-punk trio is unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed.” – Washington Post

“Most exciting live band in rock’n'roll” – Spin

Girl Talk will be playing Headliners on November 7th, along with The Death Set & CX KidTRONiK. We saw Girl Talk back in January with Dan Dan Deacon & it was a madhouse of sweaty, dancing bodies and intense, bewildering mash-ups. Girl Talk visited Louisville for last year’s Forecastle, and threw one of the wildest parties of the Festival. Rumor has it, his after-party at the Galt House ended up getting a lot of people shutdown and kicked-out. 

If you’ve not yet fallen in love with the things this mastermind of mash-up puts together, he will combine Neutral Milk Hotel with Ludacris, Panda Bear with Kelly Clarkson, Zwan with Ting Tings…and manages to avoid doing it for the sake of irony, but rather always for the sake of dancing…And once you allow yourself to give in to it, you’ll give up all control…the man had me singing along to Kelly Clarkson for Christ’s sake…

Going Radiohead style, you can PWYW for Girl Talk’s new album, Feed the Animals, which is exactly what he does with this album…feeding and fueling our need to dance….

While Girl Talk alone makes the concert worth it, another one of our favorite bands, The Death Set, who played Lexington’s Void Skate shop recently, will also be playing their electroinc punk.  CX KidTRONiK plays with and produces alongside quite possibly my favorite hip-hop artist ever, Saul Williams, and my favorite industrial artist, Trent Reznor.  This show is bringing it from every angle & I only hope we don’t blow the place apart…

Tickets are $15 & it’s all ages, so be careful who you’re dancing on….

UPDATE: Rumors had been around that Greg would be doing an ear X-tacy show, but that’s not true.  Also, the show has now SOLD OUT.

Our friends, The Instruction are playing a free show at The Pink Door on Wednesday, July 2nd with Dude Plays Saxophone. We’ve got really high hopes for these guys, so, if you can, we HIGHLY encourage you getting down to see them…after the show, our friend Rahman from The Zero Element will be spinning a set.

Check out our demo review HERE & sample tracks from the demo below…

The Instruction- Mayday
The Instruction- Change in the Merge
The Instruction- Hello Darlin’

Go Van Gogh is playing the noon spot on Saturday at Forecastle. This kids are from St. Louis & they play some strange mix between soul rock and standard angsty punkish rock & I’m at a loss for words to try to compare them.  The kids used to be called Greenwheel & have played with Louisville’s own (intheclear) on a number of occasions, which might give you some notion of their sound.  Admittedly, not my favorite artist on the lineup, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.  Check out a couple of of their tracks below…

Go Van Gogh – Blood Money
Go Van Gogh – Get Up

Impromptu or not, Amherst is playing a free show at Tyler Park this very moment, including a little live-band “Nirvana Karakoke” (also known as a cover) of Imodium. They’ve played a predominately instrumental set so far (a new direction?), but get down here before it’s over. There’s food too, but I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be able to get any of that…

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This week, my girlfriend bought an otoscope & was testing it, so she tried it out on me. She asked “Why is there blood in your ear?”

Makoto Kawabata, famous for his role in Acid Mothers Temple, closed Terrastock with the loudest, most deconstructive and sonic sound that any of us have ever heard. Playfully weaving textures upon textures of the most shrill and violent sounds, ultimately creating beautiful patterns from his deceptively minimalist set up.  It could just have well been an entire orchestra pit.

Kawabata is such an honorable man that when all of Acid Mother Temple wasn’t going to be able to perform, as was originally scheduled, he asked for a hotel room and nothing more, traveling from Japan on his own dime to perform solo.  What an incredible conclusion to the weekend’s events, and strangely, I believe that Mr. Kawabata felt as honored as we were…but I feel certain we were the lucky ones.

Afterwards, Phil McMullen and Kawabata shared a fairly emotional hug, as Phil welcomed Kawabata off stage to prepare for his own performance. A little nervous, Phil addressed the crowd, thanked them, and gave a little insight into the future of Terrastock, including that the lack of a Terrastock 2009…Phil cited his own need for a break (this year was his 50th birthday), the bands needed a break since they couldn’t keep doing it free every year. Privately, he addressed the rumors about Terrastock finding a home in Louisville, and the only drawbacks were the lack of an international airport, the lack of hotels within walking distance, as well as the lack of food venues. I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2010, many of those concerns are alleviated (except for the airport).

In final review, Terrastock was a great festival, with some incredible bands, and it’s unfortunate that hardly any of Louisville took the opportunity to hear these bands…you missed some incredible talent….talent that people came from all over the world to see, and you had it in your back yard. Hopefully, the city’s lack of interest hasn’t killed our chances of becoming the Festival’s permanent home, but they were expecting a lot more locals to get excited.

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Paik put on one of the more entertaining performances of the Festival, with hard-hitting post-rock sounds and far and away the best stage antics, most notably, bassist Anthony Petrovic starts tearing down Ryan Pritts’ drums only to set them up for his own drum kit.  Everyone who ran in to get a good spot for Kawabata missed one amazing performance..

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The Entrance Band weren’t the flashiest of bands, despite the bright orange, traditional Indian suit and a decent amount of movement on stage…but what they had was incredible musicianship. Sunday’s line-up despite not having the name recognition of Saturday, was as good if not better (provided you don’t count Mono), and The Entrance Band was the ones who, for me, really got things started….

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Unfortunately, I missed a lot of Sunday morning due to a late Saturday night, including missing Thee American Trio, who I was looking forward to.  As a result, the first band I caught was Simply Saucer, who started the set out with the statement “The Saucer has landed in Louisville“.  The set started out great, including a theramin and everything, but unfortunately a little over halfway through the set the rain came in and brought lightening, so men got on tall aluminum and highly electrically conductive ladders to cover the stage, while others got under plastic tables to hide from it.  The rest of us went indoors & checked out some of the art as we waited for Pelt to go on.  One of the most fascinating pieces was this guy doing circuit bending, who also had a viewfinder with a Disney projection inside of it, but he had *ahem* edited it, such that some of the Disney characters weren’t doing such nice things.  It was fantastic. Shortly thereafter, Pelt came to the stage with gongs, shakers, incense and a shoebox-looking accordion, and gave us just the relaxing mood music we needed with the rain.

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Mono was the band that a huge portion of the crowd showed up for.  From the time they started, until they ended, I was unable to breathe.  Literally, after the show had ended, I had to sit down and just breathe.  Takaakira “Taka” Goto, the brainchild behind Mono, led the epic instru-metal post-rock massacre, shredding his guitar, while Yoda (pictured above) constructed wall after wall of sound.  Together, and along with Tamaki Kunishi and Yasunori Takada, they weaved epic sagas that never really quit building upwards to the climax, they only suffered small ruptures intermittenly of frenzied sonic blasts, to reease the tension.  I felt as though years of my life could have passed by during that set…not because it was slow moving, but rather each progression seemed to truly tell such a fully developed story, transplanting me to another place in time, that my own life seemed to progress in a nonlinear format, and my reference point was lost.  I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and although pictures are supposedly worth a thousand words, no number of words could do justice to describe this performance…no such words exist…

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Oneida opened Saturday morning’s festivities around noon to a packed house, playing what I can only imagine to have been several hints at the upcoming album, Preteen Weaponry, to be released later this summer. Saturday was the day to be at Terrastock, with an incredible line-up, one band after the next with no breaks. Following Oneida, was Wooden Shjips, who, while they played a great set, had quite a bit of technical difficulty with the sound people, a problem that plagued more of the festival than it should have. In fact, during the Tara Jane O’Neil set (along with many others), the sound people left, leaving her to DIY it all, with the help of a member of the audience. The only other problem I had with the festival is that while I understand it’s a niche audience, to my untrained ear for pyschrock, a few of the bands sounded just a little too similar for my taste, which is likely to be the reason that I didn’t see what everyone else sees in Bardo Pond or Motorpsycho. In contrast, Grails put on one of the best shows of the weekend, which was hard to do indoors. Oneida had an incredible drummer, but to see the way the drummer from Grails hammered his drum kit, at times using sticks, at times using his beer bottle, and later his guitar and foot…there’s simply no comparison. Whether he was on drums or guitar, he commanded and controlled the crowd, the stage, and everything in between. Lastly, after years of distance, local townsmen Sapat played an incredibly fun set. While setting up, one of the members remarked that although it was going to be strange all playing in front of such a large crowd again, if they just each played their own thing incredibly, as they usually do, it would have to sound good. And it did.

The best set of the night though, is reserved for another post…

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Friday ended with two indoor sets, the first by Damon & Naomi, followed by Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh of Japanese band Ghost. Damon & Naomi just released a new album, Within these Walls, from which most of their set consisted.  The set was, as one would expect, a very sleepy, intimate set that contrasted significantly, but nicely with the previous Major Stars set.  The subtlety of sleepiness of it all though, was, truth be told, a little too convincing and ended up boring me just a little.  In contrast, once Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh stepped onto the stage, for both the Damon & Naomi set and their own, things got a little more interesting.  Batoh started off with a noise track, banging, whirling, tapping, clicking anything he could get his hands on, and then looping all of it & made for undoubtedly my favorite single song of the night, but unfortunately it was a one-off type of piece, before settling into a more simplified folk sound as Helena and Masaki out their love into a bit of Helena’s heritage, with multiple reconstructions of traditional swedish folk songs that were absolutely beautiful.  The highlight, apart from the noise track, was when all four of the above mentioned artists would get on stage together and construct intricate and beautiful arrangements…

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DJs (Chris) Devlin & (Ronnie) Darko are performing at this years Forecastle from 8:50-9:30. Famous for their role as the DJs ehind the genre-bending Spank Rock, these guys have also spun with other such important and influential artists as Beck, KRS 1 and Gnarls Barkley. Rather than simply putting together electronic music, these guys infuse everything from classic hip hop to Italo disco to French electro creating a dance party that keeps you sweating. These guys are up right before Method Man, and should set the energy level right where it needs to be….

You can keep up with the guys on their blog, Fully Fitted, which is a pretty entertaining read-through…

For a sample of what you’re going to get, download the 26-minute Fabricfree Mr. Devlin Bonus mix featuring Rod Lee, Mr. Oizo, Sam Cooke, PB&J, Fiona Apple, Devin the Dude, and an early version of “Race Riot on the Dance Floor”. You can get it zipped up at HERE (36.5 mb) thanks to FabricFree, or for a smaller snippet, try FabricDead.

So I go & talk about DJ 2nd Nature earlier today & he happens to put out a mix of local boys My Morning Jacket on the same day, twisting it all kinds of ways you’d never expect with a little bit of chipbeat, just the way I like it.

My Morning Jacket – One Big Holiday (DJ 2nd Nature edit)