Great Musical Moments Captured on Film - part four!

Yasss! It's back again folks, that time no-one looks forward to but me.......Warning: this blog contains swearing. Edgy!

This time, I give you the meeting of hip hop visionaries GZA (Gary Grice, The Genius, Gizza) and RZA (Robert Diggs, Rizza, Bobby Digital), and Mr Bill Murray, acting legend, in Jim Jarmusch's 2003 classic Coffee and Cigarettes. Words can't do this justice, so here you go:




Herbal tea and "Bill Motherfuckin' Murray". It's crazy, yo.

Album Review: The Corin Tucker Band - 1,000 Years

While Sleater-Kinney are on indefinite hiatus, fans of the band have had to make do with snippets of music. However, in the past few months we've heard thrilling news about Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss joining forces with Mary Timony and Rebecca Cole to form Wild Flag.....and now we have Corin Tucker releasing 1,000 Years.

On this record, Tucker reigns in the yelping vibrato that made Sleater-Kinney such an exciting band, but the listener can always tell that they are in the presence of one-third of that powerhouse band. It's a more low-key, lo-fi record than Tucker's other band, but with her bluesy guitar and garage-y live feel it's an enjoyable experience nonetheless. Sure it'll always be in the shadow of S-K, but it should be judged on its own merits rather than against the past.

Highlights are the stomping "Riley", the gentle organ-led "Handed Love" and the lovely piano closer of "Miles Away".

While I'll always pine for S-K and I suspect that Wild Flag will be a heavier, punkier prospect, The Corin Tucker Band have produced a solid debut effort, perhaps just feeling their way back into the scene. It's certainly something to build on, and I'm more than glad to have Corin Tucker making music again.

Album Review: Women - Public Strain

Cue hilarious pun.....I love Women. Honk!

On their sophomore effort, Women have made the noisy bits noisier, and the melodic bits more melodious. They're a strange proposition, full of Beach Boys and Zombies style harmony, but there's a murkiness that comes from the clattering drums, slightly out-of-tune guitars and production that makes the record sound like it was recorded in a flooded basement.

Thanks to the heavy reverb, I have no idea what Patrick Flegel is singing about, and the dissonance, atypical song structures, and wonky time signatures lend themselves to an unsettling listen. Simply put, it's a perfect record for autumn and winter time (just look at that record cover!) so I've no idea why it was released in the heat of the summer.

Album opener "Can't See You" throws the listener into the unsettling winter world, but Public Strain moves quickly into a surprising cohesive stride with the groove of "Heat Distraction", as much of a pop song as Women have produced so far, before kicking into the garage stomp of "Narrow with the Hall".

The record takes a dark turn with the two-pronged attack of "Penal Colony" and "Bells", both contributing a kind of horror soundtrack quality, but ends on possibly the finest six minutes of recorded music of 2010.

"Eyesore" combines all of Women's best qualities (noise, complexity, melody), and ends with a fadeout of the year's best riff. It's like the band didn't want to stop playing, locked into the groove of the song as it takes off into the ether. It's pure unadulterated joy, and please, please listen here:

http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/14598-eyesore/

One of 2010's best records, hands down. Women - you gotta love 'em.

Album Review - Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest

In which Bradford Cox proves that his band are just getting better and better. After the epic double of Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. one might have thought that it was downhill all the way, but Halcyon Digest goes to show that Cox has a bottomless well of shimmering pop songs to charm and beguile the listener with.

It's a more laid-back affair than Microcastle, with the focus on a nostalgia for childhood memories and the discovery of music during the days before downloads, MP3s etc. This is something that makes its way into the lyrics of "Basement Scene", an elegy to the days of DIY music scenes.

There's a mix of the floating dream-pop of Cox's solo work as Atlas Sound in tracks like lead-off track "Earthquake" and the recent single "Helicopter", and the more insistent Deerhunter sound of "Revival", which would have soundtracked the Under the Sea prom in Back to the Future if Marvin Berry and the Starlighters hadn't gotten in first, and the psych-pop of "Desire Lines" and "Memory Boy".

It ends with the lovely, touching "He Would Have Laughed", a tribute to the late Jay Reatard. It's a fine way to end the record, bringing it back to the present despite the yearning for the past redolent on the rest of the record.

Here's hoping Cox and co. continue to be so prolific, and so brilliant.

Great Musical Moments Committed to Flim, part three...

Despite Bell's suggestion that I go with the giant piano scene from Big, I've decided to don a flannel shirt (which was easy enough, I have a few) and travel back in time to the prime grunge year of 1992, where I've checked in with the denizens of Seattle as portrayed by Cameron Crowe in Singles.

I could have picked a number of moments from this movie, such as Soundgarden frontman/tragic bore Chris Cornell appearing as some fella listening to a car radio, the clumsy-with-heroin Alice in Chains, or everyone's favourite Seattle resident Tad Doyle. And let's not forget the music by Paul Westerberg of The Replacements. However, I went for one of the numerous bum-clenchingly awful moments featuring Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam.

Now, before I go on I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Pearl Jam and I freely admit to siding with them during the grunge wars with Nirvana. I still think that Vs and Vitalogy are two of the best albums to come out of that whole scene. Having said that, the members of Pearl Jam featured in Singles cannot act.

In this scene, brainless rock cliche Cliff Poncier (yes, really) of fictional band Citizen Dick, played brilliantly by Matt Dillon, discusses setlist etiquette with the rest of 'The Dick', only to stumble upon (Jeff Ament trying out a new kind of acting: not acting) a review of their latest single, ironically titled "Smarter Than You". Cue the reading out loud and use of index finger so as not to lose your place in the text, guys:

No wonder Britpop happened.

Minimal Weekend

For a bit of a change this weekend, I went off to Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall for a bit of culture and performances of the work of modern composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The Reich/Glass performances, part of Glasgow's Minimal Weekend, were of Reich's Counterpoints, and Glass's Icarus at the Edge of Time - based on Brian Greene's book of the same name.

Beginning with Steve Reich's Violin Phase of the Counterpoint sequence, this was a ten minute solo piece consisting of one violinist playing against three pre-recorded tape loops of himself. Intense stuff, yes, but picking the various patterns out from the looped layers was a fascinating and rewarding experience, "minimal" seems almost a misnomer for this piece. The trick comes from the violinist moving ahead of the tape loop, creating intricate and interlocked lines in the process.

The recital then moved on to Electric Counterpoint, one of Reich's best-known pieces. Again, this was a solo piece, this time for guitar, and also used the tape loop technique. The fifteen minute piece went from fast, to slow, and back to fast, gradually building a loop of 10 guitars, two electric bass parts and the final live solo guitar part. This was probably the highlight, with the climax being something akin to the high point in a trance/dance set by someone like Orbital. It was quite a thrill.

Less of a thrill, but ultimately still rewarding was the final Vermont Counterpoint, a solo piece for alto flute, flute, and piccolo. Again, the tape loop effect was there, with each combination of patterns becoming the base for the next movement of the ten-minute piece. Picking out the patterns was, once more, rewarding, but this was the least enjoyable out of the three.

For each composition, visuals were provided by Glasgow's Pointless Creations. They normally provide visuals for such club nights as Death Disco, and perhaps the experience is best enjoyed off your head on gak and rockers at a sweaty club rather than sitting down in an auditorium. Imagine the primitive visuals used in Star Wars when the Death Star is in range of the rebel base, minus the colour, and you're in the right ballpark.

Moving on, Icarus at the Edge of Time was a less challenging piece but enjoyable nonetheless. The story of Brian Greene's book is of Icarus, a boy on a spaceship making the first interstellar journey. Against his father's wishes, he takes off in a homemade runabout spaceship to investigate a passing black hole, forgetting -vitally - that general relativity predicts that the massive gravitational fields close to black holes slow down time drastically. When he tries to return to the mother ship, he discovers it has vanished, and that 10,000 Earth years have elapsed and he is in the middle of an interstellar highway. Later, when brought aboard a ship, he discovers in the craft's library that he has become a mythical figure, just like the classical Icarus.

Philip Glass's score was rather traditional compared to some of his other work, a bit of John Williams meets Muse, but it married perfectly to the story of Icarus, creating an appropriate sense of wonder, foreboding and excitement. There was a fabulous short film accompanying the piece, created by AI+AI, full of colour and sparkle. This is the sort of thing that will make science all the more accessible to children. It was, though, rather let down by rubbish live narration by equally rubbish Hobbit, Billy Boyd.

Ultimately, this was a terrific experience and I'd reccommend either piece to anyone, should they be performed anywhere else in the near future.

New Music from Down Under: Surf City

New Zealand has a fine history of giving the rest of the world classic indie-rock. Think Flying Nun records, The Clean, The Chills, Straightjacket Fits, Dean Wareham from Galaxie 500, The Ruby Suns and now, Surf City. Check out their fuzzy loveliness below:

http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/14970-kudos

http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/13509-autumn

Album Review: Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz

Sufjan Stevens is one of the most talent people working in music today. Fact. I'm not going to hide my admiration for the man and his work, and so this review may contain some extremely pro-Sufjan views......

On this, his sixth album proper, Stevens drops the concepts about US states, their historical figures and such, and concentrates on baring his soul - to a certain extent.

Also missing for the most part are the banjo and acoustic guitar, replaced by electronica and programmed beats. However, this is unmistakably a Sufjan Stevens record, despite Stevens's croon and whisper being replaced with a more pleading, close-to-breaking voice.....the beautiful melodies and harmony continue to shine through.

Ostensibly an album dedicated to the artist/prophet/sci-fi loon Royal Robertson, questions could be raised about the "I" in most of these songs - is it Sufjan as Royal, Sufjan as a character, or simply Sufjan as Sufjan finally spilling on what makes him tick?

Who knows, but as opening track "Futile Devices" tells us:

"It's been a long, long time since I memorized your face
It's been four hours now since I've wandered through your place
And when I sleep on your couch I feel very safe
And when you bring the blankets I cover up my face
I do love you
I do love you"

This is nakedly personal stuff from Stevens, and the tune is appropriately gorgeous. The title track "Age of Adz" embraces the glitchy electronica wholeheartedly, telling us of the end of the world, death and rotting in the ground - yet it ends with one of those triumphant choruses of voices that Sufjan does so well.

The two highlights for me, "I Walked" and "Vesuvius", best carry off the marriage of electronics to Sufjan's songwriting, and as such are the most affecting tracks on the record. On the latter, the vocal sounds like it's pleading thus:

"Sufjan, follow your heart
Follow the flame, or fall on the floor
Sufjan, the panic inside
The murdering ghost that you cannot ignore"

The album ends on the 25minute opus "Impossible Soul", a blend of the electronica, a bit of R&B, a touch of autotune, that triumphant chorus of voices, before fading out with some lovely finger-picking on the acoustic guitar - which in fact bookends the record with an acoustic intro/outtro.

The crescendo of voices that's found on a few of the songs seems to pull Sufjan out of the emotional introspection he finds himself in on the majority of songs, and points him towards hope.

This record seems like it was close to never being made during moments of existential crisis suffered by Sufjan Stevens over the past year, but it seems that his belief in his own talent, belief in his own higher power, and belief in the power of the long-playing record pulled him through - and gave us this record; a magnificent achievement and evidence once again that Sufjan Stevens is an immensely talented individual and we should treasure him greatly.

Great musical moments captured on film, part two

Continuing on with the series no-one's talking about, Great Musical Moments Captured On Film (or GMMCOF) moves on to something a bit more modern than The Band with..........


.............Sonic Youth on Gilmore Girls! That's right, Sonic Youth! On Gilmore Girls!

Well, not so much Sonic Youth as Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, with their daughter Coco. They perform a version of "What a Waste" from the Rather Ripped album in the final episode of the sixth season, "Partings".

Watch it here! And stop that jumping right now!

Of course, the big talking point of this episode wasn't Lorelei Gilmore making the mistake of going off with Christopher and ruining what she had with the perma-capped Luke, but that Sonic Youth were stepping all over turf belonging to the town troubadour played by Grant Lee Phillips of Grant Lee Buffalo fame. How dare they! Grant Lee Buffalo were a greatly underrated band, so please enjoy below two versions of "Lone Star Song":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA3Gq-Z3gRg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgyYcdVZj9Y

What next for Sonic Youth? Being the subject of excoriating comments from Steve Albini, that's what:

“They chose to join the mainstream culture and become a foot soldier for that culture’s encroachment into my neck of the woods by acting as scouts. I thought it was crass and I thought it reflected poorly on them. I still consider them friends and their music has its own integrity, but that kind of behavior—I can’t say that I think it’s not embarrassing for them…. Had Sonic Youth not done what they did I don’t know what would have happened—the alternative history game is kind of silly. But I think it cheapened music quite a bit. It made music culture kind of empty and ugly and was generally a kind of bad influence.”

Ouch. Should make for a chilly atmosphere backstage at the forthcoming New Year's Eve ATP Strange Days extravaganza. Still, no-one does comedy like Steve Albini:

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Great musical moments captured on film....

....Part 1: The Band in The Last Waltz.

In a perfect world free of reuniting purely for the cash, (hello Sex Pistols, The Eagles and, controversially, Pixies. Yeah. I said it.) The Band's "last"* concert at the Winterland ballroom in San Francisco would undoubtedly go down as the greatest ever final gig of all time.

Captured for posterity by Martin Scorcese, The Band - Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko - came together for one final show replete with guests including Neil Young (with half of Colombia up his nose), Joni Mitchell, The Staples Singers, Bob Dylan (obviously) and Ringo Starr (less obviously). It resulted in the gloriously wonky "Helpless", sublime versions of "Up On Cripple Creek" and "The Weight" and some bonkers/insightful interviews with the likes of Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, both clearly suffering the effects of various substances. Still, the late Danko remains effortlessly cool throughout the entire proceedings.

It's hard to pick one moment from the film to show off below. I could have gone for one of Levon Helm's vocal performances that mark him down as one of THE great voices in music, Richard Manuel's tartan suits, one of bandleader Robbie Robertson's solos, Danko singing "It Makes No Difference", or Garth Hudson's hair flapping about as he hunches over the organ.....However, I went for the moment that opens the film - Danko, as cool as ever, playing cutthroat at the pool table, and then The Band encoring with what should have been the last song they ever played live, a cover of the Motown standard "Don't Do It". Enjoy.



More from Great musical moments soon.....

This post is for Solomon Burke. Rest in peace, big man.


* The Band split after this concert (1976) but reformed in 1983 without the driving force of Robbie Robertson. They limped on as far as 1999, but lost Richard Manuel to suicide in 1986 after years of problems with alcohol, and in 1999 the tragic death of Rick Danko, probably as a result of years of drug abuse, led to The Band breaking up, this time for good.