Archive for December, 2008

Fol Chen “Cable TV”

The protagonist of “Cable TV” is dead broke, but has just enough money to treat her sweetheart to an day of relative luxury at a cheap motel in the middle of the desert. The song is delivered in a familiar sort of flat, cool-girl deadpan, but it’s less about conveying a condescending distance from the character and her situation, and more about communicating something along the lines of “Hey, I know this is ridiculous, but let’s make our own fun, even if it involves watching television in a place other than our apartment.” If anything, the ironic humor only makes the song sweeter by contrasting tight financial limitations with the genuine comfort and affection of the couple, particularly when they start dancing in their underwear to old Janet Jackson hits. In other words, fun and love trump glamor and wealth.

Pre-order it from Asthmatic Kitty.

R.E.M. “Harborcoat” (Live in Toronto, 1983)

I’ve already written about this song at length, so let’s just for a moment focus on sound of this particular recording, and by extension, the entire concert included with the new reissue of Murmur. One of the most appealing elements of R.E.M.’s earliest recordings is the way Peter Buck’s chords and notes ring and chime with this sort of disarming clarity, as if you are hearing something precise and impossibly clean in contrast with the muddled, unmistakably human quality of Michael Stipe’s voice. That sound comes through in this live performance, but it is filtered through the energy and urgency of being young dudes playing in a rock club, resulting in slightly mutated versions of by now incredibly familiar songs. Today, Murmur and Reckoning seem like records that have somehow always existed despite belonging to a particular time and place, but this live disc is a good reminder that they were the work of a hungry young band who just happened to become brilliant craftsmen only a few years into their career.

Buy it from Insound.

Also, as a bonus for you, I’ve set up a little R.E.M.-centric contest with the people at Insound. Basically, if you go here, you can enter to win a copy of the new R.E.M. coffee table book Hello: Photographs by David Belisle, which is one of the featured items in their holiday gift guide. There’s never been a better time to support indie retail, so go check that out.

Marnie Stern @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 11/28/2008 and Santo’s Party House 11/30/2008 (same setlist both shows)

Transformer / The Crippled Jazzer / Shea Stadium / Steely / Precious Metal / Vibrational Match / Prime / Ruler / Grapefruit / Vault / Every Single Line Means Something

When you consider the fact that a lot of rock and roll musicians don’t play with very many other musicians, and often spend most if not all of their career working with players who they stumbled into by chance — childhood friends, local acquaintances, people who answer ad listings — actual creative chemistry can be sort of miraculous. I’m not talking about just getting along and being able to play together competently — I mean, like, needle-in-a-haystack, artistic soulmate, complete-each-other chemistry. I’m talking about what Marnie Stern and Zach Hill have going for them.

In an alternate universe, Marnie Stern plays with some musicians who aren’t up to her level, and it drags her down. She has to compromise a bit, or maybe it’s the same, and it’s sloppier, or just less nimble. In another alternate universe, she’s paired with players who are just as good or better than she is, but their vibe is more uptight, and it saps some of the joy and thrill power from her songs. In yet another alternative universe, Marnie Stern never gets it sorted with other musicians, and she never really gets anywhere on her own. In our universe, she works with Zach Hill, and he matches her creativity, energy, and spirit without overshadowing her personality.

In concert, they lock in with their second guitarist Mark Shippey on some tight compositions, but despite the demanding nature of the individual parts, they never seem to be working hard. In fact, if you watch their body language, they seems almost freakishly casual. Hill in particular has an exaggerated looseness to his movement that disconnects somewhat from the precision of his performance. At many times through each of the shows, he looked more like a guy hanging out around a drum kit than a dude mercilessly pounding out fills and switching up beats. Stern’s on stage persona is a wonderful blend of silliness, enthusiasm, and intensity. Even when she’s clearly sick, as she was in the Manhattan show, she communicates this pure excitement for rocking out that in my experience is surprisingly rare. It’s so nice to watch a band have a good time, and to be fully aware that what they’re doing is awesome, and that it’s even more awesome that they get to do it.

(This is totally embarrassing in light of how I wrote this review, but uh, that actually wasn’t Zach Hill. Check the comments.)

Marnie Stern “Transformer”

For about two hours after the show in Brooklyn, I couldn’t get the main hook from “Transformer” out of my head: “I cannot be all these things to you, it’s true.” The lyric is terrific in print, but as with any good song, the music adds a meaning words alone could never convey. It’s all in the way “iiiiit’s truuue!” extends out slightly, as if climbing a steep incline and dropping like a roller coaster. There is anticipation and thrill, but also this maybe-unintentional nod to Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill, and having it roll right back down. The thing is, “Transformer” is a song that confronts futility and limitation head-on, and in doing so, sorta games the system, and finds a way toward triumph. In other words, when she sings “it’s true!,” you kinda get the sense that this time, against all odds, Sisyphus wins, and the boulder doesn’t just stay in place at the top of the hill, but instead rolls down the other side and becomes someone else’s problem.

Buy it from Amazon.