Jam of the day, an awesome but sad music video, and WYEP: Fanfarlo / "Shiny Things"

Artist: Fanfarlo
Album: Rooms Filled With Light
Song: "Shiny Things"
Released: February 28, 2012
Label: Canvasback Records

I missed the Fanfarlo show at Mr. Small's on Sunday night but was lucky enough to sneak into a last-minute admission to their live session at WYEP's studio on Monday afternoon. Lisa and I showed up right at 1:00 and were ushered into the studio as the live session was just about to kick off. Cindy Howes was up near the stage and the forty or so seats were mostly taken so we stood near the back. I smiled at the couple with their two small children also standing in the back and at the sweet old man who ducked underneath the reach of my phone while walking by me even though I was just checking my email and not taking a photograph at the time.

Fanfarlo sounded absolutely amazing. Their songs, on record, have been hit-or-miss with me, feeling like a little too over-produced twee, hyper-arranged, orchestral pop tunes to really hit me hard … but I rescind those complaints formally now. I'm a Fanfarlo fan. Part of that transformation was the band's demeanor during the interview. They were humorous, personable, off-beat, and decidely exactly the opposite of the kind of high-minded, erudite, scholarly popsters I had in mind based on their songs. Maybe I was way too pre-judgmental about their music and their image, but hey, I take it all back. Their songs now sound perfectly catchy and engaging to me, and knowing there are affable and genuinely interesting individuals behind it all … that just adds to the appeal.

The standout track of the half-hour live session was the last number, "Shiny Things". Cindy introduced the song by talking to the band about the music video, which quite literally (and quasi-violently and decidedly-creepily) portrays the song's discussion of greed and ambition and retribution and … well, now I'm kinda spoiling the imagery and surprises therein. Watch for yourself and prepare to be fucking amazed and enthralled. I can't look away from this video, even on my third straight viewing now, never mind the fact that this song is amazing. As Cindy mentioned in the interview, too, this video is incredibly sad while being absolutely awesome.

Fanfarlo / "Shiny Things" / Rooms Filled With Light / dir. Tim Nackashi

Here's a photo from the studio session. I really like their studio and I'll make it a point to go back there more often. Would you believe that this was my first time visiting WYEP's interior? Seriously! I've been in that neighborhood dozens of times for Club Café shows or hanging out at the Beehive, but I'd never actually been inside WYEP's building. It was super nice.

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Fanfarlo on the web: / Website / Facebook / Twitter / Wikipedia
Buy Rooms Filled With Light: Band site / Insound / Amazon / iTunes / eMusic

Jam of the day: "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore"

Artist: The Velvet Underground
Album: Live At The Gymnasium 1967 (live bootleg)
Song: "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore"

There is no other band for which I will so fervently track down bootlegs than The Velvet Underground. I was super late to the party on The VU (my friend introduced them to me in college—sophomore year, I think) but I was really drawn to them and scoured the web for anything I could find. I got ripped CD copies of their studio LPs from said friend, including a version of the Live 1969 album that has a 30-second long skipping section during "New Age" that is, at this point, so much a part of the song for me that when I played that version on vinyl when that friend visited me last month we both thought it sounded really odd for some reason. Yeah, we listened to it that much. I remember finding some freakin' .ra files or something crazy of some live show in Cleveland, I think, from 1969 that included a sweet jam of "Can't Stand It". See, I still remember this, even though I've long since lost track of the file itself, let alone the source. I bought the CD box set version of The Bootleg Series, Volume 1: The Quine Tapes when it came out, and that may very well be the last CD I bought. I really can't remember, but that was also at a time in my life when I hardly ever spent money on music. Obviously, things have changed greatly since then.

So, a couple years ago, a bootleg surfaced of recordings of The VU from early 1967 at The Gymnasium, a NYC venue. I somehow missed out on that hot news item until like 4 months ago, when I spotted the album on some blog post about the best internet bootlegs of all time, when I downloaded it and listened. It's the grungiest, garage-iest, and rocking-est that The VU can possibly be, really, and featues early versions of three album cuts ("I'm Waiting For The Man" and "Run, Run, Run" and "Sister Ray") and a previously-released B-side ("Guess I'm Falling In Love", an instrumental version of which appears on Another View, and a regular version of which appears on the Peel Slowly and See box set) and … the topic of discussion: "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore", a track that appears nowhere else in The VU's vast canon! Hot diggity doggety dag! I've jammed that album a number of times in the last few months after downloading it (which you can download here or here) and they are all awesome versions of these songs. But that is the only reason I would know the song "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore".

Imagine my surprise, then, when I'm sitting at Jitters, in Shadyside, just three or four days ago, when this very song comes on over the house speakers, on the barista's playlist! I started humming/singing along, and I really wasn't quite sure why. I knew instantly it was a VU song, but I couldn't even remember that it was from this bootleg. Imagine my even further surprise, then, when I'm at a concert earlier this evening (to see The Black Lips at Mr. Small's) and the opening band, Night Beats, announces, "This one's a cover song …" and launches right into a heady jam of this very song! I never even knew about this song until a few short months ago, then totally forgot about it, then was reminded of it twice within a week. That is coincidental, my friends (not ironic, mind you).

So in any event, behold, below, in static video but impressively plastic audio formats, The Velvet Underground's song, "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore".



Bonus! Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, as Dean & Britta, covered this song for their album 13 Most Beautiful … Songs For Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, which soundtrack a series of short films made by Andy Warhol consisting of closeup footage of some of the characters that hung around his "factory" back in the day, of which Lou Reed was a prominent member. For Lou's closeup footage, D & B cover this very tune. Check out that version below.



Oh, FWIW, the Night Beats version was all well and good, great for the live setting in which we were in, but for the most part a more "faithful" cover than D & B's version, which made me like it way more at the time, but slightly less now, in just-a-few-hours-even retrospect. So there's that.

Concert Review: The Walkmen / Japandroids / ARMS

Friday, October 22, 2010 at Mr. Small's

It's always nice to see a bill with three bands you know, let alone three bands you actually like, so I consider myself lucky to have seen all of these guys in one night. That said, there were the usual ups and downs of any concertgoing experience, but I think I had such high hopes for the show overall that it made the downs feel more downy. So if my review seems negative, take that with a shakerful of salt, because it actually was a really good show.

ARMS is a band that I had randomly found on eMusic last year somehow and I downloaded and have enjoyed their album Kids Aflame. They also recently released a free EP which is a solid continuation of their indie pop/rock shoegaze sound. At this show, they played six or so songs, most of which seemed to be from the new EP because I didn't recognize any of them. They had all four guys (drummer, two guitarists, and keyboards/synth) crammed into the very front of the stage in front of a couple towers of amps (all of which turned out to be later used by the Japandroids guitarist). They were all fairly energetic, but the keyboardist was really getting into it, dancing around while playing and shaking his body really fast (although that may have just been a requirement for hitting those sixteenth notes with the tambourine). Check out the video below of them playing "Emily Sue, Pt. 2" from their new EP live back in January 2010 to get an idea of what they're like. I really enjoyed their set and wish they'd had time to play more.



Next up was Japandroids, a band I'd seen back in October 2009 at Garfield Artworks and boy was that a fun show. I really like their debut album Post-Nothing, full of hooky guitar melodies and screaming, singalong vocals. I'm still amazed that it's just two guys making all that sound. The show at Garfield Artworks was fun because it's such a cramped space and a tiny stage, and their loud sound really catered well to that. But for this show, Mr. Small's is such a giant, spacious room with huge, high ceilings and I think it didn't suit their style as much. Also, singer Brian King had kinda lost his voice for some reason, and was drinking from a big mug of steaming tea (I presume) and so they couldn't really pull off those screaming vocals that I enjoy so very much. Instead, it was just drummer David Prowse doing the shouting and Brian doing some low, quieter vocals. They still sounded solid, and the drumming and guitar work were as awesome as ever, but when a group of six frat bros in the front row singing along to "Young Hearts Spark Fire" are competing with your volume level, you know you're in trouble. Overall, though, and barring the voice problems, I thought it was a good set of material from their album and from the string of singles (stringles?) they've been putting out this year. Oh, also, David totally broke his cymbal stand during a song and had to play the rest of it without that cymbal since it fell off. It was kinda neat to watch him strike the air where the cymbal used to be with his stick to keep time and not get tangled up. Thankfully, the drummer from The Walkmen lent him a replacement and the show went on. Check out this video of "Young Hearts Spark Fire" below to see them when they're on their game.



Finally, The Walkmen sauntered out and assumed their separate positions onstage and played a long set of songs, mostly new but some old, including one encore. The two overwhelming impressions I took away from their set was that singer Hamilton Leithauser has an amazing voice and that these guys practice a lot. They seemed so polished and professional that they didn't even need to look at each other. A song would end, they'd acknowledge the applause, and then they'd launch into the next one with little fanfare or pause. It was an impressive display, for sure, but I don't think I'm as much of a fanboy of their material as some other people I know are, so although I enjoyed the way in which they play music and I was thoroughly awe-struck by Hamilton's ability to just keep belting out those tunes, I found myself almost bored by the end of it. I think my friend Robert summarized that ennui best later on when someone said something like, "Oh, I really liked that song they played called ---whatever it was---" and he replied with, "Yeah, it was so good they played it 12 more times." Kinda harsh, maybe, but funny and not so inaccurate, really. I would have been fine with them playing a few less songs. I might have left with a more positive attitude towards them. Still, I have enjoyed listening to their latest album, Lisbon, but I'm afraid it will go the way of their other albums I've listened to: I'll play it through a dozen or so times within a month or two of getting it, and then forget about it until another one comes out. Ugh, like I said, I don't mean to sound negative. I did really enjoy the show as a whole; I'm mostly just quibbling about the fine line between great and fan-fucking-tastic. I found this video of them playing "The Rat" at the show. This was definitely a high point of the evening, a really high one, I'll give you that.



ARMS
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Daytrotter session

Japandroids
Website
MySpace
Wikipedia
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Artist page on Polyvinyl Records
Daytrotter session

The Walkmen
Website
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Daytrotter sessions 1, 2, 3

Concert review: Girls, Dum Dum Girls

Girls, Dum Dum Girls
Monday April 5 2010 at Mr. Small's
with Lisa, Jessie, Robert

The Dum Dum Girls rocked my world. I first heard their single "Jail La La" back in January, loved their sound, bought the 7", and marveled at the B-side track when I received the package at home and played it at 45 rpm straight into my ears: it's a molasses-laden version of The Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire", but mostly in the viscous sense with only a hint of sweetness. They opened their set at Mr. Small's with this cover song and I knew it would be a good show. The singer, Dee Dee, stared at the audience for most of their set with a deep glow in her eyes, and they all had a cultivated seriousness to their demeanors, dressed in goth black with black striped tights and dark, dark hair (except for the fire-red-headed bassist and the drummer with a big floppy hat [noted Jessie: "Hats are making a comeback!"]). Their songs live in the dark, fuzzy pop genre, with reverberating guitar strums crashing in waves over the beautiful (up to) three part female vocal harmonies, backed by a simple but driving drumbeat. I noticed the drummer seemed to have trouble with her monitor or sound system or something, which disturbed a couple of the songs and threw her off, alas. But no matter, the singer's amazingly spot-on-key vocals and penetrating stare and whimsical little guitar flails, plus the other guitarist's backing harmonies and focused playing were enough to distract my attention from the drummer's tribulations and the bassist's scary and robotic aloofness. Robert noted an obvious homogeneity of their sound, but that doesn't bother me; it's exactly what I want them to sound alike. Their full-length LP
"I Will Be" arrived in my mailbox only a week or so before the show and I had already listened to it at least 5 times by showtime. It's all-around solid, and it really showcases how well they've perfected their form in such a short time together as a band. I'm looking forward to more music from them, even if it does all sound the same.

Girls rocked the house (well, converted church), as well, but in a different way. I remember when their internet buzz really exploded last year, and I listened to a few of their songs and didn't really see what the big deal was. "Lust for Life" is irresistibly catchy and fun, but the others were just . . . underwhelming (i.e. "meh"). It turns out that their debut album, Album, really works better as a cohesive unit, and specifically in a live setting. Any one song is good enough, in its own right, but it's the amalgam of genre-blurring, multi-tempo, simple-yet-beautifully melodic songs that really makes this band good, not to mention the bare-facedly honest lyrics from Christopher Owens, no doubt due to his
crazy backstory. Their set veered from psychedelia-laden guitar riffs to crunchy blues to country twang to shoegaze solos just oozing with feedback. It was an all around super cool combo. Also, the crowd seemed rather sparse for this show, considering the apparent popularity of the band on the web. I stayed towards the front/middle of the stage for most of the show, whereas usually the front area of Mr. Small's is packed with teenagers and I end up hanging around the back area by the bar. This time, I got a chance to see both bands up close (standing a couple feet from the Girls singer during the Dum Dum Girls set, for instance) and really hear their lyrics.

Speaking of the Girls singer, he had an intriguing charismatic aloofness to him; he was very much involved in his music, not looking up too often and limiting between-song banter, but this made everyone (or, at least me) seem all the more interested in hearing what he had to say in his songs. Consider the heart-wrenching-cum-jubilant chorus of
"Hellhole Ratrace" (around the 1:00 mark in the video):
"And I don't wanna cry my whole life thru
I want to do some laughing too
So come on, come on, come on, come on and laugh with me
And I don't wanna die without shaking up a leg or two
Yeah I wanna do some dancing too
So come on, come on, come on, come on and dance with me"

Musically, in addition to the mix of sounds and styles, their rhythm section was fantastic. The drummer kept perfect time with lots of fills and flourishes, including a few drumstick twirls whenever he had more than a nanosecond of waiting to do and a few sections of songs where he played his kit with maracas. The bass player was also quite good, and he's a big part of the songwriting duo with the singer, too. Their overall set was really good and enjoyable, except for a super loud section at the end, which a few
other Pittsburgh music
blogs have pointed out in more detail. Other than that, it was great, and they came back for a three song encore, even for a smallish crowd.

In my post-show notes from later that night, I wrote this sentence:
"Reminded me how simplicity can be great if you're talented, and how "cool" has so many different definitions."
I'm not entirely sure what I meant by that, but there it is.

Dum Dum Girls:
"I Will Be" live @ SXSW 2010
"Hey Sis" live @ SXSW 2010
"Be My Baby" (Ronettes cover) live
"Bhang Bhang" live @ Pabst Theater, Milwaukee on 04/11/10

Girls:
"Laura" music video
Bunch of videos from a live set @ The Blue Note in Columbia, MO on 2/8/2010, only a few weeks before this show (should give you a good sense of what this show was like):
"Hellhole Ratrace" and "Morning Light"
"Ghostmouth"
"Goddamn"

Show review from Spinner magazine posted the next day.