A short piece about brevity.

I’m back home visiting my family at the moment. My dad’s overseas until next week, so my mum had a spare subscription ticket for a chamber music concert tonight. Seeing no good reason to say no, when she offered the ticket to me I accepted it.

Apart from knowing that it was classical chamber music, I had no idea what was going to be played at the concert. My mum didn’t either, having forgotten to check the program. As it turned out, it was a solo recital by a very fine pianist named Stephen Hough. The concert, as is typical at a classical chamber music concert, was divided into two halves; and it was the second half that was of particular interest to me.

It was comprised entirely of short waltzes from the nineteenth century. The waltz aspect is, to me, not important: what struck me was that the longest of these pieces was ten minutes long, while the majority were between two and five minutes.

This isn’t particular unusual at a rock concert, but classical music has for some time now been obsessed with the lengthy, especially in live performance: sonatas, string quartets, concerti. I’m no expert on classical music, so I don’t know why this might be, but I think it’s symptomatic of a larger mindset: despite the fact that the first lesson any of us learn in high-school English classes is “quality, not quantity”, by and large we persist in equating length, or size, or general overwhelmingness, with value for money. The idea that something only a couple of minutes long can move you just as much as something twenty or thirty minutes long is anathema in Western society these days.

It wasn’t always so: just look back at the early days of rock ’n’ roll. Buddy Holly’s songs were all around the two minute mark. Admittedly that was largely because of restrictions imposed by recording technology, but have a listen to “That’ll Be the Day”: it has an intro, two verses, four choruses, a guitar solo, and an outro. All in two minutes and sixteen seconds. And, it could be argued, as far as rock ’n’ roll goes it hasn’t been bettered yet.

The punks recognised the value in brevity, of course. But it’d be hard not to recognise it when you’re living in the seventies and you’re surrounded by people singing fifteen-minute long acid-flashbacks about dragons or aliens or whatever the hell the prog rockers were going on about. Punk, however, was largely about the short, sharp shock. But short doesn’t have to be sharp.

Back to tonight’s concert. That second half was all waltzes, and they were all short, and they were all composed in the nineteenth century, but other than that there was a great deal of diversity between them: from the outright romanticism of Chopin, to the relative sparseness of Saint-Saens, to the dreaminess of Debussy, to the exuberance of Liszt. It was a welcome reminder of just how staggeringly massive and diverse is the classical repertoire of short solo piano works. It was a delight and a pleasure to hear a few of them given an airing for a change.

Brief Thoughts

Gonna switch things up a little and post all Twitter style tonight. As usual asterisks denote leaked tracks versus actually-released stuff. HERE GOES:

• "North American Scum (Onanistic Dub)*" has the goofiest, most insidiously brain-penetrating bassline James Murphy has ever concocted. It doesn't sound anything like the original but if you like LCD's dancy tracks you'll dig this one.

• Ellen Allien's Fabric 34 mix is pretty darned spiffy. My favorite bits are Estro's "Driven (Jamie Jones Pacific Mix)" and the segue into Apparat's "Arcadia"- the pseudo-Reggaeton rhythm melting into "Arcadia's" signature drum loop is actually an improvement on the original, something I didn't think possible.

• Still diggin' the new Wolves in the Throne Room. The last track gets better with every listen.

• I think I'm the only person on earth who isn't really that into the new Animal Collective album. I fully expect Sean Bateman to declare me infidel for this.

• Conversely, holy SHIT the new Efterklang record is good. Expect a more in-depth look at it soon.

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
Warner (1978)

Obviously this isn’t a new release by any extent of the imagination. This is the first in a series of articles discussing a band or an album that I consider to be crucial to the development of the music many of us enjoy. At one point it was known as ‘Punk’, then sometimes ‘Indie’ or ‘Underground’, then eventually ‘Alternative’. Whatever label you want to give the bands that exist and have existed just off centre of the mainstream. It’s basically an attempt to paint a broader picture of the music we like. You’ll also notice that this album and others I will mention was released on a major record label. Before the 80s, these labels were often every bit as dynamic, brave and experimental as the independent labels we usually champion today. Crucially, bands like Talking Heads were seldom pressured into making an album or indeed, to change their sound or image to fit in with a popular trend. Though creative co-operation between artist and label does occasionally still happen in the present day, these success stories are few and far between. I’d ask everyone to judge these bands on the quality of the music they released rather than by their financial decisions.

Even if you’re vaguely aware of Talking Heads, the rock band formed in Manhattan during the mid-70s, chances are you won’t have heard much of the earlier records. Indeed, during the 80s, Talking Heads became a very successful band indeed, with several platinum albums and not one but two feature films to their name. They were essentially the very first band to ride on the cusp of the MTV publicity wave, sadly just as their music was becoming somewhat banal. Thus, it is difficult to imagine Talking Heads as a young band in 1978 on the brink of releasing a follow-up album to a debut record that had made only the slightest ripple in the mainstream pond. Furthermore, beyond the ambition and psychological pressures the quartet faced, there was also the desire to make amends for the relative failure of the first album. Somehow the group had found themselves recording their debut album with renowned disco hit-maker Tony Bongiovi, who had treated the band as something of an annoyance. Even worse, he had tampered with their songs by adding strings, horn charts and female backing singers. Part of songwriter David Byrne must have been at least a little bit glad that the album had tanked. Now he had an excuse to call the shots for the next record.

The first decision the band made was to bring in Brian Eno to produce their new album. Although Eno was born in Suffolk, England he was hardly the quintessential Englishman. An art-school graduate with an avowed interest in the avant garde, as well as Asian and African music, he had fallen into producing after leaving London-based band Roxy Music just before they achieved massive chart success. He had since then released a handful of extraordinary solo records ranging from the ambient to the downright maniacal. He had also worked with David Bowie on the acclaimed ‘Berlin’ trilogy, which had brought him to the attention of the American media. Fortunately for Talking Heads, he hit it off with the similarly-minded Byrne and was delighted to accept an offer to work on a new record. Immediately, Eno put his foot down and insisted the band traveled to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. His reasons for doing so were two-fold. Primarily, he coveted the studio’s state of the art MCI Mixer. It also couldn’t hurt that he was talking the band where the prying eyes of their record label and management were unlikely to follow. Both the band and Eno shared an art-school background and subsequently, commercial success was hardly a priority. All parties involved were much more interested in creating unique and timeless music.

At the height of their powers and with the right producer in tow, Talking Heads were certainly the band to achieve such a lofty goal. The roots of the band could be found in the untidy garage rock of David Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz’s previous group The Artistics. When the duo had moved from Rhode Island to New York, they started creating music using the same methods with which they had approached painting or sculpture at RISD. When unable to find a bassist in tune with their clinical style, Frantz’s girlfriend Tina Weymouth rose to the challenge. As a trio, the group created an incredibly lean and sparse variation of garage rock as perpetuated by fellow New Yorkers Television. Another crucial influence was the Modern Lovers, a Boston band lead by an incredibly straight-laced young man called Jonathan Richman. Like the Heads, Richman was enamoured by the simplicity of roots rock’n’roll and often sang about ostensibly mundane subjects such as haircuts and asking girls out to the movies. Whilst the Heads appreciated Television and the Lovers, they crafted their own sound by attaching the minimalist approach to a rhythm section which was schooled on the hard funk of Parliament and Funkadelic.

Frantz and Weymouth were a truly remarkable foil for Byrne’s songwriting. Frantz devoured Caribbean and African music which placed enormous emphasis on tight syncopation and dense polyrhythmic devices. Aside from keeping perfect metronomic time, his fills were totally unique in the spectrum of rock music. Likewise, Weymouth’s initially novice-like command of the bass wove itself into the fabric of Byrne’s songs. When arranging songs, the basslines would be necessarily simple so Weymouth could grasp the notation easily enough. After a few short months of rehearsals, she had developed a style which was completely her own – both brittle and funky. Over the top of this rock solid rhythmic foundation, David Byrne would play guitar and sing in a thin, off-kilter voice. Byrne’s songs were packed with nervous energy, characterised by his chattering guitar lines and neurotic observations. Byrne’s lyrics were also outside the box, as influenced by his literary heroes. Lou Reed had pioneered this trick in his group the Velvet Underground but whereas Reed was obsessed with the seedier end of fiction, Byrne took his influence from Dadaism, Gertrude Stein, Pop Art and non-fictional works of philosophy and psychology. The culmination of these factors produced a thoroughly modern sound but after making a few experimental trips into the studio and securing a contract with Sire Records, the group decided they needed a fourth person to flesh out the sound. Fortunately, they managed to entice former Modern Lovers keyboardist Jerry Harrison into the band. Slightly older and more wary of the potential pitfalls of the music industry, Harrison provided both a sense of experience and filled out the band’s sound with keyboard and auxiliary guitar.

If anyone was going to draw out the best performances from this group it was Brian Eno. His choice of studio and comparatively relaxed attitude to recording suited the band. Whereas Tony Bongiovi had practiced traditional studio practices such as isolating the band from each other during takes and enforcing rigorous retakes, Eno was content to let the band find a natural groove at their own pace. With this laissez-faire approach, the band recorded the basic tracks in the first five days. Crucially, Eno sensed that the band’s energy was reliant on playing together in the same room as a single unit and recorded them live to tape. He would then use his own electronic toys and the 24 track MCI mixing desk to manipulate the sound of each instrument individually. Although Eno happily described himself as a ‘non-musician’, he was an excellent sound doctor and something of a sonic innovator. With the use of the 24 track mixing desk he could change each note to his satisfaction. Not only could he play with the volume of each instrument, he could adjust the frequencies of each instrument at any given time. He could make Tina Weymouth’s bass sound as dense as a minor earthquake. He could make the guitars of David Byrne and Jerry Harrison mesh like the whirring blades of a precision mechanical saw. On most songs he crushed Byrnes vocals down in the mix to sound like the rantings of paranoid nerd. Most importantly, Eno recognised that Talking Heads were a band of rhythm players and mixed them as such.

In the 60s and 70s as popular rock music developed into a commercial behemoth, the common practices of mixing had changed completely. Pop music relies on a the power of a simple melody, sometimes two or three. In order to sell records effectively, you needed to insert this melody into your listeners consciousness as quickly as possible. Traditionally, a melody would be produced by a singer or sometimes the guitar player. In recording terms, these melodies are sometimes known as ‘Hooks’. If you look at the entire history of rock music, chances are you’ll be able to recall the hook of most commercially successful songs. Thus, almost all pop music will have the singer or guitarist at the very top of the mix. These two sounds will often dominate the range of frequencies, though you might not notice unless you are looking for it. With the melody at the top of the mix, the lower frequencies of the rhythm section were pushed down and compressed. Back in 1978, this was still a very common practice for all commercial rock music. However, funk revolutionaries such as Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament had reversed this trend to reflect their roots in African tribal music. They re-introduced a focus on the rhythmic groove above any other instruments in the mix, even the vocals. Brian Eno also subscribed to this theory of mixing. On the new Talking Heads record he placed the rhythm section at the very top of the mix.

The opening song ‘Thank You For Sending Me an Angel’ introduces us to the hypnotic treadmill effect Eno created with the band’s instruments. The rolling, repetitive groove seems to be in full gallop and yet remains perfectly stationary for several bars. An overdub of Harrison playing the steel rims of his snare provides an occasional counterpoint for the busy syncopation – something that was to become a hallmark of Eno and Talking Heads’ collaborations. The following track ‘With Our Love’ is the first real hint of the album’s classic status. Weymouth hits an unrelenting locked groove that is near impossible not to dance to. The guitars chime in absolutely perfect unison creating a tension which eventually breaks into a choppy percussive vibe. Brilliantly, Eno tucks the occasional keyboard flourishes in behind the guitars and tunes them into what is essentially the same pitch. This results in a beautiful streamlining effect that contributes a sense of overall fluidity to the song’s otherwise abrupt changes. A distant synthesizer - another Eno trademark - creeps into the mix as Byrne flusters over the inherent complications of emotional attachment. “Forget the trouble,” he barks. “That’s the trouble”.

The next song ‘The Good Thing’ confirms the running theme of the conflict between reason and emotion. Byrne had been reading a book about Chinese rhetoric when he had penned the lyrics and wanted a Communist People’s Choir effect on the backing vocals. Eno drafted in Weymouth and all of the female employees of Compass Point, credited in the liner notes as ‘Tina and the Typing Pool’, to sing with Byrne. The finished article sounds like a cross between a self-improvement pledge and an utterly rational statement of intent. “As we economize, efficiency is multiplied,” intones the choir with Byrne as a keyboard chirps just below. After a couple of minutes the song breaks pace and the band once again rides an incredible Weymouth bassline until the outro. “Cut out the weakness, reinforce what is strong,” yells Byrne in a fitting encapsulation of Talking Heads’ compositional technique. Next track ‘Warning Sign’ was a survivor from Byrne’s days in the Artistics. He tells us of an impending omen but neglects to inform us of any helpful details. Instead he talks about his hair. This song was written when Byrne was interested in Cybernetics, a mathematical theory that allows one to predict the future using probability. Eno disguised Byrne’s voice by adding ghostly synth rinses just before and after each line. The resulting song is ambiguous to the point of Dadaism.

On ‘The Girls Want to Be With the Girls’ Byrne examines the conflict of interests between the sexes as he sees it. “Girls are getting into abstract analysis,” he explains. “They want to make an intuitive leap.” The guitar sits in perfect harmony with the keyboard until the outlandish breakdown following the chorus. The guitar line weaves into the stratosphere and the keyboard gradually ascends in pursuit. It’s as if the entire psychedelic era is being compacted into 20 seconds of music and then immediately discarded as a dead end. In ‘Found a Job’ Byrne takes minimalist idealism to it’s logical extreme. Bob and Judy can’t decide to watch on the television and Byrne can’t help but wonder if they might be better of making their own shows. The crass naivety of the lyric is complemented beautifully by a single-finger keyboard solo during the extended outro. Side One ends and the record only gets more peculiar from here onwards.

Side Two of More Songs About Buildings and Food is one of the best sides of vinyl you will ever hear on headphones. If you don’t have headphones, try to get exactly between the speakers and bring the bass up to a reasonable level. The opening track ‘Artists Only’ is another surrealist oddity that sees Byrne taking the role of a dementedly self-obsessed painter. “I don’t have to prove that I am creative!” He admonishes by way of warning. After a deceptively calm introduction, the Heads beat a jogging pace before hitting the brakes and building patiently on an undulating Weymouth bassline. The guitar chatters in one channel whilst a decaying piano motif tinkles in the other. Eventually Frantz crashes down on his drums and the band lurch back into the song. Even this sturm und drang seems ill preparation for the compacted funk of ‘I’m Not in Love’, which is the most relentlessly up-tempo song of the band’s career. It’s also the most narcissistic song Byrne ever penned. “Please respect my opinions,” he spits. “They will be respected some day”. Eventually he releases a synthesized yelp and as the band race to the finish line Eno has the entire group sounding like the cacophony of a single, gigantic percussive machine. Guitar left detaches after a moment and starts to spit fractured chords back into the fray before Weymouth’s bass anchors the song back to the ground.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of the collaboration is the throbbing menace of ‘Stay Hungry’. After his prior declaration that he was beyond love, Byrne is finally ready to make to engage in physical intimacy. “I think that we can signify our love now,” he concedes in the opening line. “Ooh Girl, you can initiate an impulse of love.” Predictably, Byrne approaches the physical act of love with the same neurotic precision with which he regarded the emotion from afar. The song rides on the best Tina Weymouth bassline yet and by comparison the guitars sound like metallic pens scratching on sheets of glass. Gradually a synthesizer crescendo wails into life and Byrne solemnly intones his closing observations of the brief encounter. “Here’s that rhythm again, Here’s my shoulder-blade”. Fittingly, the title of the song was appropriated from a health and fitness magazine. It was characteristic of Byrne to colour his raciest song with something as sterile as a weight-lifting maxim.

On the oddity that is Talking Heads’ cover of ‘Take Me to the River’, Byrne is contemplating sex again. When the legendary soul-singer Al Green wrote the song he instilled the lyrics with a primitive, Southern Baptist vibe. The victim of the song is hounded by a girl who steals his money and cigarettes but won’t allow him to consummate their union. On the original, Green managed to capture the confusion of unrequited adolescent lust, which David Byrne translates into the tortured ramblings of a love-sick nerd. Eno literally takes the song to the river and throws it in at the deep end. The entire track sounds like it is immersed in fifteen feet of water, complete with sonar-like keyboard pings. Rather than increase the tempo towards the pay-off, Eno used a volume limiter to give the impression that the song was gradually getting louder. The odd song out is undoubtedly the closing track ‘The Big Country’, an acoustic affair replete with slide guitar. David Byrne takes a flight over the United States and observes them with an objective eye. One might initially be deceived that the song is a tribute to Byrne’s adopted homeland until the chorus reveals a darker purpose. “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me,” announces Byrne. “I wouldn’t live there, no Siree.” Byrne found a kindred spirit in the form of legendary rock critic Lester Bangs. “Finally, somebody said it: there is nothing beyond Jersey;” wrote the scribe in agreement. “Jack Kerouac made all that shit up, he was a science fiction writer.”

Although More Songs About Buildings and Food garnered the band further critical acclaim, it still didn’t push the band into the mainstream despite charting in the top thirty with the single version of ‘Take Me to the River’. It did however substantially outsell the previous record to the extent that the band would go on to make another two extraordinary albums with Brian Eno. The next record Fear of Music would push the band into an the African influenced odyssey which would culminate in the prog-funk monstrosity Remain In Light. This record would produce a single in the shape of ‘Once in a Lifetime’, which catapulted the band to stardom with the help of a video in heavy circulation on MTV. While it is true that Talking Heads certainly went on to make more commercially successful and arguably more ambitious music during the 80s, personally I consider More Songs About Buildings and Food to be the band’s crowning achievement. Simply put, there have been very few rock albums that managed to cram such unabashed innovation into two sides of vinyl and you could do a lot worse than finding out for yourself.

Tommy Dski

Wolves in the Throne Room- Two Hunters*

I'm not the biggest black metal fan in the entire world. There are some aspects of it I like (intense, melodic guitars, agonized raw-throated screaming, nontraditional song structures) and some aspects I don't (generally poor recording quality*, agonized raw-throated screaming, utterly ridiculous thematic elements, silly makeup). I'm not completely obsessed with first-wave black metal bands, I don't think Burzum's first album is the greatest thing in history, and I like to think I'm not a complete misanthrope. So there are your caveats.

Wolves in the Throne Room are one of my favorite bands in this genre. They write long (the average length of a WitTR track has to be over 10 minutes), intricate songs that lope through vast stretches of musical landscape while still remaining firmly in black metal timbre and territory. One thing most listeners (and writers) overlook when talking about black metal is the melody firmly entrenched in all the gloom and doom, and Wolves in the Throne Room deliver memorable riffs and melodies in spades. Finally, these guys actually sound decent on record! The afforementioned poor recording quality so closely associated with "true" black metal does the bands no favors, and it's refreshing to hear someone like WitTR willing to buck the tradition and go for hi-fidelity (or perhaps more accurately, ANY fidelity) sound.

Two Hunters begins with "Dia Artio," a keyboard-driven overture that evokes nothing so much as French shoegazer electronicists M83. It wasn't what I was expecting to begin the album, but it's a cool song and it works in context. "Behold the Vastness and Sorrow" follows, a 12-minute tirade of harmonized guitars, maniacal-yet-song-appropriate drumming, and screeched, echo-drenched vocals.

"Cleansing" can be taken as a development of "Dia Artio," as it takes the keyboards, subdued guitar and drumming of the album opener and adds a gorgeous female vocal line that's part-Gregorian and part aria. It's the one moment of sheer beauty on this record and works as a brilliant pinnacle towering above all the blastbeats and frantic screaming, which the track quickly (by this band's standards, anyway) dissolves back into.

"I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots" is the high point of the album and the band's catalogue to date. It begins with a melancholy clean guitar line that quickly bursts into a flurry of blastbeats and distortion that intensifies until it hits the first of several peaks in the song - a shift into half-time and the most memorable harmony riff on the album, punctuated by an opening scream that, to my ears, personifies despair (as pretentious as that sounds). A third of the way through, the rhythm section drops out and a single guitar churns through the chords signalling the next section of the song. Melodically it resembles nothing so much as a Godspeed You! Black Emperor track with the dials running in the red and the found-sound field recordings replaced with a suicidal hysteric. From here on out it's tribal drumming and a chord progression that echoes the darker moments of Failure...with hand-claps. Hand-claps. And it works! The final third of the track is introduced with a delicate finger-picked guitar line that explodes into, you guessed it, more distortion, harmonized guitar, and screaming. It all ends not with a bang, but a whimper- the female vocals from "Cleanse" return over the diminishing guitar, crooning a few more melancholy notes as everything fades out.

Probably my favorite thing about this record and band in general is their skill at transitioning from riff to riff and section to section within each song. It's virtually the only way I can think of to make a 15-minute metal song interesting, let alone an album full of 'em, and WitTR excel at it. The female vocals on "Cleansing," the keyboards liberally and effectively spread throughout the record, the superior production (hey it doesn't sound like total shit! WOW), and the stunning climax and denouement of the final track make Two Hunters Wolves in the Throne Room's best release thus far, and one of the most enjoyable metal records I've heard in 2007.

*Black metal diehards will no doubt castigate me for this. I don't care. Music should be decently-recorded whenever possible. Black metal recorded on a four-track in a cave isn't more black, it just sounds like shit.

Stars - In our Bedroom After the War *
(Arts & Crafts international)

Another week, another Canadian Indie rock band. Ironically, I actually did spend several evenings this week pushing down bubbles under wallpaper so I am reasonably well prepared. This is the fourth record by Montreal based quintet Stars after the relative success of previous record Set Yourself On Fire. After the disappointment of The New Pornographers' rather limp Challengers, this album is actually something of a relief. Firstly, it was released over iTunes months before the vinyl or compact disc will be available in stores. This is a step in the right direction for music as far as I am concerned. Anything that helps kill off the compact disc as the de rigueur musical format. For too long have you reigned, oh bothersome shiny coaster. Take your eighty minute capacity and your plastic spindles. Your obsolescence is a step in the right direction. Take the mainstream high-street retailer with you. You shall not be missed.

The other relief is that the album artwork is a drastic improvement over the UK pressing of Set Yourself On Fire. I know this is petty and belated but I had to hold out for an import because the cover was a completely unnecessary shot of a topless woman clenching her breasts. I don’t know much about marketing but I can also tell you this band is good enough without pandering to the Mötley Crüe dollar. The final relief is that although this is another highly polished album in the vein of the recent Rilo Kiley and New Porn efforts, this one actually works. Stars were never reliant on the rock aspect of their sound and the slip into glossy electro-pop is complimentary. The use of keyboards is very central throughout, even more so than on previous records. Overall the tunes themselves are far more spacious but crucially the sense of song management is maintained. The word ‘orchestrated’ is bandied about more than strictly necessary these days but here you genuinely feel like these songs were meticulously layered from the ground up. This is certainly the biggest advantage of having a competent pianist and arranger like Chris Seligman.

Opening track ‘The Night Starts Here’ is classic Stars but they sound at once fuller, more confident than before. The biggest pull is still Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan’s perfect harmonies, though the use of this trick has become more economical. Whereas their peers have floundered somewhat on their push for mainstream acceptance, Stars have gone all out and brought in Kajagoogoo producer Joe Chicarelli. Nothing he does is particularly innovative but he fills this gentle collection of tunes with just the right amount of pop sheen. By being unashamed of their intentions, Stars have actually come out on top. The breezy lounge pop of ‘My Favourite Book’ pays off with dividends. It’s the kind of brilliant mix-tape fodder Stars have perfected over the years. Likewise, the funk lite ‘Ghost of Genova Heights’ is another departure that works surprisingly well. They even find time to kick out the jams on ‘Bitches In Tokyo’, which is one of the loudest songs they have ever attempted. It also has all the power and defiance that was missing from Challengers.

There are a few dodgy tracks here and there but overall I think there is more than enough to appeal to both Stars fans and the casual listener. Fair warning, if you don’t like processed instrumentation and meretricious pop music, give this a wide berth. This one is definitely the closest you can get to daytime radio friendly without a trip to the vomitorium. I can see this one making something of a splash and good luck to them. Stars obviously wanted to make a pristine pop record and for once they actually stayed the course. Aside to European readers - Do you remember The Beautiful South? If the answer is “Yes, I liked them a lot”, buy ten copies of this, your new favourite record. I promise not to judge you. Much.

Tommy Dski

Wilco- Live at The Fillmore, Denver Colorado, 9/2/2007

Jeff Tweedy is doing it better than any other musician right now. He has been for a couple of years. His albums are amazing, his individual songs are incredible, and, since he remade the band for the AGIB tour, the live shows defy belief. Their show on Sunday was either my 8th or 9th Wilco show, and I do not think I will ever get tired of watching that band on stage.

The show was similar in many respects to their show I caught in Toronto over to summer. He still opened with a slow acoustic version of "Sunken Treasure," and they still closed with a complete freakout on "Spiders(Kidsmoke)". Richard Swift was opening instead of Low, but I got there too late for him anyway. Swift is an amazing performer, and well worth looking into if you enjoy insturments and the sounds they make, by the way. A slightly odd choice to open for Wilco, but definitely I am sad I missed the show.

There's a feeling, after seeing a band enough times, that the only thing thats going to influence the show is the occasional surprise song( in this case an amazing version of "Too Far Apart", which was the first song I've ever heard them do off of AM) and the crowd. It could be a Denver standard, but the crowd was horrendous. People pushed past me every 5 minutes, on their way to the bar to grab yet another cheap beer or watery mixed drink. It wouldn't have bugged me so much if those same people didn't seem to think they had the right to push right back up to the front after they did their shopping, spilling beer on everyone around them in the process.

The ability of an asshole crowd to bring down the quality of the show is astounding, but no matter how poorly the drunk guy in front of me tried to hit on the college student standing next to him, he couldn't kill my enjoyment at hearing "Hesitating Beauty" and "California Stars," both from the Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg, back to back. There was also the solo Nels Cline added into Red-Eyed and Blue, bringing it, like all the songs off their old albums, into step with their new style.

The other important thing to know about Wilco live is that Jeff Tweedy is hilarious. He was slightly off his game tonight, but he did promise to teach people how good AM was by rerecording it with the bands current lineup. It's apparently going to be called BM, and we're going to think it's the best record ever.

Jeff Tweedy is also starting to look a little old(and a little like Jeffrey Rowland, what the fuck!), and more and more I'm finding this reflected in the crowds at their shows. There was a shocking percentage of the crowd who had completely gray hair, plus bald heads, beer bellies, and an unsettling amount of terrible fashion sense. I only saw three or four "hipsters" there. It depresses me a little that a band I love so much now seems to belong to the generation before me, but that's life. I'll still keep going to see him sing.

Vitalic- V Live*

I've got a huge boner for Vitalic. His Daft-Punk-meets-FM-distortion chug is one of modern techno's most popular, recognizable, and emulated sounds (I'm looking at you, Justice and Digitalism). OK Cowboy was easily the most accomplished, anthemic, and accessible dance album to come out since Daft Punk's legendary Discovery and Homework. The big question in my mind and, perhaps, the minds of others is "how will he follow it up?"

V Live is something of a stopgap between OK Cowboy (presumably) upcoming releases, showcasing a live set (recorded in Belgium in 2006) composed of equal parts OK Cowboy classix and new stuff (or stuff I hadn't heard before, at least.) The set itself is nearly seamless, save the constant crowd noise-cheers punctuating every transition, bass drop, and riff change. It's not overwhelming and gives the recording a sense of "place" that it would otherwise lack.

Vitalic live treats his songs like hot taffy, stretching and compressing them in places, adding and subtracting elements in places you don't expect if you've only heard OK Cowboy. The "Bells" remix in particular sees a familiar track chopped and twisted until it resembles the original about as much as a pretzel resembles a wad of dough. It's a nice change of pace if you've internalized the album and EP tracks as thoroughly as I have.

As for the stuff I hadn't heard before, it's More Vitalic Music. Nothing radical in terms of stylistic shift or sonic signature, but enjoyable all the same.

Dance music is one of the few genres where I feel comfortable recommending a "live" album on the same terms as a "studio recording," since the same laptops and sequencers are usually responsible for both products. OK Cowboy is still Vitalic's magnum opus (and the best introduction to his work), but V Live is a welcome snack for those of us eagerly awaiting his next full-course meal.

The New Pornographers – Challengers*
Matador

The New Pornographers recorded one of my favourite albums of all time back in 2000. Mass Romantic occupies a unique position in my music collection because I have never once become sick of its charms. Call me next time there’s sunny weather where I am and ask me what I am blasting. In fact, save yourself a phone call. I guarantee it will be Mass Romantic. Twelve of the sweetest, most downright invigorating examples of pop music I have ever heard. The only thing I could possibly hold against that record is that it had lousy artwork and the fact that it was inexplicably, nay inexcusably, not entitled The New Pornographers and Neko.

Of course, once you achieve perfection, there remains the question of what to do next. Newman, Bejar, Case and co floundered a bit on Electric Version but did manage to recapture some of the majesty on Twin Cinema. The critics did back-flips again and I can understand why. The New Porn really did make one of the best records of my lifetime and all of the associated bands (namely Destroyer, Superconductor and Neko Case’s solo work) have produced extraordinary music. Still, critical acclaim starts to feel a bit hollow after a while. In their native Canada, The New Porn have done more than respectable business. Elsewhere, they remain thoroughly obscure. That was all well and good until everyone and their dad bought a copy of The Neon Bible. If the title of this album is anything to go by, this might be considered something of a riposte.

Sure enough, this is the most polished and stripped-down music the New Porn have attempted to date. The vocals are up front in the mix and the guitars are bright to the point of incandescence. Personally, I don’t think it works at all. One of the pre-requisites of power pop is a bit of, well, power. Whereas a real challenger would explode from the gate, this one trots. It gathers a bit of pace later on but it’s too late - the race finished half an hour ago. The opening two tracks are both Newman songs sung in light harmony with Case and for the briefest of moment it sounds like a less experimental version of Stars or a modernised Fleetwood Mac. The latter band comparison is interesting for a number of reasons. If you will remember, after the sheer pop bliss of Rumours, Lindsey Buckingham presented his record label with the adventurous and varied Tusk. He had the luxury because Rumours had already sold millions of records. I can’t shake the suspicion that the New Porn have this the wrong way round. They have made their masterwork and now they seem to be trying to reverse engineer mainstream acceptance.

Still, you can’t blame them at all. They deserve success more than any other band you care to name. The trouble is, I don’t think this is the album to do it. When they gather some much-needed pace on ‘All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth’ things start to look up. Likewise, the expansive and roomy ‘Failsafe’ is an enjoyable blast of shimmering pop. The other songs drift into one over-polished mess. Even the usually reliable Bejar wildcards sound muted due to the horrible mix. Criminally, I can’t even hear drummer extraordinaire Kurt Dahle on most songs. There isn’t an obvious single either, which seems to defy the point of making such an obvious ploy for wider acceptance. Still, I hope beyond hope that there is an audience for this music because as someone who has the previous three records, after the requisite ten listens to write this review, I certainly don’t ever want to hear this again. It worked! I will not buy this record. I really hope someone will though.

Tommy Dski