Tricks And Treats - Janelle Monae and Of Montreal at the Hollywood Palladium, October 30, 2010

Costumed revelers were in abundance at the Janelle Monae/Of Montreal double bill at the Hollywood Palladium on October 30th, 2010,  but by my estimate, only about half of those Halloween celebrants were in the audience. 

The rest were to be found on stage.

Combining efforts to thrill an enthusiastic crowd with two very different takes on rock 'n roll as theatre, Monae and Of Montreal employed all manner of props, costumes, and multimedia technology to offer something that proved to be much more than just your run of the mill concert.

Monea went on first around 9:15, opening with a video introduction of just her face, framed much as in her Cold War video, explaining the backstory behind her Cindy Mayweather ArchAndroid saga, and ending with an exhortation to dance or die!

And with that her crack three piece keyboards/drums/guitar band, playing to track, broke into Dance or Die while three robed, hooded figures began dancing center stage, all with their backs turned towards the audience.  We knew Janelle was one of the three, but it was impossible to tell who. 

Finally, two verses in, Janelle turned toward the audience, and threw off her robe to reveal herself dressed in her trademark tuxedo-like white shirt and black slacks.

Oh, and that crazy hair-do, which looks even crazier and more prominent live.

As on ArchAndroid, Faster and Locked Inside followed, and then all but Janelle and her guitarist left for a lengthy but impressive rendition of Charlie Chaplin's Smile.


Janelle Monae performs Charlie Chaplin's Smile midway through her amazing opening set.

Kevin Barnes then joined Janelle for a decent version of ArchAndroid's worst track, the Barne's penned Make The Bus, which was quickly followed by an okay run on Wondaland.

Up to this point the show had been fast and energetic, and the band sounded great, but it hadn't yet reached transcendent heights. 

That all changed with the final three numbers.

First, roadies brought out an easel, and Janelle, brush in hand, began painting a picture of either a rose or a woman's backside (or maybe both) while delivering a trippy, spellbinding version of Mushroom and Roses.  After that, Cold War and Tightrope followed, hitting like a heavyweight boxer's best one-two combo. A dynamite close to what might have been the best warm up set I've seen in my lifetime, right down to it's final seconds, in which Janelle darted hysterically around stage avoiding a roadie trying to cover her in a James Brown cloak.

Here's a youtube clip of the Cold War/Tightrope ending.

Of Montreal's set that followed was a shaggier, looser, but even more theatrical affair. 

Sporting a large, multi-gendered, multi-racial, heavily sideburned band dressed in white, militaristic uniforms, as well as four or five dancers/puppeteers who were constantly entering and leaving stage in all manner of imaginative, surrealistic costumes, the entire set had a distinct Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe which seemed perfectly appropriate for the night before Halloween.



Fish-headed creatures accompany Of Montreal during show opener Coquet Coquette!



Barnes himself was a whirling dervish throughout the near two hour set, and the band also played with great energy, but that didn't always offset a pretty poor sound mix from where I was standing.   

As a result, the strongest impact was made not by the strongest songs, but by the most elaborate set pieces.

The first of two major highlights for me was Girl Named Hello from recent release False Priest.  The band locked into a repetitive groove half way through the song and jumped into a long theatrical set piece in which Barnes made out with a female dancer wearing a pig mask, while in the background another dancer dressed as a butcher ate fork-ripped morsels from a second pig-headed dancer laid prone on a surgical table...bizarre doesn't begin to describe it.  A good friend I was with found it all too indulgent, but for me it was all very, well...memorable.

Here's a youtube clip of it and preceding track Sex Karma...some naughty moments, so parents, might not want to watch around the kids.

She's A Rejector was the night's other highlight, a purely musical one this time. Taking that song's closing guitar lick, the band built on and extended it, built and extended until they reached a massive cathartic crescendo. I felt it was the best moment of the night for either act.



Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes is caged by bizarre, wood-headed beings.



But the night's biggest surprise came with the encore.

For months on this latest tour, Of Montreal has been closing with a medley of Michael Jackson covers, but tonight, they broke out the greatest song in their arsenal, Hissing Fauna's eleven minute centerpiece The Past Is A Grotesque Animal.

It's one of the decade's truly great songs, a song I still rank as the top track of 2007, but also a song the band rarely plays live. 

Unfortunately on this night, it was only a good, not great, rendition - the muddy sound that had hindered the band on numerous numbers really got in the way here, and the band members weren't quite able to capture the feel of those phenomenal, idiosyncratic, Sympathy For The Devil-styled backing vocals that Barnes overdubbed himself on the album.

So a minor letdown at the end, but despite this, the night in full was still a tremendous experience...rock n' roll as I've never quite seen it before.  If you're a fan of wildly adventurous hip/hop and soul and/or flamboyant, Prince-like disco-funk, I highly encourage you to check this fantastic double bill out.



HIGH VIOLET - The National (2010)

The truly great albums come at us in a myriad ways.

Some floor us with their stark originality, throwing down a stunning combination of sounds and approaches never heard before.

Some impress us with the sheer musical virtuosity on display, while others win us over by taking the opposite approach, stripping things down to their most naked and elemental.

Still others succeed by perfectly capturing a mood, or through the strength of the artist's unique personality.

And then sometimes, it all just boils down to plain old craft, applied at a ridiculously high level.

Brooklyn's The National are rock n' roll craftsmen of the highest order, and High Violet, their fifth release of yuppified, angsty, Joy Division-lite material, is their most meticulous release yet.  From the opening moments of lead track Terrible Love to the closing beats of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks, there isn't a nanosecond on this album that doesn't work.

It is without question in my mind the best album of 2010, and frankly, despite being less original than anything in my top ten for 2009, it would have been my number one album in that year also (even topping Pitchfork's beloved Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective).

I'm amazed that an album of such samey sounding material, that also sounds a lot like the bands previous two releases Alligator and Boxer, could be so consistently compelling, but it is...this album grabs me from the first note and never let's go.

Certain tracks do stand out as firsts among equals.  Bloodbuzz Ohio is High Violet's Apartment Story, the undeniable single, and the ballad Runaway its most impeccably emotive moment, but my favorite is the album's darkest track, the Bon Iver-backed Afraid of Anyone, which perfectly nails a new parent's protective paranoia towards dangers unknown.  It's a song anyone can love, but only a parent can truly understand.

But even more than any one track, much of High Violet's success has to be attributed to Bryan Devendorf's martial drumming, which much like Larry Mullen's work with early U2, gives High Violet its relentless forward propulsion.

Despite my enthusiastic review, I do urge those unfamilar with The National to sample a few songs first.  Their melancholy, sometimes mopey sound doesn't appeal to everyone.  But if meticulously plotted, immaculately orchestrated alt-rock is your cup of tea, you are in for a serious treat.

I cannot recommend this album strongly enough.

Status: Highest Recommend.

Here's the official video to the album's first single, Bloodbuzz Ohio.

Cherry Picker's Best Bets: Terrible Love, Afraid Of Everyone, Bloodbuzz Ohio, Runaway, England.

Component Breakdown:

1. Terrible Love - 9

2. Sorrow - 8

3. Anyone's Ghost - 7

4. Little Faith - 9

5. Afraid of Everyone -10

6. Bloodbuzz Ohio - 9

7. Lemonworld - 8

8. Runaway - 10

9. Conversation 16 - 8

10. England - 9

11. Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks - 9

Intangibles: Very High

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Take That, You Damn Volcano - Frightened Rabbit, Plants and Animals, Bad Veins at Club Mayan, Los Angeles 10-13-2010

That pesky Icelandic Volcano.

It blew a massive hole in Coachella 2010's schedule, and of the dozen or so acts that ended up stranded on the other side of the Atlantic, none had I wanted to see more than Frightened Rabbit.

I loved their folksy, slightly U2ish 2008 break-up rant The Midnight Organ Fight, enjoyed their latest release The Winter of Mixed Drinks, and felt a number of the tracks from that album seem like inevitable live barnburners.  But it was not to be.  The band never made it.

So tonight was all about payback.  No volcano would stop me from seeing one of my favorite bands of the moment.

Things got off to a great start.  Before anyone even took the stage, I met a couple of really great guys, David, a sports promoter and huge Rabbits fan on vacation from New York, and Henry, a managing director for an LA media group, who was there with his wife.  Soon we were all wrapped up one of those enthusiastic who-do-you-like-here's-who-I-like music conversations one only experiences between sets at concerts, and the four of us ending up hanging out the entire night.  Great meeting you guys, made the show even more fun.

Ohio's Bad Veins took the stage first, and since it's just a drummer and a guitarist, I assumed we were in for another set of no-fi punk, until I saw the forty-year-old reel to reel recorder on a chair between them. The guitarist/singer hit play, and what transpired was much more Muse/Radiohead styled anthem making than No Age lo-fi muck. 

Now I'm a huge real instruments guy when it comes to live performance, not a big fan of watching DJs or bands that play to track.  But by putting that big old-fashioned reel to reel upfront on stage, tacitly copping to the non-human third band member, the effect was kinda cool, and I came away impressed with the band's music. 

Canada's Plants and Animals was up next, and as stoked as I was for Frightened Rabbit, I was equally pumped to see this band for the first time. 

Their inventive 2008 release Parc Avenue had a number of excellent tracks in a variety of styles, from the straight-up heartland rocker Feedback In The Field, to the moody Good Friend, to the jazzy jam Mercy, as well as a number of other excellent, longer, proggier tracks.

Unfortunately, crowd and band were not to gel on this occassion. 

Anyone familiar with L.A. concert going knows that (no use sugar coating it) L.A. crowds are the worst...everyone at the show thinks they're more important than the band they've come to see and no one ever shuts up.  Bad Veins managed to go on before most of the crowd had arrived, but by the time Plants and Animals got on stage, Frightened Rabbits cadre of younger female fans had arrived, and for an act like Plants and Animals that veers frequently between rocking and quieter material, the background chatter was truly oppressive.

To their discredit, however, Plants and Animals were complete lunkheads about it, making no effort to guage the crowd. 

A shame.  Of all the bands that played that night, it was clearly evident they're collectively the most talented ...strongest chops by a wide margin, able to play a far broader range of styles.  But there's also a cocky, disinterested, Frat Boy vibe to these gents...they seemed perfectly content to just play to each other and ignore the crowd, which was ignoring them right back.  I was screaming for them to whip out Mercy or Feedback, high-energy songs that would have immediately pulled the crowd into the show, but they just kept on chugging with their longer, more difficult numbers to process like Faerie Dance as the Chatty Kathies drowned them out. 

Very disappointing set.  Hopefully, these guys get a clue about reading their audience right quick, because they have the talent to be major players on the indie scene, and are committing career suicide if they don't.

Frightened Rabbit finally came on around 9:45 and immediatley launched into a fine rendition of Nothing Like You from Mixed Drinks. Now a five piece after having recently expanded from a trio, the band sounded great, but make no mistake, unlike Plants and Animals, which is clearly a three-headed democracy, this is lead singer Scott Hutchinson's band start to finish. 

Scruffy, doughy, coarse, affable, and as witty and quick to enter into conversation with the audience as Swell Season/Frames frontman Glenn Hansard (but with a more facile, less hyper-active presence). Following the opening number, he waxed with genuine excitement about having met Tom Hanks the night before, and then it was off into a rollicking version of Organ Fight's Old Old Fashion.

What followed was a lively, thoroughly enjoyable, if only occaissionally spectacular push through most of the material off of their last two albums.  Specifc numbers from each record shined. My Backward's Walk really pulled the crowd in, and a riveting acoustic solo rendition of Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms (pictured at right) was the unquestionable set highlight until the bands final two songs before the encore, a fabulous Living In Colour, and then a beyond ass-kicking take on their most U2ish track, the foul-mouthed but moving epic of romantic craving Keep Yourself Warm.

Encore included an uplugged take on Poke, and the band wrapped things up nicely with a passionate version of Mixed Drinks' The Loneliness and the Scream.

Aside from possibly the members of Plants and Animals, who probably didn't care anyway, a great time was had by all.

Here's rooting they get their live act together, and that that damn volcano does nothing to prevent all three acts from having fabulous showings at Coachella 2011.

HEARTLAND - Owen Pallett (2010)

Canadian violinist Owen Pallett's Heartland, his first release since dropping the performing name Final Fantasy (so as not to create confusion with the video game on a recent Japanese tour), is a bundle of ironic, sometimes even maddening, contradictions:  Undeniably a pop album, yet almost completely devoid of traditional pop/rock instrumentation; a empathetic and amusing Candide-styled narrative about a farmer struggling to reunite with his beloved wife and daughter, brought to you by an openly gay artist; a narratively driven album that nevertheless mixes the vocals infuriatingly, obscurely low.

But when it comes to Pallett's skill with string arrangements, there are no contradictions.  He's just a near genius at it.

In a recent review of Four Tet's There Is Love In You, I commented on how much I loved the way samples built upon samples upon samples to create swirls of stunning yet appealing complexity.  Well, swap all manner of orchestral string instruments for samples, and the effect is pretty much the same here.  Strings swell and add, swell and add as the songs progress into delicious crescendos. The amazing final two minutes of The Great Elsewhere illustrates this best, but examples can be found throughout the record.

I do have a few reservations. The low mix on the vocals is truly aggravating.  I've got no problem with buried vocals in pop music, thousands of artists have used them to great effect, and Pallett's got a fine, gentle croon...but if you're going to tell a story, please, just f*#%ing tell a story.  This isn't artistic license I'm taking exception with here, it's a flat out boneheaded mistake. It's impossible to figure out what's going on lyrically here without referring to the liner notes, and both Pallett and his producer deserve a slap on the wrist for this.  Hopefully they'll go back and remix in a couple of years.

Secondly, listeners need to know this is a very dense album that gives up it's charms very slowly.  I hated it the first three times I heard it, and truth be told, while I now find myself loving it eight or nine listens in, I'm still not sure I've got a true handle on it. 

Simply put, this is a major league grower, commit to it for an extended period of time or else.

Finally, it goes without saying that while I now consider this a near strong recommend, this album isn't for everyone.  If your tastes in music run to the more conventionally hard rocking, or if thoughts of an album that reminds more of scores to animated Disney features from the 40s and 50s than rock n' roll today doesn't float your boat, probably best to steer clear.

For those that can dig something orchestral and original and intricate, though, I highly encourage checking Heartland out.

And for those torn about whether to give this a try, start with Lewis Takes Off His Shirt, it's easily the most accessible track.

Status: Solid Recommend.

Cherry Picker's Best Bets: The Great Elsewhere, Oh Heartland, Up Yours, Lewis Takes Off His Shirt, Tryst With Mephistopheles.

Component Breakdown:
1. Midnight Directives - 7
2. Keep The Dog Quiet - 8
3. Mount Alpentine - 6
4. Red Sun No. 5 - 7
5. Lewis Takes Action - 7
6. The Great Elsewhere - 9
7. Oh Heartland, Up Yours - 8
8. Lewis Takes Off His Shirt - 9
9. Flare Gun - 6
10. E Is For Estranged - 7
11. Tryst With Mephistopheles - 8
12. What Do You Think Will Happen Now? - 5
Intangibles - Above Average

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