Brian Eyster’s Pitchfolk

Sitting high atop MetaCritic’s All-Time High Scores list is Brian Wilson’s brilliant Smile. (Metacritic’s numerical ratings in this case may be slightly inflated, but the sentiment is correct.) Smile seems to have ushered in an overly-dense-symphonic-pop renaissance: last year’s Blueberry Boat and now this year’s sophomore release from Architecture in Helsinki, In Case We Die.

Australia’s Architecture in Helsinki are an 8-piece band (finally, a large band that doesn’t call themselves a “collective”) that boasts several distinctive singers, horns, detailed percussion, production that stitches it all together flawlessly, and most importantly, songs. Catchy little melodies that give way to catchy horn lines and other vocal melodies.

What separates In Case We Die is that each song contains section after catchy section of melody. Where a standard indie pop band would build a song around 2 or 3 sections, Architecture in Helsinki go through 2 or 3 sections, then throw them away and move on to 2 or 3 more. In a single song. This is an epic CD that somehow clocks in at a concise 42 minutes. It leaves you feeling satiated and slightly overwhelmed, but surprisingly eager to jump back in for another listen. This is what the Polyphonic Spree should sound like. There are days when I (gasp) even wish Blueberry Boat felt a little more like this.

It’s not without its faults: occasionally the drums feel too confined by a click-track (a necessity for recording this many layers), instrumental track “Rendezvous Potrero Hill” feels unnecessary, and some of the energetic peaks should be stronger. But this is symphonic pop that doesn’t sacrifice the “pop” for the “symphonic.” One of the year’s best so far.

Denver is lucky to claim avante/jazz/Americana guitarist Bill Frisell as a native. While he makes his current residence in Seattle, he usually returns to the Denver area several times a year to play shows. Last winter he played the tiny Old Main on the CU campus with a quintet including local hero Ron Miles and the always-brilliant Joey Baron. June 8 saw Frisell play the Boulder Theater with vocalist Petra Haden and a trio including Viktor Krauss and drummer Matt Chamberlin.

Frisell and Petra Haden opened the show with a set of tasteful guitar & voice duets from their recent CD. Haden’s voice is refreshingly pure; unlike many of today’s young singers (Madeline Peyroux, Nellie MacKay) her style is very clean without any affectation or period ornamentation. The effect is nice, but it requires a dynamic accompanist to hold your attention. Frisell is that accompanist. Playing exclusively electric guitar with the occasional loop/delay effect, Frisell’s spacious, rich sound stole the show. Several songs led into open instrumental sections with Frisell self-accompanying loops and Haden’s competent fiddle playing.

But the trio set was the meat of the show. Frisell has a knack for selecting drummers outside the jazz scene and allowing them to shine (Jim Keltner, for one), and this was no exception. Studio drummer Matt Chamberlin (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple) brought a jazz drummer’s sense of space and improvisation to the mix, while rarely relying on jazz patterns. The set consisted of mostly familiar Frisell tunes and Americana standards (”I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”). The band stayed mostly inside the lines of the songs; developing the songs from the inside-out with dynamics and melody guiding the improvisations.

A couple weeks ago, I played a guest DJ set with my friend Damon Haley on Boulder’s KGNU. The recording of the show didn’t come out, so here’s all that remains, the playlist:

1. Fiery Furnaces - “My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found” (Blueberry Boat)
2. Super Furry Animals - “She’s Got Spies” (Radiator)
3. New Pornographers - “Fake Headlines” (Mass Romantic)
4. TV on the Radio - “Mr. Grieves” (Young Liars)
5. Architecture in Helsinki - “It’s 5″ (In Case We Die)
6. Me, Mom, & Morgantaler - “No More Nervous Breakdown” (Shiva Space Machine)
7. The Go! Team - “The Power Is On” (Thunder Lightning Strike)
8. Gang of Four - “Return the Gift” (Entertainment)
9. Bloc Party - “Pioneers” (Silent Alarm)
10. Spoon - “Turn Your Camera On” (Gimme Fiction)
11. Dimmer - “Getting What You Give” (You’ve Got To Hear Music)
12. LCD Soundsystem - “Give It Up” (LCD Soundsystem)
13. The Fall - “Bombast” (This Nation’s Saving Grace)
14. McLusky - “To Hell With Good Intentions” (McLusky Do Dallas)
15. The Gourds - “Layin Around the House” (Bolsa de Agua)
16. Wilco - “Magazine Called Sunset” (More Like the Moon EP)
17. Arcade Fire - “Woodland National Anthem (Arcade Fire EP)
18. Antony & the Johnsons - “For Today I am a Boy” (I Am a Bird Now)

It’s the standard formula: a few things new, a few things old, a few things obscure. All the track are highly recommended.

It’s a fact that many indie rock shows are boring. The songs are overly scripted with little room for improvisation, the bands often lack energy after driving themselves through the night in a cramped van, and they aspire to recreate the sonic details of their recordings. Fair enough. So it’s always a thrill when a band (an international buzz band, no less) goes out and tears their CD to shreds and absolutely destroys a room. The opening night of Bloc Party’s first widespread U.S. tour was such a show.

I’ve been raving about the energy level on Bloc Party’s recent Silent Alarm - it’s one of the more unhinged rhythm section recordings I’ve heard in years. But live, they loosened what remaining harnesses were in place and played a riotously raw set of music. Most tracks started faster than on the recording and finished even faster. Guitarists Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack flirted with effects and noise guitar all night while the top-notch rhythm section pushed harder and harder. Sweat filled the room (drummer Matt Tong played shirtless most of the night) from the stage to the back of the crowd.

The Gang of Four comparisons are even more accurate live, but with less of the overt political baggage. They knew their role was to rock hard, play good songs, and have a good time. And they delivered.

Oh boy, here we go again. Now that most of the world has looked beyond the controversy of DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, another group of likeminded experimentalists have gone and stirred up the copyright pool (and coffers) of 60’s pop. The group: artists on Manchester-based internet label Hippocamp. Their target: the Beach Boys’ certified classic Pet Sounds.

Unlike the conceptually brilliant, but artistically (and technically) somewhat lazy Grey Album, this collection is diverse, engrossing, and frequently virtuosic. Officially titled Hippocamp Ruins Pet Sounds, the collection is currently (err, temporarily) available at various sites on the web including here. Knowing Mike Love’s love for litigation, the cease-and-desist orders have already been mailed.

This is not the first highly publicized Beach Boys remix. Austrain laptopper Christian Fennesz came to international attention with his 1998 abstract reimagining of “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulder)”.

It’s difficult to discuss And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead without discussing the centerpiece of their live shows: the destruction. They play harder, tighter, and louder than nearly any major-label band. The enormous 6-piece live band effortlessly shifts time signatures and tempos. Their twin-drummer assault is frequently breathtaking, especially considering how several players rotate between drums and guitars. But in the end, it’s all about the destruction.

Their recent show at Boulder’s Fox Theater showcased a more confident nuanced band than their performance last fall in Denver. The show opened with “Will You Smile Again for Me” (which Conrad Keely now claims was inspired by Brian Wilson’s struggle to complete Smile). The song opens with an odd-meter, twin-drum aural assault, that then gives way to a sparse middle section that slowly builds back to a reprise of the opening jam. It’s breathtaking music, and easily the strongest track on the new CD. The set continued with a varied set of songs from their entire catalog; loud and heavy with a touch of prog. And then there were the intermittent moments of destruction.

With all the internal contradictions and mixed messages surrounding the band, sometimes it’s difficult to know what is real and what is for show. Their concerts feature frequent noise experiments yet they publicly decry abstract (visual) art - see Conrad Keely’s notorious article in Filter magazine, “Abstract Art Is Sh*t”. They are signed by major label Interscope / A&M, but tirelessly scream out against the corporate music industry. Live, they are a raw DIY indie band, who requires four roadies to keep the show going with all the destruction occurring on the stage.

So it’s difficult to know if the agression in their live show is part of the act, or a series of very public tantrums. Jason Reece kicked over the entire drum set at least twice during Friday’s show at the Fox Theater in Boulder. But he was able to quickly turn off the aggression to apologize to the audience at least once for the technical difficulties with the show (a bass amp had to be replaced early in the show).

In the end, it’s probably a combination of factors. Conrad Keely’s interviews are notorious for spinning webs of fiction and contradictions. His band and his public persona are works of art: clever combinations of truth and fiction.

I always wonder how the occasional bluegrass band gets the attention of the indie press when there are about a hundred other comparable bands vying for the spot. It would be nice to think the band is just plain awesome. But it’s more likely a matter of label connections, personal connections, and, well, that the band rocks.

The taste-making website, PitchforkMedia, today has a review of Chatham County Line’s latest CD, Route 23. It doesn’t really matter what the reviewer said (they gave it a respectable 7.3), this young band will now get a second-look by all the other indie ‘zines that passed them up. Good for them.

For a band usually described with the usual set of lazy pop adjectives (”60’s”, “dreamy”, “California”, “sunny”) The Shins inhabit their own world. When the band is on - which the remarkably consistent quartet almost always is - they take the standard indie pop formula of guitar/bass/drums and solo lead vocals and turn them into something magical. Last Tuesday’s sold-out show at Denver’s Fillmore Auditorium was no exception.

The four fairly average musicians are defined by two crucial ingredients: James Mercer’s soaring voice and his distinctive songs. Mercer’s ability to continually hit the sky notes that frequent his top-heavy melodies is remarkable. Shins’ songs are short and there are few instrumental breaks, so Mercer is singing most of the set. His vocals are not effortless (and they slipped late in the set), but that gives them an honesty too often missing in pop bands.

But it’s the songs that have the lasting effect. Mercer challenges himself with surprising chord changes and elongated melodies that are both endlessly attractive and difficult to sing in isolation. These are songs that are difficult to sing along to - the melodies are too high and the words are too hard to understand - but impossible to listen to without joining in. The Shins canon is solid without exception, though several of the set’s near-misses occurred during new songs (and a Magnetic Fields cover).

As a live band, the Shins bring an urgency to many of their songs which the recordings lack. Opener “Caring Is Creepy” and closer “So Says I” turn into melodious punk freakouts. The instrumental outro of “One By One All Day” turns into an extended Velvet Underground sonic jam, as the high frequency drones of the repeating two-chord roll in nearly-visible waves across the auditorium.

For a modern pop band the Shins make little use of sophisticated arrangements. With the exception of Marty Crandall’s occasional synthesizer flourish, the live band sticks to a two-guitar, bass, drums, lead vocalist formula. But it never sounds anything other than perfect. The intro to their early hit “Know Your Onion!” awoke the audience to the unrealized potential of Beach Boys vocal counterpoint. But after hearing the song’s overstuffed melody, we were reminded why simplicity correctly wins out.

The Shins were helped early on in their career by Modest Mouse, so it was nice to see them doing the same for openers The Brunettes. After hearing the band perform in their native New Zealand, the Shins were so impressed they invited them to join them on this U.S. tour. Performing as a seven-piece - with plenty of horns, glockenspiels, and clapping - the Brunettes performed an inviting mix of retro pop mixing Springsteen and Costello with plenty of boy-girl vocals.

Gang of Four are back. Rhino’s expanded edition of Entertainment! comes out on Tuesday, their current reunion tour is garnering nothing but love, and the current crop of disciples have re-inspired some great rock language.

In a description of their upcoming stand at the Irving Plaza, The New Yorker writes “The Gang’s danceable agitprop was spiked with Andy Gill’s dissonant, staccato guitar attack, whose style led rock critics to start abusing the adjective angular.” True, the word may be over-used, but it is one of the great rock words. Staccato? Too classical stuffy. Spiked? Not danceable. Angular? Modern, mathematical, architectural, opaque. Perfect.

Way to go Matador Records for making the best song from Spoon’s latest available as a free download. The track, “I Turn My Camera On,” is a pre-punk disco-falsetto funk, unlike anything else in Spoon’s fine catalog. It reminds me of You’ve Got to Hear the Music, the excellent CD from New Zealand’s Dimmer. Pitchfork’s recent review of Gimme Fiction raves about this track, “a Prince-tastic masterpiece hearkening back to the Stones’ “Emotional Rescue”, but with a show-stopping grandeur that beats them both at their own game.” And it’s available as a free download!

It’s a difficult issue for labels and artists: give away an album’s best material as its strongest promo or hold it back as the strongest reason to buy the CD. When a label chooses the former it shows a confidence that usually inspires me to go out and buy the whole thing. If the rest of the CD doesn’t live up to the free track(s), it’s hard to be upset with the label for giving away something so precious.