Arctic Monkeys: Live at the Hollywood Palladium

Last year, in a late-night moment of weakness (OK, on a drunken impulse), I purchased a ticket to see the Arctic Monkeys, knowing there was a very slim chance I would actually attend the show. It was a $20 ticket for small show at a biker bar venue in the middle of Death Valley, 4 hours away from where I live. Though the investment was not large, I woke up the next morning and laughed off the foolish notion that I would drive 8 hours round trip for a single show. I’m a fan, but I’m not that big a fan… of any band.

Still, I love those seclusive Monkeys, and the fact is they schedule very few US tour dates. When the announcement came that they would return to Southern California for a date at the Hollywood Palladium on June 3, I jumped at the chance to see them this time around (not requiring travel to the far corners of the state!) With only 11 shows across the US to promote the release of their new album Suck It and See, I was thrilled to have the chance see them in the small, sold out venue.

One of Arctic Monkeys greatest strengths in the studio is magnified in their live show; they seamlessly shift tempo within songs, providing energetic ebbs and flows. Their audience may be swaying gently in one moment, while eagerly awaiting that upcoming chorus where they will jump in the air, shake their fists, and shout out loud. At the heart of this strength is drummer Matt Helders; holy hell, the force is strong in this one! “Brianstorm,” off of their album Favourite Worst Nightmare is among the most lightning-fast drumming you will ever hear, and to witness that song live is proof that Helders is indeed as quick and precise as the studio version suggests. Throughout the show, I was continually amazed by the puppeteer effect Helders’ playing had over the movement of the crowd.

The enthusiastic crowd did not let up on energetic outpouring throughout the entire set, even when the band played the less familiar songs of their new (unreleased) album. Clearly, I was not the only one who had been live streaming the new material off of the Monkeys’ website. In an hour and a half set that was an even mix of about 4 songs from each album, the band played new songs “Brick by Brick,” “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair,” “She’s Thunderstorms,” “The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala,” and “Reckless Serenade” to a crowd that already knew the lyrics. Naturally, the night’s highlights and the songs that stirred the greatest fervor were old favorites “Still Take You Home,” “The View From the Afternoon,” and the especially fun “When the Sun Goes Down.”

The Arctic Monkeys are quite impressive, with all band members playing well off one another’s strengths. The rhythm section is so versatile, and when it slows tempo and allows the lead guitar to weave in bluesy, acid rock riffs, the result is the sexier, more controlled sound that marks their evolution with each new album from angsty townies to world traveling rock stars. The new album has a mellower feel than the earlier albums, a consequence of more thoughtful and diverse arrangements in which the rhythm section and guitar playing trade off and compliment each other well.

As I’ve said before, and it bears repeating, Alex Turner is a smart and witty lyricist. He often writes from an observational viewpoint. In a crowded room of people, he is likely the wallflower, quietly drinking in the interactions of those around him, and taking careful note of appearance and body language. I have yet to scour the lyrics of the new album, but my initial impression is that it does not reflect his best lyrical work. However, I think a move toward lyrical simplicity is intentional here; it fits an early 1960 retro-rock feel that permeates the new album. A song like “Brick by Brick” has predictable wordplay and is lyrically repetitive, but such qualities make it one of the catchiest “throwback” songs on the album.

Members of the Arctic Monkeys, just 19 years old when they wrote their first album and became national treasures in England, demonstrate growth and maturity with each new album release. Some fans may miss the more aggressive sound of early albums, as the band continues to explore psychedelic, blues, and surf rock genres. But if you drop a naysayer into the middle of Friday night’s mosh pit I think they would find that the band has not abandoned their old sound at all. A mix of old and new material flowed seamlessly together to create a satisfying, well-balanced live experience.

-AZ

Interview: The Silent Comedy

I am particularly fascinated by certain sociological characteristics of rock and roll bands – the nomadic lifestyle, the personal and working relationships behind the creativity, and the inspirations that drive that creativity. There is another pattern of interest- a correlation between a devoted and deeply connected fan base with a band’s ability to use principles of religious congregation in the writing and delivery of their music. I’m not talking about a particular denomination or belief, but rather, a mastery in rallying a community together, inspiring a feeling of belonging, and facilitating that cathartic release of energy at a rock show that parallels the historic use of religion for that function.

Going into my interview with San Diego-based band The Silent Comedy, I knew they had a unique insight into these three themes – a nomadic existence, a sense of broader community, and integration of music and religion – that long preceded their life as a working band. On a sunny day in Santa Barbara, brothers and band founders Joshua and Jeremiah Zimmerman sat with me in the park and shared some of the profound life experiences that shaped their worldview, and now offers layers of depth to their songwriting craft.

Jeremiah and Joshua, sons of a Pentecostal minister, spent their early years in Orange County, California. When Joshua was 12 and Jeremiah was 15, their parents sold all possessions and uprooted the family to South Asia to pursue missionary work and to scout a location to open a holistic medicine clinic. For two years, the brothers and their parents, along with another family, lived out of backpacks, moving from India, Nepal, Thailand, and then on to parts of Europe and the United States. I asked them to talk to me a bit about how those experiences shaped them as songwriters and as traveling performers.

Jeremiah: It was a very strange experience to have at that age, not doing anything in a permanent way, getting rid of everything and just becoming vagabonds for a while. Some places we would roll in and leave the next day, some places we would stay for months. And the bug for touring came from that. I am happiest when on the road.

Joshua: We became completely placeless and we made peace with the fact that we were not going to see any of our friends. You really become kind of anchorless. And that is something that people have said about our music.

When asked whether the musical traditions of the places they visited had an influence on the sound of the Silent Comedy:

Joshua: It wasn’t necessarily the musical traditions of wherever we were, but it was more of a feeling. And also just the dark aspects – our outlook on the world changed drastically when we went on that trip. To go from an affluent upper-class area to having no possessions, being on the streets of Calcutta… I don’t think I had ever seen a dead person before. We went to Mother Theresa’s Home for the Dying and they were carrying a body out when we arrived. Kids on the street without jawbones (a deformity of malnourishment) would hold on to your clothes, begging for money.

Jeremiah: And there were some situations that felt hostile. We were in Dehradun (India) during elections and people were getting killed on Election Day, and there was just a lot of tension. At a young age to experience that, it changes you fundamentally. The difference between being aware of the things that are going on in other parts of the world when you are in the States, versus experiencing it firsthand – you realize the enormity of problems that exist in places where everyday life is [wondering] “will I make it through today?” So that did influence our sound, I think, just experiencing that that kind of uncertainty in the environment around us.

Joshua: Coming back to Orange County, it was tough to acclimate. We were a bit removed… you know, we’ve always been weird. We see in our music now; we just can’t embrace the norms of subject matter that people write about, like love songs. We can try to write love songs but they come out a little warped.

Part of the “placeless” feel of the songs in the Silent Comedy catalog is that they conjure imagery of migratory characters from a different time in American history, notably late 19th/ early 20th Century – Wild West prospectors, Prohibition-era bootleggers, Vaudeville performers, and traveling preachers. So where does this imagery come from?

Jeremiah: Our dad was a minister in the Assemblies of God, a Southern Pentecostal denomination and so the whole tent-revival-snake-handling stuff – they weren’t as crazy as that - but still in that tradition. So we grew up in that environment.

Joshua: We try to get to deep human issues in songwriting, like the dirtiness of humanity mixed with the desire for redemption. The tent revival thing was huge during the Great Depression. So when we think of the events that evoke those forces in the world, we naturally go back in time because to sing about the grinding pressures of life, its not that you missed your morning latte, it is more about immediate survival.

On writing songs that are imaginative storytelling vs. autobiographical:

Joshua: I always thought it was a really cool thing to write songs that are totally in character. [“Exploitation” from the perspective of a sexual victim] is about the human trafficking trade. My dad is involved in an organization to stop human trafficking and I was interested in the work that they do. I read case studies on their website and that song came out as a way of kind of purging my brain from the horrific details from those case studies.

Joshua: Some songs, you take what has happened in your life and you put it in a fictional context, because sometimes it’s easier to not be as confessional. Like the song “49” is a real personal situation transposed into a situation that occurs during the Gold Rush.

Jeremiah: I think some vagueness is good. I don’t ever want to be so specific (in autobiographical songwriting) that I am the only one who can relate what I’m talking about.

In addition to Jeremiah (piano) and Joshua (bass), who are the primary vocalists of the band, the Silent Comedy is also comprised of Justin Buchanan (banjo and mandolin), Chad Lee (percussion), and Tim Graves (Guitar and Harmonica). Their live show, probably best described by Joshua as a “whiskey-fueled tent revival,” is a boisterous dancing-stomping-shouting celebration that leaves the crowd feeling like participants, not just spectators. An appreciation for showmanship and inclusiveness, which the brothers acquired from years of attending Pentecostal tent revivals, shines through in the Silent Comedy’s live performance.

Jeremiah: Being raised in that kind of church environment where the crowd is involved and everyone is participating and raising their hands, it was always a pet peeve of mine at rock shows when the cool kids would be standing there with their arms crossed. If you’re going to be there and be into music, just drop the act, get into it, be a little foolish. If people are going to come out to see us, we have got to be worth seeing, and I think that some of those early (tent revival) experiences inspired that. That kind of showmanship, those traveling preacher types are great at that.

Joshua: It’s one thing to see a band whip people into frenzy, it’s even more incredible to watch a single guy, without a band, whip people into frenzy. There is a lot of force behind it. If we had been brought up in a different religious tradition, we would have a different approach to it. In Catholicism or Anglicanism, people come to sit and observe and hear someone talk, but in Pentecostalism people don’t come to observe. It gets chaotic and energetic. People come to have an experience, and that is what we bring to the music.

The Silent Comedy indeed delivers a phenomenal live experience, and I came away from it with an overarching feeling inclusiveness. It was as if their sound was the equivalent of outstretched arms, beckoning the crowd closer so that we could all, collectively, stomp harder and sing louder. Many bands, probably without realizing it, erect a wall between them the audience, a division between performer and spectator. I found the Silent Comedy to be refreshingly accessible, both in conversation and also as performers. They clearly operate under the philosophy that they are part of a greater community that includes the new faces of each town they visit. It is no surprise that they are collecting new loyal and devoted fans with every live show.

I may be a heathen, but I’ll worship in the church of the Silent Comedy any day of the week. And twice on Sunday.

-AZ

The White Stripes.

Since the White Stripes announced their break up last week, I have struggled to find the words to celebrate what that band has meant to rock and roll over the last decade, and what it has meant to me personally. It feels inappropriate to eulogize a band in which the dominant personality, Jack White, continues to prolifically make music in other bands. Further, in band eulogy it is commonplace to overstate artistic genius. While Jack White is a mad genius of sorts, the White Stripes were flawed, and they purposely strived for imperfection. Fortunately, they came into our lives at a time when a resurgence of dirty imperfection in rock an roll was sorely needed, and that is why they are often credited as modern saviors of rock.

To appreciate fans’ heartsick reaction to word that Jack and Meg White would no longer make music together, one must recall the bleak landscape of rock and roll when the Stripes emerged on the music scene. By the late 1990’s, popular music had become a homogenized mess of boy bands, pop tarts, and whatever awful category of music includes Creed, Limp Bizkit, and Linkin Park. Record labels had seemingly hijacked artistic freedom, and music making was reduced to a formulaic process that left little variation in finished product. Everything new and emerging at the time felt fake, dishonest, and shallow. Fans of grittier guitar and drum-driven rock relied on new releases from old favorites, bands who had emerged in a different time and had managed to hold on to their creative integrity.

Then came along the White Stripes, a duo that shocked every sensibility accustomed to the tidy, glossy, buffed and polished state of music at the turn of the millennium. Meg and Jack - a drummer of basic skill and simplicity, and a guitar master with a raw and grating vocal - were anything but polished. But their calling card of a simple drum beat as the backdrop to killer guitar riff – an obvious formula that had been dormant for too long – was the freshest sound the world of rock music had heard in years. The simplicity of the White Stripes – two people with homegrown style, making heartfelt blues-rock, without back-up singers, dancers, and entourages – offered a stark realization of how so many musical acts had lost focus of what is most important: the music.

In a previous post, I expressed my gratitude for the White Stripes and the pivotal role they played for me as a music fan. Prior to my introduction to them, I was stuck in (mostly) a classic rock rut, listening to the same music I had loved for years, made decades before. I felt hopeless that a band from my generation would come along and live up to the songwriting integrity of the music I was raised on. I have said before that my journey as a music fan thus far can be divided into two eras: before I discovered the White Stripes and after I discovered them (specifically, that line drawn from first listen to the “Elephant” album). They were the bridge that linked my love of classic rock, including Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan, to a new period of music discovery that has come since that first listen to “Elephant.” Simply put, the White Stripes were the first band to come along that made me believe in my own generation of music makers.

It wasn’t just the music that made the White Stripes so intriguing. It was a dichotomy between the brash, honest, in-your-face quality to their sound, and the enigmatic image in which Jack and Meg presented themselves to the world. A divorced couple, claiming to be siblings, they had an on-stage chemistry that was hard to pinpoint as familial, friendly, or outright sexual. Meg’s painfully shy demeanor in interviews, her inability to look up from behind a curtain of hair and a voice so inaudible that she required subtitles, gave the viewer the uncomfortable feeling that she was not a participant by her own free will. Contrast with Jack, part bluesman prodigy, part cunning businessman, driven, eccentric, provocative, perhaps even a bit tyrannical. To witness their public interaction begged the question “What the hell goes on with those two behind closed doors?” Image and interpersonal dynamics are always a component of fan interest in a band, and the White Stripes remain a mystery in that regard.

As Jack and Meg White end their career together, they leave as their legacy a few important lessons and reminders: 1) With imagination and the right equipment, two people are capable of captivating audiences at the world’s largest venues and rocking harder than most bands two or three times their size. 2) Cool is a premium in this industry, and the coolest thing a band can be is enigmatic. There is a fine line between keeping fans interested and sharing too much, and the White Stripes leave current and future fans puzzled by their eccentricity as a duo. 3) Sometimes rock and roll is a dish best served raw, and all of the imperfections in a live experience – a guitar slightly out of tune or a note sung off key – assert that human error is preferable to technological perfection.

And so, the book on the White Stripes is closed and put on the shelf. While Jack continues with a number of projects, the reclusive Meg may slip off into hiding, only coaxed out now and again to appear as a guest in the studio or on stage. But the core philosophies of the White Stripes live on, both through Jack White’s ongoing projects, and in new bands that have and will been inspired by the Stripes. In the history of rock and roll, we can peg their influence on the genre right up there among the greats.

-AZ

My Most Played Albums of 2010

This humble website is a diary, the place where I document the music that gets under my skin and leaves a lasting impression in my heart and mind. Therefore, as 2010 comes to a close, I feel compelled to discuss the albums that got the most play this year at Casa de AZ. This is not a compilation of the best albums released this year, but you will find plenty of those from various music magazines and bloggers.

This is not a "Best Of" list because I do not enjoy reviewing albums; the critical dissection of an album's components tends to take the fun out of the listening experience. But also, I do not believe that an album must be perfectly written or flawlessly produced to become a meaningful soundtrack to a time and place in your life. Rather, an album can become special to the listener for a various subjective reasons; perhaps it plays background to joyful times spent with people you love, or offers comfort during anxious or troubled times. So, with that, I give you the albums that made up my 2010 soundtrack. Some I consider near perfection, others… let’s just say were perfectly imperfect. Each of them found a place in my mind, some a place in my heart, and a few will still stay with me for many years to come.

Two albums this year stood apart from the rest, and it comes as no surprise that those two albums are popping up on all the rock critics’ year-end lists. One album offered the ideal blues-rock soundtrack to a sunny day barbecue and drinks with friends, and turned a long-established-but-little-known working band an instant household name (The Black Keys). The other highly acclaimed album once again verified that the world’s biggest indie band continues to bleed out thought-provoking themes with passion and integrity (Arcade Fire). Those albums were a cut above the rest.

Most of the albums I enjoyed this year were met with lukewarm reception by critics and have not been featured prominently on year-end lists. To be perfectly honest, despite keeping them in heavy rotation throughout the year, I admit to my own less-than-totally-awestruck reaction to a few of them. But love and loyalty – to a voice or to a style – kept me playing them again and again. One near and dear band produced the soundtrack to my Summer 2010 road trips (The Gaslight Anthem), while another album was a highly anticipated solo effort to which I was sentimentally attached before the very first play (Brandon Flowers). One album, a sophomore effort, did not stack up to the artist’s debut, but her talent and wordsmith ability kept me listening anyway (Laura Marling).

Fortunately, the year introduced me to a number of new bands that caught my attention and made me excited for future releases. A couple of newcomers produced catchy “retro” albums that put a refreshing spin on decades-old music genres by including brass and organs to their sound, one in the style of 1940’s big-band (April Smith and the Last Picture Show) and the other channeling a 1960’s Motown sound (Fitz and the Tantrums). Another new favorite dealt out gritty blues-garage rock with catchy hooks and harmony (TAB the Band). A criminally harsh rating from Pitchfork - the most cynical online publication in the music world - piqued my interest in one new band (Mumford & Sons). As I anticipated, that album’s greatest crime was its overtly romantic themes and overuse of the words “soul,” “love,” “heart,” and meteorological metaphors. I, however, found those flaws to be endearing and beautiful. Lastly, came the “dark horse” album, swooping up my attention in this final month of the year and dominating my holiday playlist with it’s grabbing intro song and surprisingly coherent mix of post-punk, indie, folk, and soul genres throughout the album (Transfer).

A year ago, I had never heard of half of the bands that turned out my most played new album releases. Therefore, 2010 was year of discovery, and I hope that many of the bands that made up my year’s soundtrack have the staying power to continue to produce great new music in the future. It is exciting to think of the new talent that 2011 may bring; as with the start of each new year, I eagerly await to be sonically amazed.

My 2010 Most Played Albums:

1. Brothers, The Black Keys
2. The Suburbs, Arcade Fire
3. American Slang, Gaslight Anthem
4. Songs for a Sinking Ship, April Smith and the Last Picture Show
5. Zoo Noises, TAB the Band
6. Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons
7. Flamingo, Brandon Flowers
8. I Speak Because I Can, Laura Marling
9. Pickin’ Up the Pieces, Fitz and the Tantrums
10. Future Selves, Transfer

-AZ

Looking For Love… In a Music Subscription

It’s been a long time since I fell in love, since I found that heart-fluttering infatuation that leaves you awe-struck, inspired, and feigning for more. In its absence, the landscape seems a little more drab and colorless. And so, with the fear that discovery of my greatest loves are but a thing of the past, I put my 20th century notions of courtship behind me and embraced the modern ways of cyber-searching for love. I go online, create a personal profile, and begin my quest. Wait, I am talking about music… right? YES! Yes I am! I signed up for my first online music subscription with Rdio, and so it begins, a renewed commitment to search for new musical love affairs.

I don’t know what took me so long to get a music subscription, but it might be the best $5 I spend each month. I jokingly compare the search for good music to frustrations of dating, the latter I admit to knowing nothing about. But the fact is that there is a lot of very bad music out there, and sometimes you have to kiss many frogs, so to speak, before you find a prince. Not only that; music is so subjective that even your most trusted tastemakers – friends, bloggers, etc. – will highly recommend music that will not please your personal palette. Therefore, a music subscription offers commitment-free access to explore new music to your hearts content! It is the ultimate tool for the music populist – don’t take other peoples word on what good music is, just look it up using your preferred music subscription service and decide for yourself.

Only a few weeks in to my subscription, I have not yet found any new favorites. However, I have enjoyed getting to know a few of this year’s new releases without shelling out the dough. Here are some of the albums that I have been playing, via my shiny new music subscription.


Pickin’ Up the Pieces, Fitz and the Tantrums
A funkified, modernized Motown sound. Great male and female vocals, vibrant horns, and a lead singer that sounds a bit like Daryl Hall (not that I’m holding that against him). In fact, this album is my favorite find so far, and I will purchase it for my library.


The Lady Killer, Cee-Lo Green
One-half of Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo was the vocalist on the catchy Gnarls tune “Crazy.” What is not to like about a whole album containing that soulful vocal? Also, he managed to turn a song called “Fuck You” into a benevolent-sounding and very catchy pop song.


My Beautiful Dark Twisted, Fantasy, Kanye West
This is the most hyped album of the year and ridiculously praised by the music community. Kanye’s inability to pen lyrics that are not a self-indulgent pity party about how misunderstood he is reminds me why I will never understand the allure of hip-hop. But hey, I tried.


Mt. Desolation, Mt. Desolation
Very listenable, country-tinged rock; complete with delicate guitar play, pleasant vocal, and folk storytelling. I can’t say this album blows me away, but I do continue to play it.



Out of Our Minds, Melissa Auf der Maur
The best thing to come out of 90’s alt-rock bands Hole and Smashing Pumpkins is multi-instrumentalist Auf der Maur. Out of Our Minds is a concept album that plays like a graphic novel fantasy. Sounds nerdy, right? The music and production is beautiful, grandiose, and feels destined to be the score for a dark, off-Broadway musical.

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, “Best Of 2010” and “Top 10 Album” lists are popping up all over the web. A music subscription from one of the various providers – Rdio, MOG, Spotify, Ping – is a great alternative to buying artists’ albums you’ve never heard based on recommendations.

-AZ

Why Arcade Fire Is Worthy of All That Praise

I finally saw for myself, and all I had heard was true; Arcade Fire is indeed extraordinary. They deserve every accolade that each new album, each breathtaking live performance, yields. Whatever one may feel about their sound, they are, irrefutably, a band that stands head and shoulders above contemporaries in quality of artistic expression and the pure joy that radiates from their stage performance. While their songs document the angst of a generation, their live performance reminds us that life happens in this exhilarating moment, as we sing and dance with friends and strangers.

Sometimes blatantly, sometimes inadvertently, rock and pop music provide a cultural account of a given time and place. Some popular music serves only for entertainment, providing escape and frivolity, while offering clues about the collective mindset of a particular time (think Disco). But, it is the music that is purposeful in its social documentation that we typically consider “art.” Artists survey the cultural landscape, challenge us to face what we may instinctively turn from, and create beautiful and poetic starting points for discussion. Remarkably, Arcade Fire does not sacrifice any of the entertainment value of their music by filling it with provocative themes. They successfully marry the frivolous and the somber, the whimsical and the weighty, becoming this generation’s most socially conscience “art” band in which people actually want to listen.

With the release of Arcade Fire’s third album, The Suburbs, they have solidified themselves as the rock and roll documentarians of this era. The band has packed more meaningful commentary into a single album than most artists convey in a lifetime of work. It is stunning, honest, and heartbreakingly pinpoints the collective anxiety of a generation that is economically unsettled and missing a sense of community in the midst of a hyper-connected digital age.

As someone who came into social and political awareness before social media networks became our communication, before the 24-hour news cycle became our information, and before reality television became our entertainment, I understand the sentiment conveyed by lyricist Win Butler on this album. He indirectly asks these questions: Have we lost our attention span for thoughtful discourse (“We Used to Wait”)? Have computers stripped us of meaningful human connection with one another (“Deep Blue”)? Is a cultural gap between the “modern kids” and older cohorts widening (“Rococo”)?

I use to write. I used to write letters. I used to sign my name. I used to sleep at night before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain. –“We Used To Wait”

Often presented as a foreboding dream - the word “dream” occurs consistently throughout the album - songs follow themes of lonely detachment in the modern age, environmental doom, the decay of the middle class suburbs, and a longing for a simpler era. Even though the album alludes to profound concerns about the direction we are heading, it is written from a personal voice and an inclusive viewpoint. Therefore, it does not come off in the least bit preachy or self-righteous. It is observational, even confessional, and the sadness and longing in the songs precludes it from feeling activist or political.

Can you understand why I want a daughter while I’m still young? I want to hold her hand and show her some beauty before this damage is done. –“The Suburbs”

The shift in tone from the Neon Bible album to The Suburbs, with respect the theme of capitalist greed, is notable. Released in 2007 to a climate of mounting frustration with Bush-era politics, Neon Bible was a call to arms for the citizenry to wise up to, among other things, the dangerous marriage of government and big business. I would not label Arcade Fire an activist band, but there was unmistakable anger and frustration in Neon Bible, with traces of finger pointing. However, the introspective nature of the new album suggests that Win Butler no longer relates to the problems he sees from the outsider perspective he took on Neon Bible. It would seem that maturity and a few years of self-reflection between albums has led him to take ownership of the problems around him, even if they are not his alone to bear. Ultimately, this makes the message more relatable.

You never trust a millionaire quoting the Sermon on the Mount. I used to think I was not like them but I'm beginning to have my doubts. –“City With No Children”

For all the seriousness embedded in Arcade Fire songs, their live show is the most joyful outpouring of energy I have witnessed, both by the band and from the audience. Looking down at the stage, it seemed like the band members were bright and colorful wind-up dolls, dancing and playing with exaggerated whole-body movements. Each owned all parts of the stage as they switched instruments and remained dynamic throughout the entire set. Regine Chassagne is particularly magnetic in stage presence, as too is Will Butler; both showing amazing energy as they played a multitude of instruments and danced around the stage (or in Will’s case, ran through the audience with his drum).

From the opening song until the unbelievable closer, “Wake Up,” the audience was on its feet chanting the words and clapping the beats. I had heard for years that an Arcade Fire show was a truly unique experience; what made it special was the feeling that those musicians wanted nothing more in that moment than to be playing for us. Arcade Fire is a band that clearly loves making music together, and they would be giving the same enthusiasm playing to a house full of guests as to a stadium full of concertgoers. It is not often that you walk away from a show feeling honored to have bared witness to a performance, but that is how I felt leaving the show that night.

I’ll leave you with links to a fantastic BBC Culture Show documentary on Arcade Fire, which includes live clips and an interview. It is a couple of years old, from the release of the Neon Bible album, but it is well made and really captures the spirit of the band. I hope you enjoy these watching this short documentary, and also hope you have the opportunity to catch their phenomenal live show!

-AZ

BBC The Culture Show Documentary: Part 1



Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 (Thanks @jennyhaze!)

Latest Earworm: Band of Skulls

Any name recognition that the English trio Band of Skulls has in the United States likely came last year when one of their songs was selected for the most recent Twilight movie soundtrack. Since I continue to ignore all things Twilight-related, I arrived late to discover this great rock and roll band. Instead, it was a 30 second sound bite for the new Ford Mustang commercial that piqued my interest and led me to Band of Skulls. Although the band name implies dark, gothic death metal, the likes of which only 15 year old misfits would enjoy, they actually have a classic guitar sound that ranges in genre from garage to blues rock, with nice variations in tempo throughout their debut album, Baby Darling Dollface Honey.

Band of Skulls is made up of Russell Marsden (guitar and vocals), Emma Richardson (bass and vocals), and Matt Hayward (drums). Marsden and Richardson share vocal responsibilities, both convincingly delivering hard-edged vocals on the faster songs and creating lush harmonies on the more tranquil songs. From start to finish, listeners will hear a mix of classic blues rock (Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Rolling Stones) and contemporary garage rock (White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) influences; songs range from drum and bass-heavy guitar riff tunes to sweet acoustic ballads. The vocal blend of male and female add rich depth, and even an eerie quality, to each song. Marsden and Richardson trade verses on the stompy “I Know What I Am” and meld harmonies tightly in “Fires.” “Honest” is a beautiful song that resembles some of Led Zeppelin’s delicate tunes, like “The Battle of Evermore.”

Band of Skulls are not stylistically reinventing the wheel, nor are their songs lyrically profound. Many of the lines are catchy but repetitive, and their sound is fairly derivative of the bands I mentioned earlier. But their arrangements, though familiar, still sound fresh and interesting, and the bottom line is that they are fun to listen to. Check out their website to hear a few of their songs. They just may become your next favorite band to pop in the car stereo, roll down the windows, crank up the volume, and drive a little bit faster than you should.

-AZ