A couple of tiny website adjustment thingies. I upgraded to Movable Type v 2.6.2 today, and as always, there were a few moments where it felt like I had hosed my entire website, but it ended up being easily fixed moments later. Movable Type’s gotta smooth that stuff out a little better, or else they’re going to give me a heart attack.

With the MT upgrade, I finally decided to look at the built-in search features and figured out how it worked. It’s actually really easy to implement, but because of the way I have the website setup with all the PHP and includes and what not, there were a few little things I had to tweak and figure out it actually linked to the proper pages. Turns out I got it up and running in about 15 minutes, so that was pretty cool. So now there’s a search feature, it’s on the sidebar.

Also, I did a quick redesign of the http://www.grumblemutterspit.org frontpage. In case you didn’t know, grumblemutterspit.org actually hosts a few different websites. I share it with my friend Linus, and I also run a Sleater-Kinney Concert Review Archive on it. The old page looked like this, and it was basically just a placeholder bit that Linus dropped on there the day after we got the space available.

I didn’t spend a terrible amount of time revamping it but I did like the way it turned out. I think I made Linus look like a White dude, he thinks I look like a White dude too, and a serial killer no less. He also thinks Carrie Brownstein’s head is way too big in comparison to ours.

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Before watching Dark Blue, I caught an instore performance at Found Music by the Like, a band I’ve been trying to keep tabs on since I saw them open for Elvis Costello last year. They’re a local L.A. act with no record deal, so they’re a bit difficult to track. All three members are still in high school, so they don’t play particularly often, opening for the likes of Anna Waronker, Rooney and Phantom Planet when they do. I’m sure once all three graduate, there will be harder push for them to be professionals.

The instore seemed like quite the family affair, with a small merch table and cookies, sodas and chips layed out for anyone that walked in the record store. The store’s pretty small, stacked with lots of vinyl and used CDs. It’s a really cool store, but is only two aisles wide and has a horrible layout for an actual performance. You can go about four or five people wide, and really only the first couple of rows can actually see. As with the Knitting Factory yesterday, I could only see the performer’s heads bob up and down as they played. I’m getting a bit tired of the disembodied head performance and I’m going to have to start lobbying for stadium seating at these things or something.

Before the show started up I picked up both their EPs for $6, and the merch person tossed in a pin. I’m not much for pins, but I’m sure this “I Like The Like” pin will get stuck on something sooner or later. The performance was solid, about 40 minutes of dreamy pop songs interspersed with giggly chatter. All the songs seemed a bit more punchy than when I heard them first, and the material that was new to me all had a better sense of dynamics and song structure than what I remember from… gah, last year. The Interview Magazine writeup described the music as a mix of Radiohead, Cardigans and PJ Harvey, which is pretty far off, in my opinion. My friend pegged them as a more stripped down, less lush Stereolab, which is a bit closer. Judge for yourself and download a couple of their MP3s, (So I’ll Sit Here) Waiting and Falling Away.

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For a Cat Power show, I thought it went fairly smoothly. By that I mean that about half the songs got somewhere close to completion, she apologized for sucking only about eight or nine times, and she stayed on stage for an entire hour. I’ve been caught saying that I’d listen to Chan Marshall sing a phonebook, and for some parts of the concert, she may have been. Nervous and jittery, she made up one song on the spot and sang snippets of about 20 others. It feels less like a concert than hanging out in your friend’s bedroom as she jams along and goofs on her instruments. I’m not sure most people would put up with it, but when she does come through it’s so painfully beautiful that I’d be hard pressed to say that it wasn’t worth the wait. It’s really that good. The piano ballads worked best, and her cover of Satisfaction is probably one of my favorite covers ever. She never sings the chorus until one longing reading towards the end of her arrangement.

I think the show would have went along better if the Knitting Factory didn’t suck so much as a venue. For a name venue, I was kind of stunned at how bad it was. It’s a small floor with a small balcony, with a bar in the back of the floor. It’s small and it’s intimate, but the sight lines are atrocious. Chan performs sitting down, so for the first portion of the show, I saw the top of her head. Once I got a better angle, I got to see her whole head. Wheeeeee! The balcony overhangs the floor in the back AND the sides, so there’s really only a small portion of the floor that isn’t claustrophobic. Because Chan only plays either a guitar or a piano while singing, it’s always a very sparse sound. This isn’t really a problem at a lot of venues, but at the Factory you can hear the bar clinking constantly, and one of the ventilation pipes would rattle heinously when Chan would strum an open E. Add this to the fact that a lot of the crowd towards the back decided to talk openly during the show, and it was a pretty frustrating evening. I swear, the stuff I put up with sometimes.

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Carrie, Corin and Janet came to town, so I went to go say Hi. Twice.

My digital camera was acting funny, plus I was on the balcony, so no photos were taken this time. I was pretty much strictly there to see the show, and had a blast on both nights. Their performance on Friday was on par with the last show at the Highlands, with great crowd enthusiam and a high powered set. Their turn on Saturday was even better, although the setlist was a little milder and the crowd slightly more subdued.

They’ve always been one of the better live acts around when they click, and they’re really starting to hit a monster stride this year. They’ve been locked in pretty much every time I’ve seen them and they’ve achieved the perfect balance between their ferocious punk energy and tremendous technical precision, tight without sounding mechanical, powerful without being ragged. After this tour they’re doing a short opening stint for Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder’s been begging them to tour for a few years now, so I hope he enjoys getting blown off the stage on a nightly basis for a week or two.

photo by Rich Gin at Irving Plaza, NYC / October 15, 2002

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Last week I went to go see Kodo play Royce Hall for a concert. After I bought the tickets, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew there’d be a lot of drumming but not much else.

The program runs 90 minutes long, and explores several different forms of Taiko drumming. The first number used three medium sized drums with six drummers (one on each side). Each drummer had a drumstick the size of width of a stickball bat, and about half as long. They took turns soloing, and each drummer had their own take on the low stance baseball like swings that the drumming required. One drummer twisted with so much torque to generate the necessary force that it looked like his head would come flying off.

Over the course of the show, some numbers were better than others, and there were about four or five different drums, some used in conjunction with flutes or gongs, but not much other instrumentation. It doesn’t really get boring though, because the booming, primal nature of the drums is hard to ignore. Also, there’s a certain amount of athleticism to the different stances, and in the most strenuous combinations, it looks like music as martial arts.

The big showstopper is when they roll out the O-Daiko, a massive 900 pound drum that measures four feet across. It’s carved out of one piece of wood (a gigantic tree, I’d imagine) and comes out on a cart that weights two tons. It’s a mind boggling piece of equipment, and brings some serious thunder when struck.

After the big O-Daiko finale, the entire troupe of 12 men and 4 women came out for a big dancing and drumming party and instead of exiting backstage, they walk out drumming through the aisles and greeting the fans, who were on their feet clapping to the beat.

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Cat Power‘s newest release, You Are Free, is probably the best thing Chan Marshalls ever done. That’s big talk considering her oeuvre: five albums of perfect melancholy that feature one of the great voices of our time. Efforts to categorize her as Southern folk, goth-folk, or the heinously named Sadcore, fail miserably to account for her sound. Cat Power sounds more like moods than genre. Her music is the sullen cries of lives gone and echoing through deserted mountains and valleys… um… with a guitar.

While Im a big fan of her older work, I still find it difficult to listen to the albums straight through. They are unrelentingly dour and carry so much emotional weight that I find myself throwing my headphones off just to get a breather. I have no idea why Matador‘s press photo has Chan smiling so brilliantly, it’s about the last thing you’d expect from her music.

“You Are Free” still evokes the same emotions, but Chan achieves a better balance this time. The record feels sequenced for vinyl, as the front seven feels completely different than the back seven. For the first half, instead of consistent downbeat tempos of earlier work, theres a wider variety here, with a few (relatively) peppier numbers and better range of instrumentation. “I Don’t Blame You” is a plain piano ballad, but it has a bounce in its step and a gorgeous melody. “Free” has a drum track that feels like a drum machine, while “Good Woman” sports some ghostly backing vocals from a children’s choir and Eddie Vedder. The first half closes with “He War,” as close to rocking out as Chan’s ever gotten, with a full band including Dave Grohl on drums. The second half feels more like a characteristically Cat Power album. It’s sad and scary, incredibly spare in its sound and painful in its depth. “Maybe Not” and “Names” are the most beautifully sad things I’ve heard since Tom Waits’ teary “Georgia Lee. ” It closes with “Evolution,” another plaintive ballad, this time a duet with a deep, deep male voice that sounds a bit like Leonard Cohen, although I’m pretty sure it’s not him. The sequencing makes the record drag a bit, but it’s a fairly minor complaint because the songs themselves are so strong.

While there are upbeat pieces, this is not a party album. Its the most complete songwriting effort Chans had, and her vocal performance is on par with the phenomenal Covers Record. Shes still able to find resolve and strength from her fragile, raw voice. Its a heartbreaking, spellbinding record, and my favorite album of the year.

He War is available for download here.

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Buried in the KRS newsletter last week was a link to the DCN (Digital Club Network), a website that streams live concerts from clubs all across the country. There’s an immense list of bands to choose from, but some of note include: Apples in Stereo, Bangs, Cat Power, Cheap Trick, Dick Dale, Sarah Dougher, Erase Errata, Gossip, Interpol, Mooney Suzuki, Quails, Quasi and Ron Sexsmith. There are countless others, but my eyes started to bug out after awhile.

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Somewhere in between this week’s disasters (the State of the Union and the Columbia), I managed to catch a show at the Troubadour. It was a double bill of the Hot Hot Heat and the Walkmen. I’ll get this out of the way right now and say I left before the Walkmen even showed up. I’m not a huge fan of the Walkmen, although the song they sold for that Saturn commercial is pretty good (it’s called We’ve Been Had, in case you were wondering).

Anyway, back to the Hot Hot Heat, or the HHH, if you wish. They’re a rock band out of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, who’s sound is fairly undescribable. Like a lot of the other “retro” bands, they harken back to an earlier sound. Unlike everyone else, they take their cues from early new wave punk, with punchy keyboards and spiky guitar action laying over an incredibly tight rhythm section. I always end up pulling out the Attractions comparison, because it’s one of the few that make sense to me. Like Costello’s band around the Armed Forces era, the Hot Hot Heat push a more traditional rock sound with some ill fitting keyboard bits that somehow work.

More than anything, the Hot Hot Heat are fun. Their preposterously hooky melodies and danceable pulse make them impossible to stand still to. With a little more success, the Hot Hot Heat live show could become legendary, as their music practically begs for dancing and singing along. When their fans catch up to their music, it could become something really special. Their set consisted of four songs off of the brilliant Knock Knock Knock EP, two new songs (that were sort of lackluster), with the rest of the material off of Make Up the Breakdown.

The band itself throws itself around with energy, especially the lead singer. Unfortunately, he has a really punchable face, and there are times his preening seemed all a bit too much. Still, it seemed to go over well with the people up front, particularly the female fans who snapped photos and commented frequently about the tightness of the singer’s pants.

How fun are the Hot Hot Heat? They’re so danceable and well dressed that everyone thinks they’re gay.

Downloadable mp3s and videos are available on their website. Their current rotation single is Bandages.

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