Elvis Costello played two nights at Royce Hall this week, his final commitment to UCLA as an “Artist in Residence.” Costello used the classy venue as an opportunity to slow it down and play two nights filled with ballads, torch songs, soul numbers and jazzy renditions of older songs.

Normally, when rock artists try and expand their horizons, it becomes a pretty awful mess. Now, not everything Elvis has done has glowed, but his work with the Juliet Letters, his acoustic tour with Steve Nieve and his side project with Burt Bacharach have all helped hone his skills to a finer degree. In particular, Elvis has become one hell of a singer. It may not have the smoothest timbre, but Costello has remarkable power, and a fine sense of phrasing and delivery. He loves resinging lyrics a little differently each time as well as backing off the microphone and singing with different degrees of amplification.

The setlists for both nights were pretty interesting, as Costello paid more attention to later, post Blood and Chocolate work. One of my favorites from the first night was “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” which had an extended middle where Elvis blended it into the Motown classic “You Really Got a Hold On Me.” Older tracks like “Man Out of Time” and “High Fidelity” were great, and the Bacharach co-written “God Give Me Strength” has potential to become a real classic. On the second night, Elvis played “Couldn’t Call It Unexpected No. 4″ as well as a new song called “When It Sings,” which seemed to allude to his recent breakup with Cait O’ Riordan. Great stuff that happened both nights included the slow burning “My Dark Life,” and the solo, acoustic and completely unplugged “Still Too Soon To Know.” For that number, Elvis stood on the side of the stage and sang without a microphone, filling a completely silent hall with just his voice and guitar. For both nights he closed with the anti-war pair of “Shipbuilding” and “What’s So Funny (About Peace, Love and Understanding)” and then the recent ballad “I Want To Vanish.”

This was a brilliant set of shows, but I’m looking forward to his next tour where he’ll get back to the full rocking rhythm show with the Imposters. It seems silly to have one of the finest rock drummers in the land in Pete Thomas back there playing with brushes.

Setlists follow (credit to Nunki from the Elvis Costello Mailing List):

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I’m not sure how this happened, but the best live act came to town last week and barely anyone knew about it. Electric Eel Shock may not seem like much when they show up at the club, just three Japanese guys that weigh about 100 pounds each. Other than some distinctive hair, they just don’t seem that special. By the time they’re done, everyone in the club looks like they’ve just been kicked in the brainstem repeatedly for an hour.

What happened inbetween? What happened was the single nuttiest, most energetic set and grandest display of rock and roll showmanship I’ve ever seen. EES is a very basic rock band at best, Black Sabbath filtered through the stripped and raw style of the MC5, but in the span of that hour, they will have you convinced they are the greatest band of all time.

Consider this: the members of Electric Eel Shock have a very basic grasp of the English language. They communicate with the crowd on a completely base level, yelling and jumping and throwing up devil horns. It’s almost a challenge to the audience to yell and jump and throw more devil horns. It’s a challenge that the audience always loses, of course. But in the journey, the band gets the crowd whipped into a frenzy and into lost abandon. It’s pretty rare to see people lose it like that, especially in hipster crowds where the most action you’ll see is people bob their head occasionally while they cross their arms and stare down the band, but it is almost a certainty with the Electric Eel Shock.

It’s incredibly refreshing to see other cultures filter back things like rock and roll as they don’t know the rules. As a result, they can adopt all the cliches and somehow repackage them into something that feels fresh again. There’s something beautiful about people throwing up the Universal Metal Sign without any layer of irony. Electric Eel Shock doesn’t throw their hands in the air like that to be funny or cool, they do it because they’re rocking the shit out of everything and sticking their fingers up in the air like that is the only way they can express it.

Drummer Gian Ito crushes out beats with two sticks in each hand, or sometimes just by bashing on the cymbals with his bare hands. He’ll make odd noises into his microphone, like a cat in heat, for his “backing vocals.” Bass player Kazu Maekawa stomps around on stage and leaps everywhere, including the wall in a display of trickwalking bass playing. All of this madness is fronted by Akhito Morimoto, who has gleaned every rock stance in the book, and invented a few of his own. He is the only person I’ve ever seen do solos from an exaggerated sumo stance, and the only person to use his Flying V as a jackhammer. He’s also the only person I’ve seen engaged in mortal combat with himself on stage, a rock n roll Tyler Durden that ends the set by karate chopping his instrument in its crotch, and then guillotining himself with the edge of the guitar. It’s a relentless assault on the senses. Oh, and the drummer’s naked all the time.

Pictures of EES here.

More pictures of EES.

Video Link here. You MUST watch this!!!

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Continuing on with more reviews of albums from superhyped bands that I obtained through questionable means comes my take on The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever To Tell. After releasing a stunning debut EP last year and drinking their way through a major label bidding war, The YYYs are finally going to officially debut their first full length on Interscope.

The major label business isn’t really relevant though, as Fever to Tell is a lo-fi production and feels as dirty and raw as any indie release. I’m actually not even sure why I brought it up now, other than I’m pretty much typing as fast as I can and hoping to make sense so I can sleep at decent hour tonight. A lot of the YYYs hype is based around their nutty stage show, where lead singer Karen O struts and flaunts and in general gets crazy and wild and rock and roll. Of course, none of this is on the record. I mean, you can hear Karen O and she sure sounds wild, but you don’t get to see her pour beer on herself or anything.

Like many bands now, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are drums/guitar/vocal, trying to stretch that out as far and fast as they can. Nick Zinner’s guitar style sounds like a fuzzed up blues/slide player, something like a punchier version of PJ Harvey’s records. Brian Chase roams free on drums, and Fever To Tell exploits his sound well. Without a bass, you can hear the thumps and wacks fill the room, and the record sounds about very close to a live performance. Karen O’s vocals sound downright animalistic, with all her melody lines interspersed with yelps and pants.

I’d actually heard many of the tracks on Fever To Tell before, as they’d premiered them on various radio stations last year. The strongest of those tracks are all here, and form the best parts of the album. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have a stripped, almost improvised song style, which are both the album’s strengths and weaknesses. When they work, the songs feel like they’ve captured lightning in a bottle. Songs like “Pin,” “Rich,” and “Date With A Night” feel wild and free and just on the verge of breaking down. Even the more restrained tracks like “Maps” and “Y-Control” have a sense of drama and live-wire spontaneity that you’re more accustomed to seeing in live performances than on record. When things don’t click, like on the swaggering “Man” or the closing Velvetish dirge of “Modern Romance,” the songs feel aimless and repetitive, a set of hooks and ideas still in search of a proper song.

With any band that gets this kind of publicity, it becomes difficult to separate the music from the press releases. The truth always lies somewhere inbetween. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are better than the choruses that yell “overrated” would have you believe, but they’re also lacking in just enough to justify that criticism. As it stands, if this was my first exposure to them, I’d be impressed and eagerly awaiting another album, where they might take that next step and live up to the accolades.

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Before I get underway, caveats abound: I’m not that big on the White Stripes. I have all their releases, but I’m not someone who lauds them as a vanguard of some mystical new era. While I’ve liked a lot of their previous catalog, it also hits me as a bit fatiguing to listen to for long periods of time, and sometimes so evocative of other heavy blues that I’ll just flip it off and put on one of those records instead.

With all that out of the way, Elephant is pretty easily their best release yet. It kicks off with something off kilter, a bass (or possibly a guitar through an octave/EQ pedal), before settling into the White Stripes formula: Meg’s deliberate kick and snare with Jack’s ragged guitar work. The boasting swagger of “Seven Nation Army” bleeds right into the churn of “Black Math” which leads to some bizarre Queen like vocal choruses on “There’s No Home For You Here.” The first three tracks are vintage Stripes without sounding like carbon copies. Jack White’s virtuoso guitar work, steps up even further on Elephant, doing all parts rhythm and lead, effortlessly switching between the subtle and the monstrous.

The rest of the album rocks similarly, with just enough breakups to keep it from getting monotonous. A cover of Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know Waht To Do With Myself” and a Meg White vocal solo “In The Cold, Cold Night,” don’t quite stand up with the rest of the album, but they provide a segue into the slightly more restrained middle section, before that album kicks back into overdrive with “Ball and Biscuit” and “The Hardest Button.” “Little Acorns” tries to provide another break, but it pretty much makes me hit the skip button every time. The album closes with another strong sequence, with rockers “The Air Near My Fingers,” the completely perfect “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine” before finishing with a goof-off hoedown with Holly GoLightly, Jack and Meg alternating vocals.

If the Stripes weren’t really your bag before, Elephant may or may not swing your vote. It’s a logical progression of everything White, only improved. If you liked them before, Elephant will probably be your favorite album of the year, if not the decade.

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Watched a lot of stuff this weekend:

War… there’s just way too much footage. Is there some kind of highlight show I can catch next week?

Oscars… I haven’t seen half the nominated movies, so I was out of the loop this year. I thought the highlight was Michael Moore’s extended rant and the subsequent boos. Hello? You reward him for being an outspoken liberal that doesn’t like to follow rules or decorum and then you boo when he goes off in his speech? What in the world did you expect? The whole moment was so tacky and inappropriate (on all sides, really) that it just made me laugh.

NCAA Basketball… hey, it was a pretty sweet weekend of roundball. I’m not in a pool this year, but my bracket would probably be busted by now. That said, I won $2 from my roommate when Marquette made the Sweet 16 and when Gonzaga only lost by 1 against Arizona in the best game of the weekend. I’m sure he’ll win it back from me next weekend.

Last but not least, Kelly Sue DeConnick (i.e. the only person that comments on this thing that I haven’t met) got her web presence up. She puts the words together in sentences better than me (although she’s probably got plenty of company in that regard), so go click over. Also, I guess if you’re looking to hire anybody to write some porn, she’d be the person to contact too. Ha, now I know you’ll click over. People are suckers for porn.

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OK, you know what the worst thing about this war is so far? (Obviously, other than the dying and the poor international diplomacy and the general ruination of the world)…

OK, the worst thing about this war is the local news coverage. I just watched Chuck Henry, who normally does goofy travelogue shows like they show on E!, on the news, and he used a telestrator to illustrate our simultaneous attack on Afghanistan. Right after that, I watched the local weatherdude explain the weather in Iraq. Hello?!?!? Am I going to work in Iraq tomorrow? Why do I need to know if I should be carrying my parka?

I’ve been long resigned to the whole idea of this thing, but man, there’s no need to torture me with news coverage that borders on Saturday Night Live outtakes. I guess I’ll just have to watch Blind Date or some other crappy show instead.

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Not that anyone REALLY cares what I’m listening to on my computer, but Matt Haughey banged out a way to easily have my PC update the webpage with my current playlist. There’s a little section on the right now that lists the last five MP3s that fired up on the computer.

Details on how to do this are located on A Whole Lotta Nothing. He also has some instructions for doing this with ITunes.

My only problem is that I don’t really use WinAmp so much anymore.

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OK… so I get to the Troubadour to see the rock show and there’s *5* acts playing. They are The Quails, Erase Errata, Aislers Set, Atom and His Package and Ted Leo / Pharmacists. I knew three of these acts (the first two and the headliner, Ted Leo).

I’d seen the Quails open for Sleater-Kinney, and they’re still super great. They played half new material and half older stuff. Decked out in semi-matching grey outfits (adorned with the words “The Quails No War”), the Quails tumbled through a 40 minute set of heavy grooved, post-punky rock, propelled mostly by Seth Lorinzci’s muscular bass work. I couldn’t hear guitarist Jen’s instrument or vocal, which hurt the performance a lot, as her punchy guitar work and vocal yelps help color the songs. Along with “Riding the Five”, my other favorite part of their set was their cover of the Dick’s “No Fucking War” flowing into their own “Shine a Light.”

[ See the Quails Live in Concert Here ]

The art-rock no-wave antics of Erase Errata were next. I was pretty well prepared for them, as I’d seen them open for Le Tigre over a year ago. Visually, they always get to the stage with striking costuming. As always, they were lit only with blacklit tubes, so that the bright accents of their Flintstone-esque patterns were the only thing visible. Their sound remains pretty much the same, with quirky bass guitar work providing the main melody over noisy guitars and crash heavy, dance beat drumming. As with the Quails, the main vocal of Jenny Hoyston was barely audible. Hoyston doesn’t really sing very loudly, so it was lost in the wash of noise, along with the trumpet and flute playing that she did during the breakdowns. Overall, you could see the audience wasn’t that into it, which is a shame.

[ See Erase Errata Live in Concert ]

Aislers Set arrived shortly after, with a full band (two guitars, bass, drums and keyboard) that seemed to overload the stage. Aislers Set is an indie pop/choral rock sort of band, with delicate vocals and a grand, mini-orchestral sound. The problem with this sort of act (think Stereolab or Belle and Sebastian) is that without a perfect mix and good acoustics, the sound just turns to sludge. The band sounded better when the drums went soft and the main sound was Amy Linton’s shimmery 12 string guitar. When they went to more uptempo songs with livelier drums, the balance seemed off again. I’m going to assume Aislers Set sounds better on record, but in this live setting, they weren’t able to come across. (Sorry, there are no Aislers Set shows online, as far as I could find).

The next act was named Atom and His Package. Atom is basically one dude with a CD player with presequenced material, playing along with a guitar. Atom (or Adam, I guess) sings nerdy punk about Rob Halford, the Washington Redskins and… pretty much anything he can make a funny song about. Imagine They Might Be Giants/Weird Al as a one man band and you’ll start to get the idea. This really wasn’t my bag, but I was stunned to see the people around me singing along and knowing all the words. Not only were people getting into it (which, I can understand, if not necessarily agree with), there were people that had traveled here exclusively to see The Package, and some even left before Ted Leo came on. I was mystified.

[ See Atom and His Package Live in Concert ]

So after what seemed like the eternal undercard, Ted Leo / Pharmacists finally showed up for the main event. It’s difficult to really describe Ted Leo’s sound, as he draws from so much and yet is able to make everything his own. At times, the Pharmacists will sound like the frantic energy of the Jam. When they infuse Stax era soul into their songs, as in “Bridges, Squares”, they wouldn’t feel out of place on Elvis Costello’s Get Happy!!!. “Dead Voices” recalls Big Star’s “In The Streets,” while “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone” tosses in a bit of 2-tone feel in a tribute to 2nd wave ska. When Leo loses the band and goes on an overtly political solo number, there are echoes of Billy Bragg. Leo’s voice is usually what separates him out, as he comes in a couple of clicks higher than all the aforementioned singers and more frequently infuses his choruses and hooks with soulful falsetto coos.

After a quick soundcheck, Ted thanked the opening acts and the audience for sticking around for such a long, intense night of music. They were down one Pharmacist, as the keyboard player was sick at home for this tour. Instead, they substituted with violin player Ida Pearle. Once the show started, it was pretty much a torrent of exuberant rock and roll after that. Without a keyboarist and with a harsh sounding guitar, The Pharmacists’ set didn’t sound like the polished material on record. Instead, it was more straight ahead and stripped, pushed forward by the insistent thud of the drummer’s kick pedal. While most of the band looks pretty laid back during the show, Leo spazzes around like his amphetamine fueled mod rock predecessors. Leo burned through most of the material I was familiar with early, (I’m only on true sing-along basis with the first half of Hearts of Oak), and spent the rest of evening rocking me with unfamiliar material.

He set the tone early by going right to “Ballad of the Sin-Eater” by the third or fourth song. For this number, only the rhythm section plays their regular instruments, and the rest of the band picks up random percussion (cowbell, maraca and tambourine). Leo even passes out a couple of spare tambos to the audience, and the result is a houseful of people stomping and bashing at things as a lone bassline goes on and on. It’s an ass-rocking party, and most would use it as a closer. It’s a testament to Leo’s manic energy that he uses it to get the crowd up and alive early, and then keeps it going through the rest of his set through pure will.

Unlike the other bands, Ted Leo set his mike up directly in front of me on the left side of the stage, whereas for the rest of the evening I was mostly facing the bass players. I thought this was pretty cool, but one thing I didn’t realize was how much Ted Leo sweat and gleeked as he sang. There was a pretty consistently fine sheet of mist coming off the guy as he shook around on stage, mostly on me. Next Ted Leo show, I’m bringing a tarp.

[ Watch Ted Leo Live in Concert ]

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Somehow I was convinced that this shirt was a good idea:

This shirt and other goods available for purchase here.

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Like their first album, it’s a stack of superdense pop rock, the kind it takes a couple of listens to take it all in. The first time through I was intrigued with all the great hooks in every song, but I found myself listening deeply to the layered production my next few times through. Lots of great little touches in the background. The songs have a great balance between that pop immediacy and a deeper intricacy in their arrangements. Reminds me of Brian Wilson’s followers, like Elephant Six and their ilk, except the New Pr0n grounds their songs with these bombastic rhythm parts that keep things moving and exuberant. Listeners probably aren’t going to comment about it’s grand songwriting and stunning studiowork anyway, because they’ll be too busy singing along and dancing. It doesn’t have anything as standout as the first album’s two Neko Case numbers, but overall it’s about as strong an album. Very good from front to back.

Sample It:

The Laws Have Changed (mp3)

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