Yo La Tengood!

I've been a little overwhelmed lately, so I wont wax in depth about this, but I saw indie rock emissaries Yo La Tengo Friday night at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood. It was a wonderful show. This was part of their "Freewheeling Yo La Tengo Tour" which basically means they had a stripped down, acoustic set-up, and they developed their setlist extemporaneously via discussion from the audience. Too bad my LA peers, myself included, didn't seem ready to stimulate dynamic discussion. The music on the other hand, was incredible. The loose format made the show hearken back to what it might have been like to see them in their earlier days. Ira, the guitarist and singer, said this format was kind of like how their practices are. Except with more songs. They even switched instruments for their second to last song afer a dude asked them to. Georgia, singer and drummer and wife of Ira (and warm fuzzy center of the band in this stolid, playful sense) wasn't too into playing guitar. We applauded the effort all the same.

Speaking of Yo La Tengo from their earlier days, here's a video of them in 1988. They are obviously less precious these days, more mature, marinated, but the show had this kind of feel, somewhat, and not really:

Callahan's Kind of Cool

Assured, sharp, cool (tempered, comfortable in his own skin), Bill Callahan took to the stage of the Echoplex at around 11:20 last night and got down to business. Notably it wasn't (Smog) who performed. (Smog) being Callahan's moniker from his earliest days on the indie scene back in 1988. This time around, he's simply Bill Callahan, touring in support of his album "Woke on a Whaleheart." And Callahan, with a company of incredible musicians (bass, violin, and a percussionist who worked it standing up), put on an excellent show.

Callahan's songs all came off well, his trilling, mildly low voice ushered his lyrical loops while the music often started of spare and would build, slowly, to a cacophony made all the more impressive given the presence of only 4 people on stage. At times the sound seemed bigger than all of them. Like how the energy of the more propulsive track, "Diamond Dancer," was palpable. The percussionist, who heretofore was exemplar with his subtlety and controlled erratics and atmospherics, suddenly thundered a hard 4/4 beat, while the violinist hit a higher and more haunting register than she had with other songs, peeling askew and gorgeously shrill, with hints of lamenting vibrato. And of course, Bill, his expressive maw, hollering in this calculating, controlled sense.

And that was the essence of the whole show. It was experimental in that the songs all had the space to lumber and exist on a very mellow level. The music was imbued with a sense of composure, subsumed by the very necessity of the songs. That's what I was ultimately left with, Callahan's necessity. Necessary, as in, it's necessary to hear him sing to you, and because the venue was small and only half-filled, it felt like he was addressing us. It was necessary to hear him sing,"Oh I never really realized death is what it meant to make it on my own," in an excellent rendition of "Say Valley Maker." That was the line that stayed with me the most. He's saying that we're all in this together right now, in this moment (you can be alone when you die).

Interluded

Bessie Smith singing, oh how she's singing, "Careless Love Blues."

Wake Up Your Windows!

It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and a good reason to dredge up this rare New Year's Eve performance by Jeff Mangum, the man behind the band Neutral Milk Hotel. Mangum was an obscure late 90s indie rock figure whose last proper album, the brilliant In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, came out in 1998. But his songs don't seem to tire, particularly the one being performed in this video, "Engine," which can't be found on either of his albums but stands as one of his best songs, though honestly, they're all so good:


PS. Check out the incredible saw playing. Damn a well executed saw performance can make a good song great! Black Heart Procession kills on stage when the saw gets involved.

You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory

If you thought you were hot on this heat wave weekend, watch this video and turn the heat up higher. Witness Ronnie Spector (60s pop star and former wife of crazy Phil Spector) seriously rocking out and feeling it, hard, on this superb cover of a Thunders song. This performance is from 1997 at Coney Island High. That's Joey Ramone on the right, belting it in the chorus. Something about the piercing, drowsy, vibrato in Ronnie's voice crushes me. She owns this song.

Summer's Here, Let's Imagine Snow

See the tousled mane. She's boyish but singing like an exposed woman who hasn't lost the little girl inside of her. Julie Doiron's songs have this mesmerizing effect, possessed of a kind of purity, but not innocence. No. There's edge and not edge defined by brutality I don't think. Whenever I hear her songs, I feel like I'm being let in on a secret. And I feel a sense of gratitude for the fact that I can hear these haunting and validating miracles. Her music presents a lovely ambiguity of feelings. Just right. Just right.

Doiron's latest album "Woke Myself Up" has secretly creeped into my life this year and has become my favorite thus far, if only because I've listened to it more than any other and I can't stop. The songs on this album are movements, they build (not necessarily building up to cacophonous). You have to hear the whole song to get a sense. Every song has this unexpected turn in sense, melody, or texture that makes it transcendent. Yet they're all kind of matter-of-fact. That's what I like about her. Life is moving enough without too much embellishment or overarching dramatics. Because when the smoke clears, I think it's the genuine, hashed out connections that matter. Doiron connects with me like that. And I can only hope that she's allowed to continue to create. Please.