Friends Don't Let Friends Be Ironic

While most things are crumbling to shit, I did, on the plus side, discover why I've been on this folk music binge as of late.

It is totally free of pretension. Or, at the very least, that god-awful Irony that seems to creep up in everything indie made in the past 15 years.

When Scott Avett sings about...well when Scott Avett sings about just about anything, it's totally bare. As someone who was a much better writer than I once put it, "If the Avett Brothers are sex, they are sex with the lights on. With your wife." And it's TOTALLY TRUE.

When Langhorne Slim squeaks to holy hell on 'Lord', it works! There's no layer of autotune or overproduced nonsense to coat everything with a slick of butter. You are dragged across that vocal canyon, face down on the rocks.

Even on I and Love and You, that much-lauded Rick Rubin behemoth, the slick layer of producing and maturing the Avetts and Rubin provided could not stifle the honesty of four guys with instruments.

In essence, I have grown so tired of this ironic thing, that hearing somebody's bare voice with simple lyrics that come from a good place in their heart makes me want to sob and hug them hard.

Wavves are shitty for shittiness' sake. At this point the damn kid could really afford a halfway decent guitar and a halfway decent recording studio. He just chooses not to. It's part of his thing.

There's sort of a cute parallel between Wavves being shitty for shittiness' sake and kids buying clothing at Urban Outfitters that looks like its been torn, destroyed, aged, weathered and worn for decades. Faded shirts. Ripped jeans. Worn-in flannel. It's an added layer of character without the work or dirty thriftstores. Bloody disgusting.

Not that I'm exclusively insulting Wavves here. Or even the genre of crappy music (take note, Times New Viking et al). Vampire Weekend citing soukous or the existence of Aesop Rock are all in this same category of gross, sticky irony.

Not that I'm exclusively insulting Jewish rappers here.

With someone like Matisyahu, yes, there is a kitsch value. He's a Hasidic rapper. There's a risk of becoming a novelty, sure, but at the same time, there's an honesty behind Matisyahu's work. He makes rap music because he loves it and has always loved it. Aesop Rock isn't that kind of kid. Aesop Rock is the kind of kid that started listening to it when he calculated that his parents wouldn't approve, and that kids in school would do a doubletake when he started blasting Wu-Tang or NWA. He did it for attention, and the little bitch is still doing it for attention.

So, for all the Aesop Rocks of the world, who do it because it'll draw attention as a commodity, and for the Wavves of the world, who do it because there will always be kids wanting someone else to rip their jeans for them: grow the holy hell up.

And, for all the Matisyahus and Avett Brothers and Langhorne Slims of the world who do it because they love it and they don't mind being a little honest with total strangers every time they sing and will bare their scars in public: thank you.

Next concert is Islands w/ Jemina Pearl @ the Middle East Downstairs November 4

Until then,
Stay True
WF
Honesty = Best Policy

The Avett Brothers - Distraction #74
The Avett Brothers - Slight Figure of Speech
Langhorne Slim - Lord
Matisyahu - So Hi So Lo

THESE ENTRIES ARE SO LONG WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME

Andrew Bird @ the S. Portland High School Auditorium

1. The place
A massive high school auditorium, fabulous sound and strangely I got good seating, despite it being general admission and I arriving just as the house lights dimmed. It looked like a high school auditorium.
2. The people
Maine is a bloody weird state. Lots of grandmas and some hipsters, almost all high school lookin' (the hipsters, not the grandmas) some little kids with hands on ears and the most 'this-is-my-daughter's-play' atmosphere ever (attn: you do not need to vocalize laughter every time Andrew Bird or Annie Clark talk).
3. The performers
So Andrew Bird used almost the exact set list he used when I saw him this summer in Boston, even the same banter between songs (IE: him trying to verbalize something only explicable through music, IE: the impossible IE: he rambled) but this time it was actually funny! He had wit! It was just him too--no backing band--so when he looped himself into a light coma it was pretty magic.
St. Vincent I think was a little too much for an opener--a little too much PBR, not quite enough NPR, but some of the grandfolks seemed to get with it, what with the flute and the sax and the clarinet. Plus, at the end of Bird's set, Annie Clark came back out and they did a duet of a new song, along with some St. Vincent, along with St. Vincent coming back out for the most stirring, thumping rendition of Scythian Empires I've ever heard. Swoon. During the sort-of encore, they performed potentially the sexiest rendition of Bob Dylan's 'Oh Sister' I've ever heard. In short: they have super duper chemistry, and need to get on the baby making soon.

I'm willing to step aside and let Annie take 'im, so long as she treats him like she did last night.

So maybe the $10 in tolls between here and Maine, and the numerous near-death experiences in that rainy, foggy drive were a bit much, but the concert made up for it.

Until next time,
Stay NOT KETCHUPY,
WF
I Love AB

4. I'll go back and put up MP3s for these reviews when I'm certain people are reading this. Which they aren't, so it just seems like unnecessary work. Rawr.

Heart: Meet Hands

So hopefully this one doesn't take the three days the last one took, as tomorrow is another concert and I just don't have time for this tomfoolery.

The Avett Brothers @ the House of Blues, Sunday October 18

1. The Place
The House of Blues, as somebody funnier than I once put it: the Starbucks of concert venues. It's true, but I got in early enough that I was close, which is good given it's apparently like 2500 people, so that would've sucked. It's big, it's well lit, the sound's good. Not generally a common combination of details.
2. The People
It was an all ages show (I think HOB might actually be an all ages venue, which is nutso but sort of logical) so there were scrawny little 12 year olds with their dads and a gaggle of middle aged women with bleached hair and even a good smattering of people who CAME FROM NORTH CAROLINA FOR THE SHOW AND THE SHOW ALONE. Everyone was, like at Langhorne Slim, blindingly happy, ceaselessly energetic and knew the words to every song. If the fans are always this great I'm going to country/bluegrass/post-Civil War rock concerts more often. During 'Living of Love', one of the more ballady-type songs in the Avett repertoire, a woman in front of me, previously jovial and bouncy as they come, was smearing away tears, screaming at the top of her lungs. The concert was that good.
3. The Players
So the openers were Nicole Atkins and the Black Sea, and in addition to being kind of a precious looking 16-year-old (who's actually like 30, so good on her whatever's doing that) they were decent pop types. Nothing new, but she had a strong enough voice to keep it from drifting into Michelle Branch territory. Not a whole ton of energy though. A little drab.

But lo, then came the Avett Brothers. Darting between a keyboard and an electric guitar and a drum kit and a bass drum and a banjo and an acoustic, the brothers, assisted by Bob (switching between electric and upright bass) and Joe (switching between cello and not being on stage) it was two hours of sweaty, happy joy. The heyday of songs about cheatin' on your woman and runnin' off rang a little sour as their wedding rings (Scott and Bob are daddies now too) glinted in the spotlights, but goddamn if it wasn't a great show. Again: if all concerts had that much energy, I wouldn't be wasting my time chronicling them, because I could just write AWESOME AWESOME across a piece of paper all the time.

Plus, those are some damn good looking men. Oh my god are they good looking.

1. That photo is blatantly stolen from Rachel A and is a couple years old. Scott looks the same. Maybe a little less facial hair.
2. Soon, I will start putting up my own photos of concerts. Once I can afford a camera. That is a vital part of the equation.
3. Tomorrow is Andrew Bird at the Portland High School Auditorium WHAT?

Until then,
Stay beside some nice chicken fingers or something,
WF
I know, right?

Nicole Atkins - Neptune City
The Avett Brothers - Paranoia in B Flat Major
The Avett Brothers - Living of Love
The Avett Brothers - Gimmeakiss

I HUGGED HIM

So a first. Again.

1. The place
I've never been to TT the Bear's before, but I really, really like it. It's painfully small--turns out, the smallest venue in Boston I've been to. The whole building is shaped like a sideways uppercase I, with the ends being bars (yes, two bars) and the middle being the stage. It was so cute. Oh my god glory glory.
2. The people
Literally I was one of six people under 21, pretty much everyone was mid to upper twenties or older. OH EXCEPT THE 45 YEAR OLD DRUNK DUDE GRABBING MY ASS. That was great. But then he got ejected from the place and I bonded with the other two women he was bothering. ROCKIN'. Plus, the whole audience was totally uninhibited; screaming, jumping, crying, singing at the top of our lungs. I want all audiences to be that happy and loud and joyous.
3. The performers
Rare is the occasion when a band picks openers worth seeing. Sometimes, they pick one that's decent, but that probably means there's a total turd between them and the headliners (see: Ash picking Kind of Like Spitting over Circle and Square to go on before them, We Are Scientists picking Bear Hands over Bad Girlfriend to go on before them). This didn't happen. There was a clear progression in quality from the opening openers (whose name I unfortunately can't find) to Dawes to Langhorne Slim, this is true, however, both openers were still good. Plus, by the second to last song of Dawes' set, the soul-stirring 'When My Time Comes', the drunk ass grabber had been ejected, so the song's jubilatory tone was all the more fitting. They were a little on the pop-soul side (The Fray) but the lead singer was so fucking cute I didn't mind. Plus they were, y'know, good. I pogo'd to an opener, dude.

Langhorne Slim, subsequently, destroyed a venue of less than 300.

For every scream we emitted, the band screamed back. Heartbreakingly cute saxophonist wailing away, bobbing around, the man himself pulling some bizarro faces and moves that made me LAUGH AT A CONCERT HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE I'VE DONE THAT. This is the way concerts should be--the audience gives high energy back to a band giving out just as much high energy in a great reciprocal ring of joy. He brought up the audience onstage for the second to last song and jumped into the audience for the last one--little wonder, given he had lost his voice. But it didn't matter. The backers (the War Eagles) and the audience were singing so loudly that he didn't need to any more.

I was tired by the end of the show. And not by boredom like at the Dodos. By sheer expenditure of energy.

He stayed around after everyone had cleared out, and we talked. Well, he hoarsely whispered in my ear, I talked. We hugged.

Until next time,
Stay sweet (potato)
WF
Bloody in Love

Dawes - When My Time Comes
Langhorne Slim - Loretta Lee Jones
Langhorne Slim - Cinderella

Dead As

Okay so Thursday night was the Dodos at the Middle East. Some strangeness went down. It was supposed to start at 9, with doors at 8, but in reality it was doors at 9, started at 9:45. I missed the bus from here to Central Square, so I walked. It was like 40 and raining, so I was pretty grumpy by the time I got there. Anyway, review:

1. The Place
The Middle East downstairs is growing on me, I guess. The ticket taking staff are a helluva lot nicer than some places (read: the Paradise) but I didn't have any cash on me, so drinks were off limits. Suxors, but not so bad.
2. The People
Despite being under 21, for whatever reason, when I go to a concert and see a sea of black Xs on the hands of the populace, it makes me angry. It makes me judge. And, well, this was no exception. Because of what amounted to this two hour delay, a lot of kids had taken to sitting on the floor, which was kind of cute, actually. It was like a sleepover, but much more pretentious, and much more PBR. Rare was the over college-age kid. More non hipsters than hipsters, but again, every beer was a PBR, so we're talking people who want to be hipsters but aren't. Me, basically. Kind of lame.
3. The Performance
So...this was a first. I am a strong believer that you should get what you pay for. Meaning, if a play sucks, I will stick it out, because I already bought my damn ticket. Meaning, if the movie is Wanted or Vantage Point, I'll sit through the entire thing, because I already paid $10 to see it. Ruby Suns were first, and I really wanted to like them. They seem to be following that AfroBeat thing that Friendly Fires and Vampire Weekend are all about, except they were all drums, which was odd given they had no drummer. They were cute, they were Kiwis, and every old song they played was rockin. Every time they announced a song as new, I got kind of bored. You can only hear synths wailing over a droning singer's wail for so long before you lose interest.

It wasn't really fair to the Dodos. The concert I had been to previous (Manic Street Preachers) has been seven years in waiting, and was blisteringly, blindingly fucking great. Two drummers and a Joseph Gordon-Levitt knock off with my last name couldn't possibly match up, and they didn't. They were too chill, the music too vague and uninteresting, the audience too static.

What I'm trying to say is, I left early. What I'm trying to say is, it wasn't entirely the Dodos fault, but they sure as Hell could've made it harder to leave.


Anyway, now on to better days.
Stay dunked in malt vinegar, cuddling your fishy friends
WF
Brighter horizons, yeah?

No Surface, Still Reeling

So if you want to be a petty, pedantic bitch, yes, the Manics concert was six days ago. I actually decided to wait this long, and here's why.

When I was in sixth grade, by some freak crossing of ectoplasmic streams, we cable-less lot picked up MTV2, then a new station. It played music videos. All the time. They used to have this program called Control Freak wherein viewers could vote via a webpage for what music video would come up next. Lucky for me that A Life Less Ordinary by Ash off of the little-appreciated soundtrack for the film of the same name, got picked once. And thus began my Anglophilia. I suddenly had to hear every Ash song ever made, again lucky for me that their most recent album (Free All Angels) had just been released, so there was a good deal of it.
Then one day, perusing their website, I joined their messageboard. I met people--almost exclusively English--who liked Ash as much as I did, and had all these other bands in their hearts I had never heard of. Enter Suede, Pulp, Blur, and the likes of the Manic Street Preachers. Their music had been everywhere--loud and angry and political, quiet and sentimental--they had even had the requisite member disappearance, the true hallmark of any decent band. They became the soundtrack of my awkward middle school years, a damn good thing given most kids my age were listening to crap like Nickelback. I had a band quoting Sartre and Chuck D in the same song.
When I discovered that they didn't tour the US much, in that in their then-eighteen year career they had toured twice, I broke a little. I'd probably never see them live, unless I happened to study abroad at the right time. Or something.

Flash forward to this summer. Depressed that I'm going to end up at BU, a crappy film program with no future, I had decided I was going to fill my fall with concerts--a small consolation prize for my life being over, at least in my mind. And then I saw tickets were on sale for the Manic Street Preachers first American tour in a decade. Attending BU or no, I was going. I'd live on the street if I had to.

So here it is, my review for a band I thought I'd never see live, much less at a venue of like 500.

1.The Place:
The Paradise is nothing new. 'Nuff said. However, James Dean Bradfield did do an instore gig at Newbury Comics earlier in the day, and he marveled repeatedly at the fact that a place like it still existed, which made me pretty happy. Sometimes I forget not every city has a Newbury Comics.
2. The People:
I'll say me and the three other under 21s were pretty much the youngest people there by a decade. I met a couple of super awesome people, one of whom is in college across town, but by and large, the Manics fans were over 30, quite a few were British expats, and one woman, Jo (we talked) had flown from England to see them, because she said she would've paid the cost of the flight and the ticket just to see them that close up in Britain. Nutso. Great crowd though, lots of energy, lots of love for a band that has sometimes been a little short on reciprocation.
3. The performers
Bear Hands opened for the Manics. Saw them open for We Are Scientists in July, and while their sort of cranky whiny dance rock made sense there, here it was one of those "what the fuck" moments. But honestly, I think any opener would have gotten the same response. You're opening for a band that has toured the United States like three times yet still somehow gathered a rabid following.
The Manics were flawless. Poor James had come down with a cold that morning, but you couldn't tell. He's still the loudest singer in music, and he and Nick were bounding around stage for the entire gig. They were funny, there was a ton of banter between the two of them, they did sort of a greatest hits gig (every other song was from Journal for Plague Lovers) and the audience was singing along so loudly you could hear them over the speakers.

Bloody brilliant.
Until next time,
WF
Don't judge yrself


(Thursday night was the Dodos, so that'll be next, but tonight is Langhorne Slim and Sunday night is the Avett brothers. Oh boy.)

Flawless

I know this concert was Saturday night, and today is Monday. Fuck you for judging.


Ra Ra Riot, the Paradise Rock Club, 10/3/09

1. The Place
I won't wax poetic about the Paradise more than I have to, seeing as I already have (see: Sondre Lerche). It was, however, very darling that one of the bands mentioned the bizarre metal columns that dissect the room. They're sort of stylized trees, but even that seems a little too nice. They suck and they're huge.

2. The Performance
I don't like calling things perfect, if only in part because I'm too young and too dumb to be able to definitively determine whether it's true, and I will probably feel that way until the day I die. On my deathbed, I will make a list of the perfects, and pass it down to my children so that they may forever know what to eat, where to live, and which concerts it is their grave misfortune they weren't born in time to see.

This is one of those.

Up first was Princeton, a California quartet. The answer to all of the following questions is yes.
Were they heartbreakingly cute, despite featuring a set of twins (one of my big fears)? Did they sound like something out of a John Hughes movie? Did they do a duet with Alli from RRR? Were they catchy 80s synth pop the likes I haven't heard and enjoyed in ages? Am I seriously considering seeing them in a couple weeks when they come to the Middle East with Art Brut, despite making that four concerts in four days?
Strangely, Maps + Atlases, the next guys up, weren't quite as good, despite the higher billing. Hyper intricate guitar work that I didn't really get on record made much more sense live, but they were still lacking the sort of blind youthful joy the other two bands gorged themselves on. A bit of a buzz kill, in essence.
Being the last night of the tour, Ra Ra Riot seemed on the verge of bursting the whole show. It wasn't just the physical energy of six musicians running and hugging and tousling each others' hair between songs and an audience reciprocating, but rather the emotional energy of being six college friends who've made it in the closest sense of the term. I've never been proud of a band before, but two nights ago I felt like a damn parent at my kids' recital. Cellist Alli's bow was almost fully shredded by the end of the night from the pounding it took, but when all three bands shared the stage to maybe the happiest cover of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, it made total sense. Over a dozen musicians, fitted with every species of noisemaker, stringed creature and childish excitement, after a long , successful tour, screamed and jumped and romped for four minutes.

Needless to say, we all left grinning like idiots when the houselights came up, the bands included.

Or so we hope.


Up next is Manic Street Preachers at the Paradise, Thursday October 8.

Until then,
Stay golden (brown),
--WF
I Princeton - Sadie and Andy

Oh I'm Bad

Okay so admittedly this is a week late. Fuck you, I have things to get done. This is a double bill too, so prepare yourself for greatness. Tonight, we dine in Hell...

Wavves, Great Scott, Sunday September 27th

As a note, I'm doing this in a different order. You'll see why.

1. The Place:
The Great Scott, like all tiny bizarro venues in Boston, is relatively odd in shape. From a bird's eye view it's a lowercase D, with the tallest point being the stage and the rounded bottom, the bar. Subsequently, fans get pretty well funneled into a straight line from the exit to the stage, myself at the latter (a decision I would come to regret). It was clean, people were nice, and when I bitched on Twitter that I didn't get to keep my ticket stub, not one but three different people from GS either Direct Messaged me or replied with apologies. So that was pretty nice.

2. The Players
I don't know what the fuck that first thing was. There was a projector with kaleidoscopic images of what appeared to be a dead body dressed as a scarecrow interspersed with a small child picking fruit. Sort of a Jesus-meets-Tom-Joad thing. There was a guy with a keyboard and what looked like the CPU off something from the 80s. He made sounds for forty five minutes. Laughter was barely stifled on my part. Ridiculous. Ganglians, a shaggy but relatively neat and twingly sort of trio from California were next. Scuzzy California surf rock, but still with a little bit of polish. Stood like mannequins of the dead but could have been worse. Wavves had some technical difficulties, but for all his reputation as a psychopath, Nathan Williams was pretty swell about the whole thing. Arm still partially slung from a skateboarding mishap, he bashed the holy fuck out of his set, which barely clocked in at an hour, difficulties included. He apparently was recovering from a cold (or so he said) but at that volume you couldn't tell. If there was anything new in there, it was drowned in feedback, but was still easily the most enjoyable thrashing I've had in a while.

3. The People
There are things I can and cannot rock at a concert. Non-committal indie arm swinging I cannot. Head banging and pogoing, I can. Taking a phone call during a concert, particularly during a song, I cannot. Shouting odes of admiration or witty commentary I may be able to, depending on the statement (IE: YOU'RE SO HOT at Keith Murray is not okay, but SONDRE LERCHE COULD DESTROY THE WORLD at Sondre Lerche I totally could). Damn concertgoers challenged me a bit here. I remember at a fairly awkward Ted Leo concert, TL himself totally dissolving any momentum they had had by stopping and asking people to stop moshing. He did it eloquently, which just endeared his 45-year-old-ass to myself further, his words being something like "There's a certain dumb-jock element in all of us, I know, but come on. They say Boston is the land of 1,000 dances, and you're going to tell me that's the best one you can come up with."

Muse was all headbangers and devilhorns at the Avalon, back when there was an Avalon. Nary a foot was lifted.

Wavves...well, to be honest, Wavves was fifty minutes of kicks to the neck and elbows to the teeth I'm actually pretty chuffed with. Some of the more fluffy bunny elements in the crowd seemed genuinely hurt and upset over the amount of would-be stage diving going on, but come on. Wavves is the closest thing to punk rock this side of 1980, indie rags be damned. The next morning I couldn't really turn my head to the right, but that faded with time. I lost my shit a little bit, I will admit. Somehow I ended up moving from the center of the crowd to up against the wall on the right, which ended up being fortuitous in that I missed out on the melee that ensued in the middle, plus I was dead in front of NW. Guy's simultaneously the cutest and the funniest looking motherfucker I've ever met.

Overall, despite the bruises, despite a hipster peeling himself out of a flannel jacket to reveal a flannel shirt in the exact same pattern, despite the technical difficulties, the show was pretty fucking great. I probably wouldn't even say despite. Perhaps, like all things Wavves, it is because of, rather than in spite of, those imperfections that make them so good.


Up next is Ra Ra Riot, two days ago, at the Paradise.

Until then, stay lovingly soaked in vinegar.
--WF
Ketchup's just gross

Wavves - So Bored