But I Was There: The Rakes @ the Troubadour, 7/17/06
The Rakes, "The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect" (full 18-minute version) - Two out of the three opening bands opening were unimaginably, indescribably boring; the third (Scanners) were merely OK in that all-too-familiar I-like-bands-with-influences-just-not-the-ones-that-influenced-you way (seriously, Hole = EURGH). The crowd was comprised of a stunningly well-detailed constellation of Los Angeles indie-rock douchebaggery; as if the guy singlehandely trying (and failing) to bring the vest back as a viable fashion accessory, the lanky tool with a big permed Kenny G mop of hair who kept hurling himself into Brian's area in his enthusiasm to dance like he was at a Phish concert, and all manner of anonymously fat ugly goth chicks and dudes wearing girls' jeans weren't enough to turn your stomach, we were LUCKY!!! enough to be TREATED!!! to a RARE!!! appearance by BOTH!!! Steve Aoki AND!!! the Cobrasnake (!!!). And let's not even get into how hot and/or stanky it was - a less charitable person than me might compare the experience to seeing a concert inside an ass, but since that kind of person doesn't exist, I guess it'll have to be me doing it.
On the other hand, the Rakes were fucking great. Greatgreatgreatgreatgreat. I've missed seeing them twice now - once last year when my freshly-jobless ass had to pass on their first show in LA when they changed to a paying venue ON THE DAY OF THE SHOW YOU ASSHOLES ARGH, and then once earlier this year when they ran up against Daft Punk at Coachella and, uh, well, yeah - but at this point, I couldn't possibly argue that the wait wasn't worth it; I've been to better concerts this year and (Lord willing) I hope to go to more before it's over, but I don't know if I can remember the last time a band sold themselves so effectively to Me The Author Of This Here Blog on the strength of one show. I mean, it's a dead certainty that they've got my money next time they roll into town. Dead fucking certainty.
See, the thing about the Rakes is that even though they may have worked with the shit-hottest of the shit-hot indie rock producers on their debut album, they didn't use him like a crutch. I mean, there are definitely some songs in their catalogue that sounded a whole lot better on Capture/Release than they did last night (mostly the singles, but, sadly, especially "Retreat" - it just ain't the same without those hi-hats, and you're just not going to be able to get them nearly hot enough live, or at least not when you've got like twenty minutes to get set up after Every Move A Picture leaves the stage), but if their live show is any indication, Epworth's role was mostly to keep things sharp and clear, occasionally adding a little flourish here or there but certainly not to the extent that he'd later break out on Kick. Unsurprisingly, I think this led a lot of people (myself certainly among them since I was flipping out hardcore over Maximo Park and New Rhodes when Capture/Release dropped) to just sort of look past the Rakes - I mean, in a very real way, it was "just" a rock album.
Obviously, this is a retarded way to think about music. I mean, when an album actually titrates itself down to the point where its influences don't hold any sway over your ability to process a music's value, when it basically strips itself down to a "DO YOU LIKE ME [box]YES [box] NO" note, you're dealing with something that the band behind it either can't replicate, and are therefore an assemblage of poseurs who should be laughed at from every MP3 blog in all the land, or can, and therefore deserve to have their praises shouted from the highest steeples. Rock math is not complicated, people.
And, at the risk of getting redundant, BOY could the Rakes ever pull it off. It's been a good little chunk of time since I've seen a band who did a better job with their album cuts than with their singles (and given that that's a club made up of bands like Art Brut and the Scissor Sisters), but damned if they didn't go ripping through "Violent" and "We Are All Animals" with more enthusiasm and vigor than Franz Ferdinand playing "Take Me Out" to a sure-fire receptive audience. And more importantly, they didn't seem driven by any sort of self-aggrandizing motives - the impression I got from watching all of them on stage, especially lead singer Alan Donohoe, was while being in a band wasn't necessarily a calling for them, it was certainly something that they enjoyed being good at, since if it wasn't they'd never in a billion years be able to play their songs with the ferocious, overpowering tightness that they just kept shrugging off. I mean, walking out of the Troubadour last night, you could have convinced me that they laid down every track on Capture/Release in one take - that's the kind of level of performance where I couldn't give a fuck whether or not songs about 22 grand jobs will have any personal value in a decade, to say nothing of the fuck I couldn't possibly give with regards to whether or not a band's been Touched By The Lord-uh To Play Music. There is, after all, a reason why I own every Strokes album and absolutely nothing by King Crimson.
Anyway. The highlight of the show was either "Strasbourg" (inexplicably their closing song) or the five-minute edit of "The World Was A Mess (But His Hair Was Perfect)". I still like the eighteen-minute version better, of course - it really has ended up as one of the most inexhaustible things I've yet managed to cop off The Prettiest Pony, and that's not the kind of thing I just say - but I'm actually posting it because it's damn near germane to the show from last night. I mean, it's basically just a Rakes song stretched out to comically overblown length - you could throw this on right after "22 Grand Job" and people might not even break stride - but that's kind of the point. This song basically exists for the same reason Comedy Central's current abortive attempt at getting Dave Chappelle's lost sketches on TV exists - it's just an excuse to expose yourself to a particular talent to as full a degree as possible. And, for their part, it's not like the Rakes don't give you plenty of reasons to do so - when Donohoe's cacophonous whine finally breaks the, what, eight minute? chorus over its back, it's as thrilling as any single moment in the Rakes' entire catalogue, a true "Tupac lives" moment if ever one existed. And THAT is what you can expect from the Rakes live show - a reason to watch the Rakes live. Because they rock. Because they kick ass. Because Alan Donohoe might start singing Nelly songs. Because all the new live shit is incredible. Because they don't torture you with drama-queen encores when it's a billion degrees inside the club. Because they're the fucking Rakes, and if that's not enough for you, find another show to attend. The snake that eats its own tail, after all, never goes to bed hungry. (Click here to buy Capture/Release - the American version with their most recent single, "All Too Human", appended to the end - from Amazon.com)
The Violets, "Mirror Mirror" - "AW COCK", I loudly said to nobody in particular upon cueing up the most recent EP from The Violets, "NOT MORE SUB-SIOUXIE AND THE BANSHEES BULLSHIT. DAMMIT, THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS - WHERE THE FUCK DID I PUT MY" and right then the chorus kicked in. I don't claim to have the ability to transfer my experiences onto other people (or at least not via the internet), but trust me on this one - if your experience is even in the ballpark of mine, you'll be walking around with the chorus to this one in your head for MONTHS. It's the kind of thing that actually lifts the rest of the song which I'd been so eager to write off; now I barely even notice all those Proclaimers-esque trilled vocals or (cough) pointedly (another cough) angular guitar lines - hell, I actually kinda like 'em, and I'd have believe Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat have a friendly dice game waiting for them in Christian Heaven before I'd have seen that one coming. Long story short: it really is quite a chorus. (Click here to buy the Mirror Mirror EP directly from the band)
ELSEWHERE
- NO FRONTIN', I KISS YOU
On the other hand, the Rakes were fucking great. Greatgreatgreatgreatgreat. I've missed seeing them twice now - once last year when my freshly-jobless ass had to pass on their first show in LA when they changed to a paying venue ON THE DAY OF THE SHOW YOU ASSHOLES ARGH, and then once earlier this year when they ran up against Daft Punk at Coachella and, uh, well, yeah - but at this point, I couldn't possibly argue that the wait wasn't worth it; I've been to better concerts this year and (Lord willing) I hope to go to more before it's over, but I don't know if I can remember the last time a band sold themselves so effectively to Me The Author Of This Here Blog on the strength of one show. I mean, it's a dead certainty that they've got my money next time they roll into town. Dead fucking certainty.
See, the thing about the Rakes is that even though they may have worked with the shit-hottest of the shit-hot indie rock producers on their debut album, they didn't use him like a crutch. I mean, there are definitely some songs in their catalogue that sounded a whole lot better on Capture/Release than they did last night (mostly the singles, but, sadly, especially "Retreat" - it just ain't the same without those hi-hats, and you're just not going to be able to get them nearly hot enough live, or at least not when you've got like twenty minutes to get set up after Every Move A Picture leaves the stage), but if their live show is any indication, Epworth's role was mostly to keep things sharp and clear, occasionally adding a little flourish here or there but certainly not to the extent that he'd later break out on Kick. Unsurprisingly, I think this led a lot of people (myself certainly among them since I was flipping out hardcore over Maximo Park and New Rhodes when Capture/Release dropped) to just sort of look past the Rakes - I mean, in a very real way, it was "just" a rock album.
Obviously, this is a retarded way to think about music. I mean, when an album actually titrates itself down to the point where its influences don't hold any sway over your ability to process a music's value, when it basically strips itself down to a "DO YOU LIKE ME [box]YES [box] NO" note, you're dealing with something that the band behind it either can't replicate, and are therefore an assemblage of poseurs who should be laughed at from every MP3 blog in all the land, or can, and therefore deserve to have their praises shouted from the highest steeples. Rock math is not complicated, people.
And, at the risk of getting redundant, BOY could the Rakes ever pull it off. It's been a good little chunk of time since I've seen a band who did a better job with their album cuts than with their singles (and given that that's a club made up of bands like Art Brut and the Scissor Sisters), but damned if they didn't go ripping through "Violent" and "We Are All Animals" with more enthusiasm and vigor than Franz Ferdinand playing "Take Me Out" to a sure-fire receptive audience. And more importantly, they didn't seem driven by any sort of self-aggrandizing motives - the impression I got from watching all of them on stage, especially lead singer Alan Donohoe, was while being in a band wasn't necessarily a calling for them, it was certainly something that they enjoyed being good at, since if it wasn't they'd never in a billion years be able to play their songs with the ferocious, overpowering tightness that they just kept shrugging off. I mean, walking out of the Troubadour last night, you could have convinced me that they laid down every track on Capture/Release in one take - that's the kind of level of performance where I couldn't give a fuck whether or not songs about 22 grand jobs will have any personal value in a decade, to say nothing of the fuck I couldn't possibly give with regards to whether or not a band's been Touched By The Lord-uh To Play Music. There is, after all, a reason why I own every Strokes album and absolutely nothing by King Crimson.
Anyway. The highlight of the show was either "Strasbourg" (inexplicably their closing song) or the five-minute edit of "The World Was A Mess (But His Hair Was Perfect)". I still like the eighteen-minute version better, of course - it really has ended up as one of the most inexhaustible things I've yet managed to cop off The Prettiest Pony, and that's not the kind of thing I just say - but I'm actually posting it because it's damn near germane to the show from last night. I mean, it's basically just a Rakes song stretched out to comically overblown length - you could throw this on right after "22 Grand Job" and people might not even break stride - but that's kind of the point. This song basically exists for the same reason Comedy Central's current abortive attempt at getting Dave Chappelle's lost sketches on TV exists - it's just an excuse to expose yourself to a particular talent to as full a degree as possible. And, for their part, it's not like the Rakes don't give you plenty of reasons to do so - when Donohoe's cacophonous whine finally breaks the, what, eight minute? chorus over its back, it's as thrilling as any single moment in the Rakes' entire catalogue, a true "Tupac lives" moment if ever one existed. And THAT is what you can expect from the Rakes live show - a reason to watch the Rakes live. Because they rock. Because they kick ass. Because Alan Donohoe might start singing Nelly songs. Because all the new live shit is incredible. Because they don't torture you with drama-queen encores when it's a billion degrees inside the club. Because they're the fucking Rakes, and if that's not enough for you, find another show to attend. The snake that eats its own tail, after all, never goes to bed hungry. (Click here to buy Capture/Release - the American version with their most recent single, "All Too Human", appended to the end - from Amazon.com)
The Violets, "Mirror Mirror" - "AW COCK", I loudly said to nobody in particular upon cueing up the most recent EP from The Violets, "NOT MORE SUB-SIOUXIE AND THE BANSHEES BULLSHIT. DAMMIT, THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS - WHERE THE FUCK DID I PUT MY" and right then the chorus kicked in. I don't claim to have the ability to transfer my experiences onto other people (or at least not via the internet), but trust me on this one - if your experience is even in the ballpark of mine, you'll be walking around with the chorus to this one in your head for MONTHS. It's the kind of thing that actually lifts the rest of the song which I'd been so eager to write off; now I barely even notice all those Proclaimers-esque trilled vocals or (cough) pointedly (another cough) angular guitar lines - hell, I actually kinda like 'em, and I'd have believe Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat have a friendly dice game waiting for them in Christian Heaven before I'd have seen that one coming. Long story short: it really is quite a chorus. (Click here to buy the Mirror Mirror EP directly from the band)
ELSEWHERE
- NO FRONTIN', I KISS YOU
posted by James at 5:14 PM
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
4 Comments:
glad you loved the rakes. saw em twice at sxsw and it wasn't nearly enough.
all your kiss are belong to us
I saw them at the Troub too, and they were so rollicking good. The 18 minute "World Was a Mess" was created for a Heidi Slimane fashion show, which explains the reason it's so drawn out.
I screamed out "but his hair was perfect" when they were saying the title and the girl next to me gave me the weirdest look, but fuck that, my hair was perfect.
Post a Comment
<< Home