But But But I I I Was Was Was There There There

Mother FUCK have I ever been going to some concerts lately.

TV on the Radio @ the Hollywood Bowl, 9/24/06
TV on the Radio, "Let The Devil In" - It's not that I don't think highly of TV on the Radio's sophomore album - far from it, as there's simply no set of aesthetic criteria I can hope to personally uphold by which Return to Cookie Mountain isn't at least as accomplished as Silent Shout or Sateenkaarisuudelma or Through the Windowpane or whatever else. But it's one thing to make a record that I consider "good" and another one entirely to make one that compels me to listen to it obsessively, and outside of the fitful, afternoon-or-two-long spurts in which I listen to Return to Cookie Mountain to the exclusion of everything else, I just can't say that it's really gotten its hooks in me; it might as well be that Editors record for all the personal mileage I get out of it. Of course, this is hardly the fault of the record; the plain truth is that I just don't give a shit about righteousness in music, and given my inability to hear Return to Cookie Mountain as anything other than a bombed-out Sigur Ros record with intelligible lyrics... well, you do the math.

Having said that, I'm happy to report that their show at the Bowl on Sunday night might as well have taken place specifically to address every single concern I have about TV on the Radio in general and Return to Cookie Mountain in particular. I still can't say that either the band or the album have taken over my life, mind you - I've got friends seeing TV on the Radio twice this week - but I can't remember the last time I was on the receiving end of such a triumphantly thorough critical de-clawing at the hands of a band; there's literally nothing left on the record for me to get all huffy and superior about, and I'm not exactly known for the disregard in which I hold either huffiness or self-constructed superiority. To be fair, I think the venue really deserves to be credited with the assist; the Hollywood Bowl may be my least favorite venue to see a band play in this city ((1) it's all seats, (2) you're surrounded by thousands of Los Angelinos who've Gone Out In Public To Tastefully Enjoy Music, i.e. the people I plan on making my Jews when the world elects me to be its next Hitler, (3) noise restrictions force the venue to enforce staggeringly draconian set-time adherance, to the point where TVotR didn't even get to finish their walkoff song for fuck's sake), but it's unimpeachable if you're looking to deal with music respectfully, and I didn't have to sit for too long and try to block out all the LAssholes before I came to the unavoidable conclusion that Return to Cookie Mountain absolutely pays you back for any respect you see fit to invest in it. For such an elegantly broken-sounding record, after all, it's certainly not hard to see the seams where Return to Cookie Mountain was assembled, and if you're into production and construction as hopelessly as I am, it's mortifyingly easy to find a cubby-hole in which to leave it for the rest of time - I mean, it's certainly an accomplishment to basically make a record that sounds like someone took a hammer to the master tapes of Superfly and made a record out of the fragments, but it's not necessarily a limit-pushing one, and when ProTools is the drug and I need to score, well, let's just say I'll probably have time for you once I've exhausted the Cocteau Twins (i.e. never). As the live show made exsquisitely clear, however, I'm a world-beating dumbass; Return to Cookie Mountain is absolutely music that can be made by human beings, just song after song of passion and creative dexterity which would probably sound like utter ass in the hands of a band that didn't have such an iron grip on the song's boundaries. It'd probably be a lot easier to understand if you could just watch the drummer in action - I walked into the Bowl expecting to see the man keel over dead on stage from the superhuman importance TV on the Radio place on their drums (there's part of me that doesn't think it's a coincidence that their best, most creative, most engaging record so far avoided the boundaries of human fallibilty entirely in favor of a drum machine), but damned if the dude didn't even come close to a misstep; despite banging out some of the most intricate rhythm lines heard on a recent rock record, you could have set your watch to that show. It was really pretty incredible.

But if we're going to talk about "incredible" or "selling me on the virtues of this band", it feels like all I should really have to say is that despite what their more high-minded pretenses might lead you to believe, TV on the Radio is a Motherfucking Rock And/Or Roll Band through and through. Two days later, I still find myself bowled sorta over by the indelibility of their performance; you'd just be shocked to discover how many onstage avenues of expression Return to Cookie Mountain affords them all, from the aforementioned drummer's casual brilliance to Kyp Malone's mesmerizing John Entwhistle-esque stoicism to Tunde Adebimbe's frenzied efforts to pull his voice out of his lungs with all the frantic, pained urgent determination of someone realizing that they just dropped their keys in a public toilet. And when the moments would come when they'd have to step it up to compensate for the lack of studio magic, they came through in a big way - "Let The Devil In" sounded nigh-unrecognizable between the drums being hurled to the front of the mix and Adebimpe's endearing efforts to replicate a huge, swelling chorus with the help of only a megaphone. I mean, okay, yes it was all exquisitely mannered and musically articulated and completely empowering for anyone with a view to make fun of U2 fans, but goddamned if they weren't doing the exact same thing that gave Bono & Co. their reputation as The Greatest Rock Band In Whenever - giving and giving and giving and rocking and rocking and rocking. Hell, for all I know, that might be the exact reason for my antipathy towards Return to Cookie Mountain up until Sunday night - it's awfully hard to sign on with a phenomenon when you've grown up watching it discredit otherwise reasonbable people (I mean, really political, super-idiosyncratc attempt to take on rock from commercially oblique angles - am I the only person left on earth who'd use those same terms to describe War?). But if Sunday night reminded me of anything, it's that sometimes that exact phenomenon can really hit the spot, even if it doesn't necessarily hit it on me all the time. Well, OK - that, and avoid the Hollywood Bowl at all costs unless absolutely necessary. (Click here to buy Return to Cookie Mountain from Amazon.com)

Soulwax @ the Vanguard, 9/14/06
The Gossip, "Standing In The Way Of Control" (Soulwax edit) - The important thing to remember about Soulwax' performance of Nite Versions, I keep telling myself, isn't whether or not I had fun; the Dewaeles may have blown the doors off the motherfucker in grand style, but I'm sure we've all been to shows where we were just too exhausted beforehand to enjoy it fully (not that they helped things by kicking off their set at like 11:15 on a Thursday night FOR FUCK'S SAKE) - it was just one of those nights that can only really be described by Dave Chappelle irately snapping out "It happens". Rather, the important thing was the supernatural tightness that defined their set; I haven't been so impressed by a band successfully trying to sound exactly like they do on the record in a good long while, to the point where I have to start a BLOG BLOOD FEUD with Brian over his offhand comment about how the CD would probably come off as pretty boring. The fact of the matter is that aside from the running time and a few treats for the live crowd (JAMES. BROWN. IS. DEAD.), you couldn't slip a credit card in between the differences between Nite Versions the album and Nite Versions the concert; the only thing the live show was missing was "Compute" (which was pretty unfortunate since it's still easily my favorite Nite Version), but I'm even willing to allow them a brainfart of that magnitude for their diligence in recreating all the best bits of the record, especially that first ramp-up of synths in "Another Excuse" which just killed me. They just covered all their bases expertly and left nothing to chance, and the end result was a performance for the ages, even if it wasn't necessarily for me that night.

That being said, the big lesson that I learned from their performance is that as much as I love hearing Soulwax do The Soulwax Thing, I'm exponentially more interested in hearing them do The Soulwax Thing to other artists' songs. I mean, it says something that my favorite moment of the night was probably the twenty or so seconds when they decided to turn "Krack" into Nelly Furtado's "Maneater", namely that the raddest aspect of Soulwax' music isn't its accomplishment half as much as its single-mindedness; it's like their sole purpose in existing is simply to plant flags in songs, and since I'm already pretty well aware that the soil of their own songs holds the flag up well enough, I end up turning to their efforts with other songs just to hear them challenge themselves. Not that it's always necessarily a challenge, mind you - if Soulwax weren't caning the Gossip's original (and quite great in its own right) version of "Standing In The Way Of Control" for months and months before their edit surfaced, I'd be shocked almost to the point of catatonia - but hearing their rules work in places where they weren't originally writ as law can be thrilling in a way with which even the best Soulwax originals can't necessarily compete. I mean, I love "Much Against Everyone's Advice" as much as the next sane human being, but uh damn, gimme those skittering "Bellhead"-esque cymbal rides or the way they play up the snarling rage in Beth Ditto's vocals (and especially the way they play 'em up when the beat drops out) three times a day and four on a Sunday; it's the kind of remix that you can only get from a band that's thoroughly comfortable yet wholly unconstrained by their own limitations as musicians and songwriters. And what can I say? It's just fucking great, the kind of thing that makes a record as bowel-clenchingly rocking as Nite Versions sound pedestrian by comparison. And that's really no mean feat. (Click here to buy Nite Versions from Amazon)

Junior Boys @ the Troubadour, 9/25/06
Junior Boys, "FM" - So yeah, like I said, mother FUCK have I been seeing some shows this lately - I've probably seen more live music this month than I've seen the whole year up to now, Coachella obviously excepted. Still, I don't even have to think twice before naming the best show I've seen recently; the Junior Boys absolutely erased the universe last night, to the point where Jeremy Greenspan announcing the last song immediately set me off hissing about how short their set was, only to be informed in short order that they'd actually been playing for nearly an hour (and they came back out for an encore to boot). It's just that they're so astonishingly skilled at playing their music that it's hard to keep track of things like "time" or "needing to drink more" or "wishing I had a machete to hack a sight-path through the forest of Very Tall People in the audience"; there's just such a sense of calm gracefulness to their whole performance, starting with Greenspan's seemingly effortless breathy falsetto but born to its most satisfying apex by Matthew Didemus' elegantly blase synth programming, that slipping into the most pleasant type of pop-fugue imaginable seems like almost the only option. In fact, the only complaints I can really lodge against the show all have to do with the presence of a drummer, whose transparent and formidable competence only got in the way of the dearly-departed Johnny Dark's rhythmic textures on the songs from the first album ("Birthday" in particular died a painful death when married to such an overt 4/4 beat) and turned a lot of the slower, mellower numbers from So This Is Goodbye into entirely different tracks altogether; "FM" may well be my favorite song on So This Is Goodbye (and quite possibly my favorite Last Song On The Album of 2006), but that's largely because of the juxtaposition of The Most Delicate Melody Ever against The Most Artfully Unobtrusive Rhythm Section Ever, all of which, needless to say, gets ruined in a big way when you add unignorable skin-bashing. But hell, I can't even complain about the drums without admitting that they helped out immeasurably on other songs ("So This Is Goodbye" stands out in particular) - in the end, I'm glad they were there, even if they turned possibly my favorite song on the ir best record into a six-out-of-ten shoegaze album track. But then again, I suppose these are pretty great problems to have. (Click here to buy So This Is Goodbye from Amazon.com)