But I Was There: Vashti Bunyan @ the Echo, 9/9/06

Vashti Bunyan, "Lately" - We'd all like to think that we're original, of course, but the sad fact of reality is that even in your most unique and distinct moments, no matter how hard you Natalie-Portman-in-Garden-State it up, someone somewhere else has already both been there and done that. The way I see it, we have two options - you can either wallow in self-pity for having misconstrued your life's story as that of some scion of history (not necessarily the wrong choice, mind you) or try to keep your experiences in a frame, focusing your trail-blazing energies on very narrow footpaths of experience. For instance, it's hard for me to take much satisfaction from wishing cancer on a whole room full of people; even as I type this sentence, there are probably people wishing cancer on rooms full of people in a thousand languages that I've never even heard of. On the other hand, I'd bet dollars to donuts that I'm the only person in history to ever gaze out at a room full of people gathered for a Vashti Bunyan concert and wish the creeping cell-death on all of them - hell, it may have even been the first time anyone's ever even said the word "cancer" at one of Vashti's concerts, unless of course immediately following it up with some frail, bald woman taking the stage to insipidly supportive applause to celebrate her recovery from it. Needless to say, I'm pretty proud of myself.

Vashti played two shows last weekend: one was free and took place at the incalculably beautiful Getty Center right as the sun set for the day, while the other cost about twenty bucks a ticket and took place at the shitty, beat-up Echo. My ass being as dumb as it is, I made a bee-line for the show at the Echo, operating on the (not unreasonable, goddammit) assumption that the Echo show would have a lower concentration of hippies due to a far rattier venue and the existence of a ticket price; hippies, after all, are nothing if not equally indignant to the idea of not getting the best possible experience from their time on this earth as they are to the one about paying out money that could just as easily be spent on ugly-ass beads or patchouli oil or mandolin strings or whatever the fuck hippies spend their filthy lucre on. But alas, it was not to be; instead I walked into the Echo and, over the course of the next three hours, came into contact with the following people:

• A group of young assholes who walked right into the venue, plopped themselves down right in front of the stage in a big circle, took their shoes off, started giving each other backrubs, and refused to get up or make any room for anyone else for the rest of the show; it was a show of utter contempt for the rest of the audience of nearly GG Allinesque proportions. Suffice it to say that in a just and fair world, every single one of these people would have walk edout of the Echo's doors and right into a starring role in a gang-rape.
• For some reason, Vashti Bunyan managed to draw the tallest crowd imaginable; David and I seriously discussed the possibility that they had put up a "Must Be This Tall To Enjoy Gentle Yet Off-Kilter Folkie Song Stylings" sign (presumably Ariel Pink would be extending a finger outwards at the appropriate hash mark). And while I realize that it's kind of a crappy thing to hate on someone due to their being taller than you, especially with the Sitting Fuckwits taking up so much room and preventing everyone from finding a less objectionable viewpoint, I just don't care; I paid twenty bucks to see Vashti Bunyan sing, not see her occasionally lean forward into a square of clear sight roughly the size of the one I can make by touching my thumbs to the tips of my forefingers. It is also worth noting that this problem was exacerbated even further by the presence of hippie hair, which I am thiiiiiiiiisclose to accepting only on the head of Gavin Russom, and even he better watch his act until that Black Leotard Front album finally becomes a reality.
• All manner of jerks in costumes. Again, I admit that this is something of a spurious point on which to get hung up, but come the fuck on - if you intentionally dress like you've been inspired by "(Listen To The) Flower People", you deserve all the hate you attract. You will also perhaps be less than shocked to learn that the costumed folxxx were among the more vocally earnest (or earnestly vocal - I was too busy praying for about three hundred anvils to come crashing through the ceiling to decide) individuals present; I had an especially hard time deciding who I hated most between the weedy girl who started whining about how she couldn't hear despite standing like four feet to my able-to-hear-just-fine-thanks ass or her weedier boyfriend who piped up with the most tragically unironic "Yippee!" that I've ever heard in my life, although in reality they pretty much deserved death equally.
• The bitch who brought her dog. Seriously - on what planet do you win friends among strangers by bringing in something that (1) takes up space already in short supply due to the Seated Cockfaces up front, and (2) disrupts the show with motherfucking barking? But really, the piece de resistance had to be when she demanded with all the social grace of a wide-hipped PTA mother that everyone let her up to the front "so that people don't step on the dog's tail". I suppose it never occurred to her that another place she could have stood where the dog's tail might not be stepped on might have been, oh, I dunno, IN HER GODDAMN LIVING ROOM INSTEAD OF A FUCKING CONCERT. Naturally the Sprawling Cunts upfront welcomed her into their circle like a long-lost friend. I have never envied James Woodley so much in my life.

So you might be forgiven for being a little surprised that I'm not writing this post from my new home sharing a cell with some big motherfucker constantly asking me to pick my favorite New Kid (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ANYONE BUT DONNIE). Fortunately, the headliner couldn't have been picked to offer up a more soothing, fulfilling experience as a counterpoint to the one afforded by everyone else in attendance; had Mrs. Bunyan projected any more harmlessness or good nature into the atmosphere that night, we all might have found ourselves unable to keep from devolving into Disneyesque bunny rabbits. The famous Myth of Vashti Bunyan, of course, is that after the release of her first album, she took three decades off from the music industry to raise her children, a concept which seems implausible to anyone who hasn't seen her yet, in retrospect, all but inevitable to anyone who has; I honestly haven't encountered more than two or three people in my life who exuded such sincere positivity without immediately forcing me to declare them utterly insufferable, but all I needed was one night in the presence of Vashti's calming, restorative influence to rank her right up there with my fifth grade teacher. Except that unlike Mrs. Harward, then Vashti began to sing, and I swear to God that I've never tried harder to see a sound in my life - it's just this frightfully captivating warble, not necessarily "beautiful" in any classical sense, but so utterly compelling and delicate that transfixion is one's only real option. Sailors have turned their ships towards the rocks for less, no joke. I mean, hell, just listen to "Lately" - even if the exsquisite backing music sets you up somewhat for a disappointment (although anyone expecting anything on the level of Max Richter's tour de force production work on Lookaftering from a by-the-bootstraps touring ensemble probably deserves exactly what they get), you still get a pretty good sense for Vashti's breathtaking, intoxicating, unfathomably arresting singing voice. Now imagine that live. Was it enough to make me abandon all thoughts of the doors locking and the room being slowly filled with bees? Of course not - or at least not for a full hour, anyway. But still, though - that's a feat in and of itself. I mean, do you think I get to "OH GOD, I AM TRANS-FUCKING-FIXED" from "CANCER CANCER ALL OF YOU GET CANCER" on my own? Or rather, do you think I would? (Click here to buy Lookaftering - and it's a profoudly wonderful and borderline inexhaustible album, so try not to be stupid - from Amazon.com)

Damon Albarn & Roots Manuva, "Awfully Deep" (Lambeth Blues Metronomy remix) - Rather than actually talk about this record, I think it might be instructive to present an unordered, by-no-means-complete list of MCs I'd much rather listen to than Roots Manuva:

• Rick Ross
• Will.I.Am
  
• Coolio
• That fat guy from PM Dawn
  
• Victor
• "Colors"-era Ice-T
• MC Skat Kat
• Whodini - even tracks other than "Five Minutes of Funk" (which itself is about Two Minutes of Funk too many)
• Lyrics Born
• Jordy
• Pras, even the album cuts
  
• Speech
• Elton John
• Devastatin' Dave
• Amil
  
• The 1984 Chicago Bears
• Debbie Harry
  
• Common

Translation: Good news, everybody - Metronomy done did it again! (Click here to buy the Awfully De EP [DO YOU SEE WHAT THEY'VE DONE?!?!!?!] used from an Amazon.co.uk merchant)

The Affair, "Andy" - And as a special present to anyone who waded through today's Wall Of Long-Winded Misanthropy And Thinly-Veiled Excuses To Post The Devastatin' Dave Picture One More Time, I'd like to take this opportunity to present you with something genuinely special, although your ability to discern it as being special really depends on how much bog-standard indie guitar pop you consume in your daily diet. "Andy", you see, is in many ways about as boilerplate as you can get - 4/4 beat, all about pining, lackadaisically mastered, incomplete-feeling sound thanks to the near-absence of either a bass or a rhythm guitar, on a violently fashionable London record label (although the Affair actually hail from New York), etc.; you know the drill by now. In fact, the only way in which "Andy" might be said to be anything other than drearily familiar is in the way that it's TOTALLY FUCKING INFECTIOUS - seriously, the Hanta virus should be so lucky as to have such an immediate and all-consuming effect as this track. I actually think it wouldn't work nearly as well if it were flashier or more insistent upon itself; you might find more immediate examples of handclaps or that soaring, pleading one-woman girl-group choruses in other songs, but the satisfaction that comes from finding something you like pales in comparison to the satisfaction that comes from finding something you like in something you had to teach yourself to appreciate. And anyway, it's not like this is some impenetrable dirge, either in scope or in practice - I'd take the way Kali Holloway wrenches out that magnificently-bleated Ari Up-esque "All I ever waaaaahnted from youuuuuuu" over an awful lot more songs than you might expect, and it's far from the song's only high point. It is, in the end, Just Another Really Good Indie Rock Song; it's just that really good rock songs aren't quite dead yet, and songs like "Andy" stick out for the way they remind us of that. (Click here to order the "Andy"/"Anything But Disco (You Ruined My Life" single from Rough Trade)