A handful of Colorado’s favorite sons (and daughter), DeVotchKa, took the stage tonight with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra for an immense evening of their mariachi-gypsy laced music made even bigger.
Tonight was an electric, flawless, intuitive pairing. Coupled with the ululating vibrato of Nick Urata, which is an instrument in itself, DeVotchKa writes complex, challenging songs that have been ripe for this sort of reinvention. Songs that are already brilliant to begin with shot into the sky tonight with a thousand colors.
It’s a brilliant phenomenon lately, some of my favorite musicians recording sessions with anything from small string quartets to the sixty-person symphony orchestra I saw tonight. As I sat damp-eyed during the final gorgeous explosion of “How It Ends,” I tried to put my finger on what exactly it is that these songs gain from going through the transformation from guy-on-a-guitar to full-blown-orchestra. Best I can articulate is that I feel like it has something to do with colors, and with size.
Hearing a pop musician play with a symphony makes their songs balloon into ten thousand gradations of hue where there once were five or six. It feels like a chorus of voices (instruments) all swelling with you to agree, yes, this is a terrific song and all eleven of us violins will speak with you on that — as will a half-dozen trumpets, and those plinky wood-box percussion things. It was deeply thrilling to hear these songs get so colossally huge, and tremendously more expressive. I found myself picturing stars coming out into the sky at night during “Dearly Departed” when all the string instruments began a complex plucking pattern, the song so immense that it transcended the hall we were in. It got at that effect I am always longing and looking for in music: an overpowering sense of the vast other, the cresting of the tidal wave, the moment when it knocks you down.
We don’t, as a young-people whole, go to see the Symphony much — at least, I know I don’t. I’m sure you’ve spent many times more money in the past year on live popular music than on the symphony or other forms of “high culture,” even the raddest former band-geeks among us. I wonder if more of these incredible pairings could help remind us all why we sometimes need to sit ourselves beneath the cerulean thunder of the waves of sound that sixty people can create.
I was also watching the joy radiating around the musicians in the symphony as they performed, and from the young ones to the rad ponytailed older dudes on percussion, there was a definite energy created by this merger of forces, and what it teased out of the crowd. I would absolutely love to see more nights like tonight; I think of recordings I cherish that have captured this sort of pairing (Augie March, Josh Ritter, Joe Pug) and then fantasize about ones that would probably kill me dead if I ever were to see them live with a symphony (The National, mostly). This is a good idea with only good effects, as we stretch our musical boundaries and conceptions.
Tonight left me breathless. Musicians, let’s do this again.
Saturday was the start of the Monolith Festival and we were ready. The morning dawned perfect and gorgeous (and by dawned I mean 10am) and our parking lot tailgate went off without a hitch. Well, some hitches. We forgot utensils to flip burgers with and so mix CDs were sacrificed to the angry Weber gods.
I’d never heard New Zealand’s The Veils before, so their set was the perfect way to start a weekend designed for new musical discoveries. Silhouetted against the massive Ship Rock on the New Belgium Stage, their set impressed me with chimey notes, a bluesy groove, and Morrissey-esque vocals. I learned that the band Traviswas instrumental in originally signing them to the Rough Trade label, where their latest album Nux Vomica was released in 2006.
After the Veils it was off to the WOXY stage down in the inner bowels of the Red Rocks Visitors Center. So many of us never even knew that stages could fit down there, but fit they somehow did. Pictured below is the box o’ fun that Port O’Brien brought their pots and pans and lids and wooden spoons in for the riotous closer to their set. Alaskan Adventures indeed. Their set was a definite standout of the entire weekend for me, moving from a strong rootsy vibe to chaotic joy, all interlaced with phenomenal melodies. Just to give them that extra punch of alt-country cred, they actually have a guy in the band (guitar) named Zebedee Zaits. I would see them again live absolutely, and their All We Could Do Was Sing album may be on my tops list this year.
After hearing stories from several friends and relatives who actually have travelled to faraway cities to see Superdrag on their current club reunion tour, I was excited to finally be getting to see them for myself. Their set was relentless and rocking and still felt very vital. I’d love to find a way to bring them back to Denver to pack a small sweaty club of our own. They played a varied set drawing from the range of past albums and ace new tunes like “Filthy and Afraid.” And you know what I have to admit? It was more fun than I thought it would be to sing along and wonder just who exactly sucked out the feeling.
From Melbourne Australia, Cut Copy‘s mainstage set was some of the most fun I had all day, unexpected in the bright daylight. Their synthy alternative indie-dance sound bounced around off the massive rocks flanking the crowd and funnelled all that energy back into the writhing masses. Some of the most enthusiastic dancing I saw all day took place at this show (probably because folks had room to dance — in contrast to their labelmates The Presets whose later set downstairs was so crowded that the fire marshals came to remove a few of us).
Shortly before Holy Fuck took the New Belgium Stage around 5pm, my friends and I decided that every time someone says their band name, either an angel dies or the baby Jesus cries. I also feel like I need to call and apologize to my mom. But none of that is relevant to the soaring sounds that they send shooting out from their huddled mass of collective intensity on stage. Their set was very similar to the one I saw at Coachella, down to closing with the magnificent “Lovely Allen,” and I remain fascinated by their blend of electronic sounds with completely real rock.
AND! These videos that I shot both give me a delicious frisson of delight down my spine:
HOLY FUCK AT MONOLITH, UP CLOSE
HOLY FUCK CLOSING SONG: “LOVELY ALLEN” AT MONOLITH
The Night Marchers came from nowhere (okay, San Diego) and blew me away with their filthy retro garage rock. A friend mentioned that I should check out this group fronted by Rocket From The Crypt’s John Reis — and after hearing their tunes alternate between punk, surf and straight up devil’s apocalypse, I was glad I heeded his call.
White Denim was simply insane, like someone reincarnated Jimi Hendrix and we were gonna get the guitar-lighting festival moment all over again. Hard to believe it’s just a handful of skinny young guys, but they sounded blow-your-hair-back good (and loud!). I felt fortunate to see them on the small WOXY stage because they could be playing much larger venues in no time.
I will admit that there are others who know much more than I do about Minneapolis duo Atmosphere and their glass house of dark hip hop, but I do know that I was mesmerized by the girls in the front row who kept lifting out their bare breasts and vigorously shaking them at the guys. I mean, like Motley Crue action going on at my very own indie rock festival. I was so proud. And no, I didn’t get pictures.
Devotchka was dizzying and musically dazzling as usual (even as sleety rain spat down on us), and it felt fitting to have a Denver band headline the main stage on opening night. Amidst instruments wrapped in christmas lights, and theatrically keening melodies played on exotic instruments, the crowd warmly received these hometown indie-gypsies.
…But my favorite show of the late-night set came from Denver’s slightly-less-well-known musical collective, the multiple membered Everything Absent Or Distorted. As if the band name wasn’t enough of a mouthful (go ahead. say EAOD. we do), they pack enough random musicians onstage that their near-midnight set on one of the underground stages seemed like we just crashed band practice amongst friends. As a late addition to the Monolith schedule, not many folks found this show. But I was glad I peeled myself away from the end of Devotchka’s set to see them leap and twist and yell and play.
Reprising a collaboration from the Underground Music Showcase last month, they finally launched into a cover of this song with an unbounded, melodic ferocity — and I almost busted a spleen from singing along:
Passion Pit came and Passion Pit played that dang song which the moment I even think about it (like oh! right now! it’s happening right now) it starts looping in my head like someone implanted a tiny robot to sing it in there. I can hear it clear as day. They kicked off the Saturday night afterparty and shortly after, I kicked off some wandering and drinking and talking, and oh there was an unexpected limo ride involved. So it is with my apologies that my reporting back dwindles to a close here for Saturday at Monolith.
But oh! We had a whole ‘nother day of fun to come. We’re just getting started.
PS – I saw lots of other bands that I am too overwhelmed to write coherently about, but notably The Muslims (what Chris wrote was both true and more punctual since he blogged when I was off sleeping instead) and The Morning Benders were really grand. See everyone from Saturday: Part One, Part Two
[Superdrag setlist photo credit the formidable John Moore]
The waves of radiating heat by midday arrival at Coachella on Saturday felt the most heady of the three days, but perhaps it was just the swell in the crowd numbers in anticipation of The wee sexy Artist. More people = more body heat. Although I was excited about so many acts that day, the gild was off the lily-fresh novelty of Friday and I kept finding myself jammed into overpacked tents with too many hip dudes in neon sweating on me. This was the day I wanted to spend the most time in the Do Lab so that guy above could spray me with his cooling mists of the gods, in time to the pulsating electronic music. In that crowd, you cease feeling hot, and just feel blissful.
I started my rounds over in tent village wandering from French synthpop band The Teenagers over to the Gobi Tent for the music of Mick Jones’ (the Clash) side project with Tony James of Generation X, Carbon/Silicon. Their sound is true to those (slightly idling) punk guitar jags and the cockney drawl, but my friend kept shaking his head in dismay at Mick’s pink button down dress shirt. “Joe Strummer would’ve beaten him up for that shit,” he muttered under his breath. Ah, but we all age. Not all still sound as good as these guys did; it was an enjoyable afternoon set.
Denver’s “indie rock with a circus-polka-cabaret-Eastern-European spin” Devotchkawas next, and not only were they all dressed up like a symphony in their (surely godawful hot) dress blacks, they brought acrobats and tubas.
I love how you can see the whole stage and the crowd reflected in Jeanie Schroder’s tuba, and who doesn’t want flailing spandex-clad women swinging from large scarves in time to their live music?
After Dwight Yoakam (Dwight Yoakam!) and his hillbilly muuuusic –which seemed to go over quite well, as a testament to the variety of this festival– I headed over to get trampled at Hot Chip. The photo pit was as packed as the tent, spilling out into the open air, all of us sweating, weeping for a good shot of the band, and trying to deny that the rhythm of Hot Chip was indeed, in the end, going to get us. Those beats were just as delicious and tightly-woven as I had expected and the crowds were out in full force to be a part of that.
P.S. – You need proper athletic wear to survive Hot Chip (below). I also saw 5 grown men dressed only in matching Speedos and hip packs and it made me die a little inside.
If I thought I was trampled at Hot Chip though, my goodness it was just preparation for M.I.A. I found it interesting that the two most buzzed and frenetically attended sets of the whole festival that I saw were out in the Sahara Tent (bet it woulda been three if I made it to Justice). Traditionally, I understand that’s been the dance/DJ tent but it seems to me that maybe genres are bending and next year the organizers shouldn’t assume that the dance kids will all fit inside it. Under the stars at the outdoor stage would have been so much better. But nonetheless, M.I.A. was stomping and bright, a dizzying set causing complete crowd chaos from this Sri Lankan wundergirl.
In between Hot Chip and M.I.A. I swooned a little over Jenny Lewis, who charmingly dug out the same outfit she must have worn for her tap dance recital in 1988, and whose fellow Rilo Kileyans sounded warm and perfect in the setting sun:
Golden confetti during The Moneymaker as the sky darkened….
Portishead was alternately mournful and sexy and numbing and thrilling all at once. Under the starry desert sky Beth Gibbons’ voice floated like a ghost weaving in and out of the trance.
Also worth noting that Portishead’s set possessed the magical ability to completely jam the cell phone text messaging network, leaving thousands of us stranded, wandering with a dazed look in our eyes as we sought our friends. It was a near tragedy of Herculean proportions. You just don’t DO that to techno-addicted younguns. How did I survive festivals before texting? It was brutal.
Finally – Prince! You do not take pictures of The Artist. You take pictures of the screen showing the artist. Only Prince’s “personal photographers” were allowed in to the photo pit, much to mine and everyone else’s chagrin. I wanted to see how tiny he was from 15 feet away. But it was okay because his essence radiated all the way back to where I ended up on the field and I felt the heat, baby. One only needs to watch him play guitar like he’s in The Throes of It All to see why women flock to him (not this one, but some women. So I hear).
He was moody and sensual, I never could figure out what he was going to do next, he changed clothes in the middle of his set and played an hour after noise curfew with little concern for silly rules. And really, who was going to tell him to stop? And he pretty much blew the standard for future headliners sky high. I am not a huge Prince fan with the exception of a few undeniable favorites (Never Take The Place Of Your Man? P Control?) but this man was in charge. His cover of Radiohead’s Creep was one of those wtf moments where I looked around and said, “Wait, is he actually doing this?” – the ways he changed the lyrics eviscerated the song of a lot of its insecure meanings, and I didn’t care for that, but he made it his own. One thing Prince does not do is wish he were special.
As the final notes of Prince’s set vibrated off into the sexy oblivion where all of his performances are stored ad infinitum, one of my friends commented that people were going to be talking about that set for years. And indeed, everywhere I went I overheard conversations, starting with one at the table behind me when getting bagels the next morning.
“He kept changing what he called us!” Young Man With Visor #1 remarked. “Like, first it was [slight falsetto] ‘Hello Co-ah-chella!” then he switched and was all, “Y’all are the coolest, Cuh-chella. Unh!” When he achingly closed the sentence with that perfect Prince “unh,” I almost spit out my coffee trying not to laugh because then they would’ve known I was eavesdropping. Their conversation then veered into hypothetical situations that amused me so much I had to get up and leave: “So, if you had a nipple on your forehead, would you just wear a beanie all the time? Or a sweatband?”
On that thought-provoking note, we headed out into the ghostland observatory of Coachella on a sparsely populated Sunday . . .
The Grammys were on last night, and even though I watched them, I felt just as disconnected from the alleged art contained within them as ever. I went to the Grammys in 2003 in NYC and at the time was struck by what a spectacle, what a circus it was. It was barely about the music, more about the fashion, the pyrotechnics, the manufactured emotion of the mini-crowd they select to run down to the front, wild in their staged arm-waving enthusiasm — trying to inject an emotion into the show that doesn’t exist in the natural state.
The queen of the evening Amy Winehouse looked addled, twiggy, and uncertain with what to do with her limbs while she skittered through her material (scaring the bejesus out of half the folks watching her, asking their spouse over the beats, “Who is this Amy Winehouse gal? And why did she win all those awards?”). Lackluster performances reigned; even Feist was not represented as gloriously as she should have been (where was the rainbow colored dancing? that would have been better than that painful Beatles medley with the walking umbrella and the flying culotte lady that I thought was Heather Mills). I was surprised to find Kanye West’s performance the most potent of the night; his inspired collab with Daft Punk lead into a wrenching, broken tribute to his mama that added Kanye onto the short list of people that have made me cry this month (how did that happen?!).
Anyways, score one for the corporate death of music that makes me feel anything inside. Yep, pretty cheerful around here today.
Here are five tunes for you to spin this week:
Up Against The Glass The Botticellis The musical byproduct of communal living in the Outer Richmond district of San Francisco, indie pop-surf band The Botticellis impressed me when I saw them at NoisePop last year opening for Cake. They’ve got a tight, sunny, ’60s sound saturated with multihued orchestral melodies. I’d posted an earlier version of this addictive little song last year; it’s now revisioned for their debut album on the Oakland, CA label Antenna Farm. Check out the vintage, analog sound of the album Old Home Movies when it comes out May 13. They’re playing some Bay Area shows in the coming months and also will be at SXSW.
Grounds For Divorce Elbow Among the bands with weird noun names (Spoon, Aqueduct, Sponge, what have you) Manchester band Elbow is the only one who would be taken on a desert island with John Cale. Not a bad endorsement. This radio rip of the first single from Elbow’s upcoming 4th album The Seldom Seen Kid (due on the UK’s Fiction Records, home of Stephen Fretwell and Ian Brown’s latests) is a haunting, gospelly blues track with a guttural punch and stomp. It sounds downright epic to these ears. [thx]
Transliterator DeVotchka The soundtrack to last year’s excellent Little Miss Sunshine brought some well-deserved acclaim to Denver quartet DeVotchKa. Since spinning those quirky, inventive, whistle and theremin-laden tunes for the film, DeVotchKa has signed to -Anti Records, and their album A Mad And Faithful Telling is due March 18th. This first single doesn’t sound like much else I’ve heard lately, spinning dizzily by the end as we discuss someone who won’t mean what they say or say what they mean. I feel confused, but I like the effect. You can stream more new stuff on their website.
Song of Love/Narayana Kula Shaker Hazy and trippy as ever, London’s Kula Shaker always get lumped into the Britpop header, but really, why? Reformed in 2005 after six years apart, their recognizable Indian chanting and psychedelic overtones remain intact on this “new” song from the album Strangefolk. Released last year in the UK, this one slipped past me originally, but is finally gearing up for a US release on Cooking Vinyl next week. The band is still steadfast in their belief that love can save the world, and this cut bends eras and genres. It builds slowly but is solidly good; have a listen.
Return To Me Glen Phillips As a pretty hearty fan of Toad The Wet Sprocket throughout the Nineties, I’m always trying to keep up with the quality, heart-warming output of the various band members since their 1998 official disbanding. Of the projects, frontman Glen Phillips has consistently grabbed my ears with his literate and earnest solo output. On tour now, Glen played last night at the Fox Theatre in Boulder (and I was sad to miss it but had just been there Saturday night for the scathingly funny rock of Mr. Matt Nathanson). One of my kind readers notified me that there’s a new EP Secrets Of The New Explorers up for download on his website, the follow-up to Mr. Lemons, his strong 2006 full-length. This winsome track is a free download and there are more like it for mere dollars.
Okay and this is getting long today but — can we file this final PS under things that make me say “hmmmm”?
I was at the auto parts store yesterday (brake light out, as two nice construction workers let me know at a stoplight the other day) and I saw this keychain breathalyzer dealie for 39 bucks by the register. I found it highly amusing that it claims to have “Hundreds of Uses.”
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
Name: Heather Browne
