Live: The For Carnation

When: 12/17
Where: Knitting Factory

Mountains openned the show last night. They play ambient, instrumental noise-folk with acoustic guitars and crap ton of electronics. At first, I enjoyed the rise and fall, the noisy dissonance and the sheer volume. However, with no melodies, no rhythms and no real surprises, I got pretty bored and left after ten minutes. [MySpace]

I came back just in time for The For Carnation, the band of ex-Slint/Squirrel Bait experimental rock genius Brian McMahan. Squirrel Bait's hardcore punk forshadowed Nirvana-style grunge back in the 80's. By the time Nirvana started changing in the indie scene, McMahan had moved on to the highly experimental, angular, sends-chill-down-your-spine music of Slint, helping spark (for better or worse) the post-rock movement.

After Slint, McMahan formed TFC and began creating much more subdued, gentle music. That may sound like a terrible direction, but it isn't always bad. When TFC is at its best, it has the same disturbing tension of Slint, but without ever providing release - the music just retreats further into its own sinister mystery. Unfortunately, TFC hasn't been that consistent - in fact, there's so much variation, I have to give you a song-by-song review.

Songs #1, 4 and 8 were TFC at its best. Minimal, desolate pieces with hints of jumpiness, these represent the logical sound of grown-up Slint. Song #7 was similar but got a little dreamer and sweeter in places. But still, something unsettling was lurking beneath the surface.

Song #2 was a bluesy number with an almost avant-garde guitar solo. Not my favorite.

Song #3 was folky and featured McMahan's lyrics sticking way out in front. They were about finding stuff in your house that reminds you of your long-gone wife. It would be banal even if it weren't cliche.

Song #5 sounded like Yo La Tengo being extra chilled out. Yawn.

Song #6, I've just forgotten.

The hit-and-miss set was made worse by McMahan's choice in bandmates. Certainly, with his reputation, he could put together a good band, right? But instead he's playing with these guys. The bass player seemed pretty solid and did a lot of strumming very well, which isn't easy to make sound good. Because of the style of music, I couldn't figure out the guitarist's skill level, but at least he didn't do anything offensive.

The real problems were the synth player and the drummer. The synth occasionally worked, but at other times, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It basically destroyed the last song (#8, which otherwise was great). Holding down the root in a hyper-oscillated, slow-attack setting just distracted from the music. Maybe if I didn't know about synthisizers, it wouldn't have bothered me so much, but I just kept imagining what was going through the keyboardist's (or songwriter's) head when he thought that'd be really cool. I love me a good slow attack, but because the sound itself was so stark, fading in on every note just drew attention away from the song itself.

And worst of all, the drummer! Brian McMahan, why are you playing with this guy? The dude is awful, seriously awful. Okay, I have a hang-up about playing cymbals with timpani mallets because it sounds like crap. You don't have to be a trained percussionist to listen to something and realize it sounds terrible. Even when he hit the cymbals with real drumsticks, they sounded bad. The toms also sounded like shit, and he abused his hi-hat in a way I haven't seen since high school (i.e. using it as a crash cymbal). I know I sound like a snob, but this isn't about following arbitrary rules, it's about making the instrument sound good.

His beats were also pretty lame, though not as bad as his tone. He wasn't the world's steadiest, but I only heard him screw up the beat badly once. As a time-keeper, he was perfectly adequate, but there were so many missed opportunities for better beats and fills. Sadly, his failings distracted me from the music and cost me a lot of enjoyment.

McMahan, on the other hand, is great. He's been in music long enough that he seems semi-comfortable singing, but still delivers a lot of his vocals in vaguely tuneful spoken monologues. I've never heard anyone pull this off but him, and he still does it, just like he did with Slint. His voice is simple and soft and his manner of speaking renders the songs even more uneasy. With Slint, he established himself as an enigmatic, haunted figure, and with TFC, when they're good, he's only buried himself deeper in his psychological darkness. He's still the real thing. [Fan MySpace]

[Note: I accidentally spelled Brian McMahan's last name "McMahon." It's been corrected now. Brian McMahon was a guitarist in the Electric Eels, also an amazing but obscure experimental musician from the heartland, but definitely a different dude.]

Upcoming Shows: Woods, David Grubbs + more

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 1

Woods @ Death By Audio | Williamsburg, Brooklyn | $?
Woods run with folks like Wavves, Nodzzz and Blank Dogs, but they do something rather different. Their pop is lo-fi, but in a more quirky way, with vocals delivered in a bizarre falsetto and guitars played cleanly. If their no-fi colleagues' music sounds as if it's buried under layers of gravel or ash, the songs Woods play sound like they're submerged under water. They somehow manage to sound distant and unnatural but still welcoming, even enchanting. And their melodies are simply beautiful. One of my favorite NY bands at one of the best venues in town. Check it out. [MySpace]


Friday, April 3

Weird Owl @ Lit Lounge | E Village, Manhattan | $6
As I noted in live review, Weird Owl plays a psyched-out version of Southern hard rock. Perhaps surprisingly, it's really enjoyable. [MySpace]


Saturday, April 4

David Grubbs @ Issue Project Room | Gowanus, Brooklyn | $8/$10
As I've said before, David Grubbs is a legend. He's a former member of Squirrel Bait, Gastr del Sol, Bastro and even Red Krayola and is one of the true innovators in 90's experimental rock. [MySpace]


Sunday, April 5

My Teenage Stride @ Cake Shop | LES, Manhattan | $8
An indie pop band that I grudgingly like, MTS play their catchy little numbers tightly and with gusto. Check it out. [MySpace]

Dust It Off: Slint - Spiderland

Album: Spiderland
Touch & Go, 1991

Among indie rock geeks, Spiderland is far from obscure, but I've been surprised a number of times recently by musically literate people who have simply never heard of Slint. Here's what you should know: Slint was the first and best of the "math rock" bands, a genre known for changing time-signatures, angular guitars, dynamic contrast and complex composition. It was also essential in kicking off "post rock," making way for bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Ros and Mogwai.

Spiderland, Slint's haunting masterpiece, has only six songs, each of them telling a different dark story. Brian McMahon's vocals are mostly spoken or screamed (though at times inadvertently tunefully), allegedly because he was too insecure to sing them. This delivery would be annoying in most contexts, but here, it's extremely powerful - McMahon simply lays the dark corners of his mind bare for his audience, without hiding behind a forced melody or song structure. Spiderland is a window into a deeply damaged psyche and its immediacy is startling and deeply unsettling.

Unlike many later post rock bands, Slint never used electronics or orchestral noise, instead focusing on traditional rock-band palette of electric guitar, bass and drums. This makes the music heavy-hitting and aggressive, an effect enhanced by the band's technique of dropping everything to a haunting whisper before slamming more out at top volume. Meanwhile, though the structures borrow more from prog rock than pop, they are clearly conceived with great care, each providing a new alien landscape against which McMahon's stories unfold.

Rumor has it that members of Slint were in and out of mental institutions throughout the recording of Spiderland, and whether or not that's true, Spiderland is one of the most anguished, painful records ever made. "Breadcrumb Trail" tells a story of an innocent romance with a fortune-teller, but the tale is shrouded in ominous details, while "Don, Aman" seems to be a harrowing if enigmatic account of mental illness.

Most chilling of all is the closer, "Good Morning, Captain." Based loosely on Coleridge's "Rime of an Ancient Mariner," the song tells the story the sole survivor of a shipwreck, an old sailor shunned when he seeks help or even witness on shore. Near the end of the song, however, McMahon seems to break down and instead of finishing the narrative, he just starts screaming "I miss you" over and over at the top of his voice until the album's close.

It's a staggering work that sounds like nothing before or since. Musically, it is a pivotal experiment in the use of changing time signatures and contrast dynamics. Emotionally, it protrays agony, horror and dispair with unsurpassed intensity. A landmark album in indie rock, Spiderland should be required listening for everyone.

Upcoming Show: Sat. 11/1 - David Grubbs Plays Cake Shop!!!

KIDS, LISTEN UP! I just found out David Grubbs is playing a FREE show at Cake Shop this Saturday. Grubbs is a legend, member of Squirrel Bait (see below), Gastr del Sol, Bastro and even Red Krayola. I have no idea how he is solo or how he is live, but it's probably worth all $0 dollars to go and find out!

(I'm going to be out of town this weekend and now I want to cry.)

p.s. Since you'll already be at Cake Shop, it's definitely worth sticking around to catch the Chinese Stars downstairs later in the evening.

Five Forgotten Pioneers: Part 1

I've made a list of five rock/pop innovators who I think are too often overlooked, and I'm going to tell you about them. Here's the first three, yay:


The Swell Maps

This band influenced Sonic Youth and Pavement, but no one seems to talk about them on this side of the Atlantic. And frankly, that's a travesty - they were one of the greatest bands of the post-punk era. Their music is difficult to classify, probably because the songs were written collectively or alternately by the band's vastly differing members. There's a lot of punk here, but also a lot of Krautrock, prog and experimental noise rock. Their albums are hodge-podge, but it somehow works, melding pop energy with visionary innovations. Experimental punk isn't unheard of (e.g. Sonic Youth, Pere Ubu) but Swell Maps were among the first and best.


Squirrel Bait

A punk band consisting of four or five high school students from Kentucky, Squirrel Bait achieved almost no recognition during their lifetime and might have been forever forgotten if its members hadn't gone on to form landmark post-rock bands Slint and Gastr del Sol (among others). There's nothing immediately experimental about this band, until you remember that this is pre-Nirvana and pre-grunge - which puts their metal-tinged punk completely ahead of its time. In 1986, no other band's sound as accurately predicted the future of rock music as Squirrel Bait, whose resemblance to Nirvana is at times uncanny.

Not only did Squirrel Bait combine metal influence with punk and melodic pop first, they also are among the best bands to use this sound. They don't top Nirvana, but might reasonably vie for second place. Perhaps because they pre-date Cobain's first releases, Squirrel Bait has a vitality and an inspired quality that's missing from the later sound-alikes. If you like Nirvana's punkier side (or even if you don't), check these guys out!


Lizzy Mercier Descloux / Rosa Yemen

One of music's true innovators, Lizzy Mercier Descloux deserved to be remembered, but today, almost no one knows her name. Descloux's career was two-fold. First, both as a solo artist and as half of duo Rosa Yemen, she was an innovative minimalist in New York City's arty No Wave scene. Her music involves simple guitar lines, complex rhythms and pseudo-melodic shrieks of nonsense in French, Descloux's native language.

The second part of her career is marked by travels throughout the Caribbean, Africa and South America, where she collected new ideas for sound and rhythm and incorporated them into her albums. AllMusic Guide essentially credits her with the invention of "world music" but that's just insulting. Today, "world music" most often refers to cheap and gimmicky "fusion" of two styles that don't belong together but that someone decided to put through a mixer to look more cultured (I'm looking at you, Sting! Not to mention Peter Gabriel and Mickey Hart.). However, in Descloux's music, the style is as it should be - an organic, open-minded melding of influences. Especially in her earlier "world" albums, her work is truly inspired and truly beautiful.


Part two is coming soon...