The Sadies, Spaceland, 5-26

The Sadies‘ unique style of country-rock is a mix of early Sun Records, the Byrds, Chet Atkins and Ennio Morricone, among others.  Despite Spaceland’s sparse and rather listless Tuesday night crowd, the quartet tore the place up.  Frontmen/brothers Dallas and Travis Good effortlessly traded licks, even playing one guitar solo in perfect unison, while the rhythm section held things down with thumping double bass lines and propulsive drums.  Travis–I think–was the flashier of the two guitarists, employing bluegrass-style flatpicking to play lightning-fast lines.  When he put down his guitar and picked up a fiddle for a couple of songs, it would’ve sparked a hoedown in any other locale. (As it was, people kind of imperceptibly tapped their toes, which is a big deal in Silver Lake.)  Maybe I’ve heard too much of the whole “intentional amateur” thing of late, but I was absolutely overjoyed to stand back and watch real musicians in action.  Punk rock proved that anyone can pick up a guitar and make music; shows like this make the case that sometimes, just picking up a guitar isn’t enough.

St. Vincent, El Rey, 5-28

I’ve already gone on at some length about my girl-crush on St. Vincent, so I’ll just say that the songs from Actor previewed at her Hollywood Forever show were brilliantly realized with the help of a full band, including her usual violin player as well as a bassist and keyboard player who doubled on saxophone and flute, respectively.  No covers or B-sides or special guests, but “Actor Out of Work” with real drums–and “Now, Now”, which, for various reasons, I’d never been able to hear live before–made the trip out to the Miracle Mile worth it.

King Khan and the Shrines, The Echo, 5.30

Indian-French-Canadian frontman Arish “King” Khan has been playing variations on high-energy garage rock for over a decade now, most famously with Mark “BBQ” Sultan (who opened the Echo show).  With the Shrines, a tight ensemble consisting of guitar, bass, drums, organ, sax, trumpet, tambourine and a go-go cheerleader, he delivered a manic set of psych/rock/funk/soul/”erotic gospel” that just wouldn’t let up until even those guys who stand at the back of every show with their arms folded were shaking a skintight-denim-clad leg.*  Highlights: “I Wanna Be A Girl,” during which a clown pinata was tossed into the audience and viciously destroyed while the saxophone player ran around displaying his “mangina” (think Silence of the Lambs), and “Take A Trip,” which followed some gospel-style testifyin’ by Khan on the subject of getting born in reverse (of course, he takes his shoes off first.)

*Don’t worry, guys, I won’t tell anyone.

That said, I like first single “Two Weeks” a lot.  The harmonies are gorgeous and it’s all expansive-sounding while still maintaining a sense of momentum.  But listening to it only highlights what the rest of the album is missing.  Also, I can’t help thinking that maybe all those “aaaAAAaaahs” in the chorus were ripped off from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Day Man!

How’s this for coincidence: right after I write about quirky twentysomething brunette singer-songwriters,  Regina Spektor comes out of the woodwork with a new album cover/tracklist/single.  Yup, that was all me.  You’re welcome. The album’s called Far and drops June 23.

The career path of Regina Spektor, it’s interesting to note, aligns roughly with the rise of the Hollywood Indie Forced Quirky Aesthetic.  Said aesthetic began its full-force assault right around the release of Garden State (and Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch) in 2004, and peaked from 2006 to 2007 (with the Oscar nominations for Little Miss Sunshine and Juno), right when Spektor’s Begin to Hope was at its most ubiquitous.  And just as the hip-yet-sincere-but-not-really vibe of those movies has recently reached mind-numbing levels of commercial saturation, so too has Spektor’s music been overutilized to the point where if I hear one more ad or TV show or trailer soundtracked by “Fidelity” or “Us,” I’ll shoot the offending music supervisor straight through the hea-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahahahaaaart.

Regardless, I’m a fan.  She’s got a lot more lyrical depth and musical merit than fellow NYC “anti-folk” quirk purveyor Kimya Dawson, and while her cutesy mannerisms can be a bit much, you can tell her heart’s in the right place.  So it’s hard to find fault with Spektor’s commercial prominence–she’s a whole lot easier on the ears than The Fray–but it does kind of make it harder to take tracks like the new “Laughing With” seriously.  For one thing, the opening line is “No one laughs at God in a hospital.”  Grey’s Anatomy much? The rest of the lyrics just pound away at that same idea: people laugh at God until they find themselves in some kind of serious situation. Original! And the somber, straightforward accompaniment is a far cry from the flighty piano lines and raucous outbursts that sold me on Songs, 11:11 and Soviet Kitsch.

It’s looking like Far will continue the poppy trajectory that Begin to Hope started, maintaining just enough of Spektor’s quirk to be interesting but not overdoing it.  I can only hope there’ll be a high like Begin deep cut “Apres Moi,” where the former Muscovite belts out a verse in Russian, or that line in “Poor Little Rich Boy” where she goes “You don’t love your girlfriend/and you know that you shouldbutshethinksthatshe’sfatbutsheisn’tbutyoudon’tloveheranyway,” and it totally shouldn’t work but it does.

ACTOR versus TWO SUNS

In this corner: Annie Clark AKA St. Vincent, the wide-eyed Polyphonic Spree alum who previously won praise for Marry Me, the best (and/or only) album named after an Arrested Development quote. (I was kinda hoping her follow-up would be called I’ve Made a Huge Mistake.)

In the other corner: Natasha Khan AKA Bat for Lashes, the British free spirit whose debut, Fur and Gold, was strong enough to earn her an opening gig for Radiohead last year.

QUIRK FACTOR

Bat for Lashes: Art-school hippie mystic type. Enjoys leather headbands and crystal balls. Invented a blond “femme fatale” alter ego named Pearl; latest album, Two Suns, supposedly explores the dichotomy between the two personas. Has a thing for the Karate Kid.

St. Vincent: Like her doppelganger Miranda July, Clark is an expert at creating ripples of anxiety and psychosis beneath a whimsical, innocent surface. Claims Igor Stravinsky, Disney musicals and Robert Fripp as influences.

THE MUSIC

St. Vincent: The mix of avant-classical, noise-rock and bedroom pop sensibilities that informs Actor may never make Annie Clark a household name, but it’s sure as hell exciting to listen to. Clark worked with producer John Congleton (Polyphonic Spree, Modest Mouse) to create immaculate, nuanced orchestral arrangements that are frequently intruded upon by “abortiony” guitars to great effect. Fuzzy, spring-loaded “Actor out of Work” is the closest thing the album has to a single; other tracks (“The Strangers”, “Marrow”) contain too many compositional hair-pin turns to be immediately accessible, but draw you in nonetheless.

Bat for Lashes: While Actor is an intentionally tricky listen, Two Suns is an album that you sink into like a big comfy bed. Nothing abortion-y here, just lush sonic layers that build up and recede in waves. Seriously, listen to the drums on “Glass” and tell me you don’t want to kind of live in that song for a while. And Khan is equally at home in that track’s ominous tribal vibe as she is among twitchy electronica (“Two Planets”) and sparse piano landscapes (“Moon and Moon.”) A couple of the album’s more propulsive tracks, “Daniel” and “Pearl’s Dream”, benefit from beats and bass provided by former Brooklyn it-band (and fellow hippie-mystic outfit) Yeasayer.

VOCALS

Bat for Lashes: Singing-wise, Khan’s influences skew towards Bjork and/or Tori Amos; these formidable forebears, all too present on Fur and Gold, manage to hover around the edges of Two Suns without becoming obvious. Her voice, usually swathed in reverb, sounds haunted but not overly emotional; the description you’ll hear the most is “chilly.” On daring vocal showcase “The Big Sleep,” Khan trades lines with Scott Walker, who guest stars as his usual creepy self; barely accompanied and faced with one of more revered voices of the past half-century, she still maintains a strong presence.

St. Vincent: Clark has the dulcet voice most coffeehouse singers would kill for, but on Actor it’s the instrument by which some seriously disturbing thoughts are conveyed. Check out the claustrophobic narrative “The Neighbors” or pop charmer “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood.” The touches of twee that blemished some of the lyrics on Marry Me (talking about Mary and her little lamb, for instance) are gone; now she’s “holed up at the motel with the televangelist.” Cool.

AND THE WINNER IS…

I’ve had these two albums in heavy rotation over the past couple of weeks, and I’m totally into both. But I have to give the edge to St. Vincent, and not just because I saw her play the Echo back before anyone had heard of her (but, you know, I totally did.) Actor is more complex, more original, and ultimately more rewarding than Two Suns. While Khan makes gorgeous music, she never really transcends her influences, and her art-school schtick can be grating. (An “all-gay, all-black gospel choir” on a track? Please.)

Incidentally, both of these artists (and their backing bands) are playing the El Rey later this spring: St. Vincent on May 28 and Bat for Lashes on June 16. Don’t miss them.

Such is the lifestyle implied in Brel’s bittersweet existential musings, expressed in a world-weary baritone and accompanied by exquisitely florid orchestration.  Even if your French, like mine, doesn’t extend past oui and non and voulez-vous couchez avec moi, the music will draw you in with its…je ne sais quois.  And if you absolutely have to find out what Brel’s songs are all about, you can always listen to Scott Walker’s equally broody English-language interpretations.  Here’s Brel vs. Walker with “Jackie” (“La Chanson De Jacky”):

Love it.  It’s like the two of them are competing in a Melodramatic-Off.  Who wins? Everyone.

One more late-ish Coachella thought: The fact that a certain Sir Paul McCartney was able to command an audience of 35,000 a good forty years after the Beatles’ career peak made me think.  Who are the Beatles of the aughts?  That is to say, which current critic- and mass audience-approved bands/solo acts will still have enough cachet to play Coachella twenty/thirty/forty years from now?  Whose name, in the distant future, will fill in the blank in the sentence, “To dislike  _____ is to dislike puppies and rainbows and all that is good on this earth”?  Let’s have a look.

Coldplay

Why they could be the Beatles of the ’00s: British quartet capable of playing stadiums; pretty, damn-near-ubiquitous songs; lead singer married to weird, widely disliked chick.

Why not: Five years after the Beatles got big, they wrote “A Day In The Life.”  It’s been nearly ten years since Coldplay broke, and even songs from their “edgy”, cred-boosting Brian Eno collaboration are milquetoast enough to underscore iPod ads and a “salute to romance” at the Oscars.

The Killers

Why they could be the Beatles of the ’00s: Only band of the ’00s deemed popular enough by Goldenvoice to headline a day of Coachella; impossibly catchy songs have cryptic lyrics (“Are we human, or are we dancer” = “I am the eggman”?)

Why not: I’ve never understood why anyone would be a fan of the Killers when they could just listen to all the bands the Killers rip off.  Also, Brandon Flowers in ten years? Probably not a pretty sight.

Kanye West

Why he could be the Beatles of the ’00s: Helped an African-American musical genre become accepted by hordes of white people; recorded a run of increasingly out-there, boundary-defying albums; widely imitated hairstyles and fashion; has the “bigger than Jesus” thing totally down.

Why not: Is it just me, or does anyone else foresee a Phil Spectoresque breakdown for Kanye in the near future?  Not to mention he’s always been a better producer than artist: he seems to save his best verses for other people’s songs.  And really, once you’ve made a minimalist emo album recorded entirely in Auto-Tune, where do you go?

The Jonas Brothers

Why they could be the Beatles of the ’00s: Huge scary army of preteen girl fans; excellent management; well-received movies; able to insinuate hot, hot sex while still maintaining a wholesome enough image that they can surprise the President’s young daughters by hiding in a closet and it won’t be creepy.  And you know, their music isn’t that bad.  If they can break their Disney connections, and then use their popularity to amass enough studio professionals and songwriters (like rock-pop impresario Adam Schlesinger) to record a real, adult album, they might have quite a career ahead of them.

Why not: Break their connections with Disney? Not gonna happpen.  The Mouse owns them from cradle to grave, and if they step even the slighest bit out of line, their parent company will shoot them, then clone a new trio from the vat of Jonas stem cells they keep in cold storage next to Frozen Walt.

Another year, another Coachella.

For various reasons (most of ‘em financial), I only went on Friday.  But by all accounts, that was the best of the three festival days.  Temperatures hovered around 90 but didn’t rise any higher, the port-a-potties were as yet unspoiled, and festival attendees entered the grounds fresh-faced, optimistic and sunburn-free.

Here’s a rundown of the bands I saw:

Dear and the Headlights: Except for diehard fans, nobody really pays attention to bands who play Coachella at 1 p.m.; they’re getting the lay of the land and taking the opportunity to sit in the shade for a while before the grounds get too crowded.  But if you’re going to half-listen to a band, it might as well be a band who plays inoffensive, generic, pleasant-enough-sounding indie rock.

The Courteneers: Hadn’t heard the Manchester quartet before, and I was pleasantly surprised–they made the best of their 2:00 time slot with a set of upbeat poppy Brit-rock.

We Are Scientists: These graduates of my alma mater, like later mainstage performers Franz Ferdinand, were kind of chewed up and spit out by the  indie dance-rock craze of the mid-aughts.  Which is sad, because they’re still making fun, smart, catchy music, and they’ve got onstage banter down to a, well, science.  Plus, it was fun to hear kids in the crowd singing along to songs I heard on the quad just a few short years ago.

The Hold Steady: It was my first time seeing these guys live, and once I got over the shock of whiskey-voiced lead singer Craig Finn looking like someone’s embarrassing uncle who teaches seventh-grade English and gets tipsy at weddings, I thought they rocked.

Finn’s pipes sounded a little weak at first, like he was getting over a cold, but his voice picked up strength as the set went on. And guitarist Tad Kubler totally ripped, even pulling out one of those guitars that are like, double guitars on “Lord, I’m Discouraged.”  Still, I got the feeling that it’s better to see the Hold Steady at a club surrounded by die-hard fans who know to sing that last “whoa-oh” at the end of “Slapped Actress” instead of clapping prematurely.  I’m excited for the El Rey this July 7th.

M. Ward: After rocking out to the Hold Steady, it was nice to sit down in the grass and mellow out with the critically beloved singer/guitarist/analog fetishist.  I only caught the last half of his set, but the mix of cuts from “Hold Time” and “Post-War” sounded fine, as did covers of “Roll Over Beethoven” and, um, “The Entertainer.”  No Zooey, though–guess she was too busy promoting her latest role as a quirky free spirit who gives a brooding man-child a new lease on life.  Just as well.

The Black Keys: I love the Southern blues-rock duo on record, but they sounded a little thin on the main stage.  They may need to get themselves a touring bassist.  Still, they provided decent accompaniment to eating something fried and delicious while watching the shadows on the field get longer.

Franz Ferdinand: Mmm, Scotsmen.  Alex Kapranos and co. played a lively set on the main stage just as the sun was going down.  They may no longer be the “it” band in indie rock, but they’re still consummate showmen and surprisingly tight musicians.  Crowd-pleaser “Take Me Out” came fairly early on.  I’m not sure how their set ended, as I spent the last few songs making my way over to the Outdoor Stage to see the second most anticipated veteran performer of the night.

Leonard Cohen: Really, there are no words…except maybe “Hallelujah.”  Best performance of the night, hell, probably the single greatest live music moment I’ve experienced in 2009 thus far.

Morrissey: After Leonard Cohen’s set, which came from a place that was very deep and very dark and very real, it was quite the letdown to have to make my way through the (by now extremely dense) crowd to the primo railing spot my friend had managed to save, only to find myself faced with a petulant Englishman.  I mean, “Girlfriend in a Coma” and “How Soon Is Now” sounded great live.  But the 50-year-old multimillionaire acted like a little bitch throughout his entire set–”The smell of burning flesh is making me sick,” the known vegetarian moaned after catching a whiff of a nearby barbecue stand.  Unfortunately for Morrissey, Coachella has multiple first-aid tents but no waahmbulance.

Paul McCartney: Okay, you could get nitpicky about all sorts of things, like how all the non-guitar/bass/drum parts were played by a guy with a synthesizer when really, countless professional string and horn players would’ve paid McCartney for the privilege of sharing a stage with him. A few lines and chords got flubbed, and Paul’s between-song asides often came across as eccentric or senile or both. And material from Fireman and other recent solo albums was met with little to no enthusiasm from the crowd.

But come on, the man’s a fucking Beatle.  And the set list testified to that: McCartney played eighteen-odd Beatles songs, including “Yesterday”, “Blackbird”, “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Helter Skelter”, even “Something” and “A Day In The Life” (dedicated to George and John, respectively.) When he segued from “Birthday” into “Can’t Buy Me Love”, even the most hard-hearted of hipsters started screaming like it was the Ed Sullivan Show circa ’64.

And ya know, loopy onstage banter and a couple missed cues? Totally excusable when you’re a 68-year-old on the eleventh anniversary of his wife’s death. (Linda, natch, not the one-legged whore.) Paul repeatedly mentioned what an emotional night it was for him, and his entire set overflowed with sincerity such that even the cheesiest of Wings songs became tolerable.  And the audience returned the favor: if you were on the Coachella grounds at approximately 12:25 a.m. that night and you weren’t belting out “Naaa naa naa na na na naaaa, na na na naaa, HEY JUDE!” then you were either dead or or coked out of your mind in the Sahara Tent.  Either way, you weren’t a functional human being.

By the time Macca played the last few chords of “The End” at around 1 a.m., I had spent thirteen straight hours at Coachella, and I was just completely done.  Of course, it took over an hour to get out of Indio and another two to make it back home, but that didn’t matter so much.

So the question now is: which well-respected, still-rockin’ veteran act will Coachella book in 2010?  I mean, who could possibly rock an all-ages crowd of thousands better than Prince and Paul McCartney? I’ve got a few ideas…

We all want to root for hometown heroes. But what if they suck?

I’m going to Coachella on Friday, and two of the bands playing on the two biggest stages are LA indie groups that have found mainstream success in recent years. I’m talking about The Airborne Toxic Event and Silversun Pickups, the latter of whom have a new album out today. Both bands rose to prominence out of the Silverlake/Echo Park scene, and both bands make commercially friendly, blatantly derivative music that is nonetheless enthusiastically lauded by local fans and critics because, yay LA!

Take that Silversun Pickups album, Swoon. Indie scene mainstay and former LA Times writer Kevin Bronson posted an almost embarrassingly effusive review on his blog; meanwhile, Ian Cohen, the Pitchfork reviewer with a hate-boner for all things Los Angeles, saddled the album with an indifferent 5.3. I’m gonna have to agree with Cohen: the songs are straight out of the early ’90s alt-rock playbook, and they’re marred by the kind of compression that makes music sound great blasted over KROQ but painfully flat otherwise.

I’m also in agreement with non-LA-centric reviews of the Airborne Toxic Event. Although that 1.6 review by (you guessed it) Ian Cohen was unwarranted, dude did kind of make a point when he wrote “The city lacks a flagship upstart indie band and wants one in the worst way.” Seriously, guys, don’t force it. You wouldn’t tolerate histrionic warmed-over Arcade Fire ripoff artists in someone else’s town; don’t tolerate them in yours just because you want to feel like your music scene means something.

Because the LA music scene would mean something even if the Pickups and Airborne Toxic Event weren’t getting national attention and playing Coachella and all that. The rest of the country might make generalizations that have been out of date since before Axl Rose stopped watching his weight, but if you live here, you know this city is teeming with great bands. Most of ‘em might never play the Fonda, but who cares? Enjoy the music for what it is, and take this lesson from the citizens of Midland, Texas: when a local makes it big, that’s not always a good thing.

I don’t know how official this e-flyer is, but apparently the long-defunct, recently resurrected noise pioneers will be playing a “warm-up” show at the mid-city venue this Thursday before they rock out in Indio on Sunday.  I got a chance to check them out at the Santa Monica Civic Center on their mini-tour last October, and trust me: they have not mellowed out with age.  Some of their albums’ nuance gets lost when played live, but the band makes up for it with sheer power. If you can stomach the 15-odd-minute white noise “holocaust” that ends every MBV show, I promise it’ll change the way you think about sound.  They use plain old guitars and pedals and amps to create a giant, tangible force that finds its way into every cell in your body.  Everyone stumbled out of the Civic Center that night looking like they’d survived an air raid.

I’m not sure how that sort of thing will translate in an outdoor setting like Coachella, where sound is allowed to escape into the desert instead of reverberating off the walls.  So if you can manage to snag a ticket to the El Rey show, go.  But bring earplugs.