akatsukira's Last.fm Journal

Canadians rock! (Them almost-Canadians come close too...)

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 02:24:21 +0000

Sun 5 Jul – Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, The New Pornographers, Los Angeles Philharmonic

As a biased, pretty easy-to-please fan of the 3 bands and the LA Phil, I had a great time at the Hollywood Bowl on the 5th of July.

The opening act, The New Pornographers were an excellent start to the night. With quite a lot of airplay from KCRW in recent weeks, their sound was familiar and the odd moment of recognition from my co-attendees was amusing to watch. @kcirtapu in particular commented on the strong similarity to one of our favourite acts: Belle and Sebastian. A fair description, I would say, as both bands have hints of folk melodies and 60s influences in their songs. As a live band, they were proficient, a good warm-up and mildly chatty, sticking to only a couple of quips (to paraphrase: "comments were made about our name, but come on, death cab? for cutie?"). I only mention chattiness for comparison to the next act: Tegan and Sara, who have (to quote my own tweet) no internal verbal filters.

If not for their fabulous voices and on-the-money lyrical commentary, Tegan and Sara should be chat show hosts of the late-night variety. But fortunately, they appear to really enjoy making music and engaging with their audience. They would have won the "Best Live Act of the Night" if there was one. They are a pair I would love to see again, preferably in a small venue with a longer set. As an aside, another thing I love about Tegan and Sara is the inability to put them in any musical category. To call them indie/alt/experimental/eclectic is like calling toro* food.

The same difficulty in categorising applies to Death Cab for Cutie, who, at various points in their career, have been tagged as grunge, emo, indie (which no longer applies post-Atlantic Records deal), punk and every other variation of rock... No small feat for a 4-person band, but hardly surprising after 12 years of hard work. That history was apparent at the Hollywood Bowl, with a set-list spanning from President of What to the sadly optimistic (or optimistically sad**) I Will Possess Your Heart.

As a live act, DCFC are pretty energetic and absolutely riveting***. They were pretty tight in the first half of their set, with a small tuning problem slightly marring our enjoyment of The Sound of Settling. I was hoping for some Chris Walla magic, but was happy enough with the aforementioned I Will Possess Your Heart multi-axe GWS**. Ben Gibbards all-important lyrics were clearly audible (by and large; there were moments where my memory had to fill the gaps), and despite occasional muddiness, the sound as heard from section M was crisp^. A strong driving bass and really clean drumming made the whole greater than (fill in the rest of this cliche yourself).

The second half of their set with the LA Phil felt like the evening was, like this review, running out of steam. I must admit that I wasn't sure how much the LA Phil could add to the DCFC sound, save for a few songs. Gladly, they did not disappoint, and chose mostly songs that benefited from massive orchestral backing: I Will Follow You Into The Dark, Soul Meets Body being my favourite two DCFC-LA Phil collaborations of the night. There were again a few duff moments, but I've already forgotten them, as insignificant as they were on the night. The song that I felt had the most promise, but perhaps suffered from lack of rehearsal or sound checks, was GrapeVine Fires, the most operatic and melodic track of their latest album Narrow Stairs. It could, and should, have been the most memorable song of the night, but it's thunder was stolen by the fireworks-Transatlanticism-heart-stealing combo finale^^.

The fireworks were an appropriate end to a pretty awesome concert. With that last act of showmanship, I could forgive the short setlist^^^ and paltry attempts at audience engagement by DCFC (understandable in the 17k+ seating Bowl). And you can be sure that will be a talking point for a while (so long as someone actually managed to catch it on film/mp4).

In summary, great opening acts, professional and entertaining DCFC, small contribution by the LA Phil, and a great ending. Add it all up, and it's more than worth the 8 hours that the whole thing took.

=====
Obligatory footnotes...
*Substitute your favourite "gourmet"-style food, carnivorous or vegan.
**Whichever way it goes, I still think of it as the "Guitar W*nkfest Song".
***Although I see from the shoutouts from the night that they have been more energetic in previous engagements. But hey, I only went to one concert...
^Which makes me think the sound is optimised for the "super seats" in G/H. Who knows how it sounds in the expensive seats... Not me with my limited budget...
^^I'd link to a youtube video, but have yet to find one sans screaming audience. Yes, they screamed/cheered for every firework...
^^^:

Sexy Salonen

Mon, 2 Jun 2008 07:27:40 +0000

Sat 31 May – Salonen's Piano Concerto
Program:
Debussy (arr. Matthews): Preludes (West Coast premiere of arrangement)
Stravinsky (arr. Stucky): Les Noces (World premiere of arrangement)
Salonen: Piano Concerto (West Coast premiere)

Anyone who has ever studied the piano under the guidance of the RSMAD's curriculum will have at some point played some of Debussy's Preludes. I stomped my way through most of Books I and II as an impatient teenager, and picked them up with nostalgia later in my late 20s. The intended delicacy of the pieces is beyond my cack-handed playing, and I would also have assumed that orchestrating these petite pieces would also result in overwhelming the senses with sound. Not so by Colin Matthews' arrangement of these 4 preludes:
-Feux d’artifice (Fireworks)
-Bruyères (Heather)
-Le vent dans la plaine (The wind in the plain)
-La fille aux cheveux de lin (The girl with the flaxen hair)

"Bruyères" was a particularly pastoral piece, and married perfectly with the soft, gentle "Le vent dans la plaine" that followed. A new postlude fit so perfectly that I would not have noticed it without prior information.

Another new arrangement was premiered: Stravinsky's Les Noces, orchestrated by Steven Stucky. I've never heard Les Noces, live or otherwise. Stravinsky's most famous piece, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rites of Spring), is one that never found as much favour with me as Petrushka, an earlier, more folksy ballet. My initial fear on reading that Les Noces was finished a decade after Le Sacre du Printemps was that it would be even more violent and abstract as he was reinventing himself as a neo-classical composer. Instead, the piece as rearranged was just mind-bogglingly fast and furious. It sounded like a whole room of Russians having a heated discussion. The subtitled lyrics mainly consisted of hair braids being done, un-done, re-done and a whole lot of unnecessary agonising. Typical opera then. Only not so. It was originally written as a ballet with 4 soloists and 4 pianos and lots of percussion. I think I will have to track that version down, because the fully orchestrated rearrangement left me... baffled. And more than a little frazzled by its sheer pace and too-many-layers. Bring on the abstract...

And to the big deal of the evening: the West Coast premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto. The first movement started out quite formal, and as Salonen himself described it in the program notes: "a modern version of some very formal (imaginary) slow French court dance from the Baroque era." As it built up, I swear my thoughts veered from the formal to something altogether more carnal. Salonen describes it as "playful dialogue" between the piano and the orchestra. I propose that he really meant it to be sex by music. The movement even finished with an orgasmic culmination of all the motifs that had been building up. When Salonen finally names Movement I, might I suggest he finds some euphemism for "Sex by Orchestra"?

The second movement, with a temporary title of "Synthetic Folk Music with Artificial Birds" was as its title suggested. It was like someone had transcribed orchestral music for midi in various ways, then re-transcribed the resulting sound back for the orchestra. I think I could grow to like this movement, but it really could not compare to the POW of the first. The third movement (untitled) was a little less abstract, but still quite unnatural. I have to confess that I was so taken with the first movement that I'll have to listen to the other two on their own if I'm ever to pay attention.

An altogether fabulous evening! I've been so skeptical about contemporary compositions, having been subjected to more John Cage than I can take. But the recent world premieres by the LA Phil, like Dystopia and Salonen's Piano Concerto give me hope that I'm not too stuck in the mud.

R.E.M. no sleep

Mon, 2 Jun 2008 05:21:36 +0000

Thu 29 May – R.E.M., Modest Mouse, The National

Sticking my neck out here, but I think the show-stealers were The National. Their direct, un-fancy performance was befitting of a warm-up band, and they certainly got me in the mood for a night of rock. Finishing their set with
mr november was a stroke of genius. No doubt some non-fans finally cottoned on who they had been listening to.

I had low-to-middling expectations from Modest Mouse, and wasn't entirely surprised when they didn't sparkle. Don't get me wrong; I think they make great music. But I think their talent lies in crafting perfect albums that need to be listened to in their entirety. Somehow, the experimental nature of their music is lost on a live stage, especially one as large as the Hollywood Bowl.

As for the headliners, R.E.M., my mistake was in not listening to their latest album, Accelerate, before the show. My bad. It was good, but since it was all new to me, not much sunk in. Of the older songs, I really enjoyed hearing Final Straw live. And I loved their super-fast take on Bad Day, possibly my favourite R.E.M. song, although that changes depending on my mood.

As a non-music aside, one of the big downers of the evening was the number of pot-smokers in the audience. Normally, at the Bowl, the smokers do us all a favour and smoke their stinky weed outside. This time, I had the misfortune to be sat behind 4 pot-heads, whose constant lighting up made my wine unpalatable and my evening a little sour. Talking through the performances also did not endear them to me. It'll be an awful day should I ever stoop to reporting pot smokers to the equally unpleasant security people.

That aside, I enjoyed the music. Even if I didn't know half the set-list. In fact, that was what made it better: that R.E.M. didn't just play their best-known hits. Consummate professionals to the last man, they keep track of what they've played in each venue and try not to repeat songs over the years. Blimey, that's organised!

Secret loves - lost, found and lost again

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:11:34 +0000

I have a small secret that I'd been hiding from last.fm: my iTunes scrobbling does not reflect my true daily listening habits.

Until a couple of months ago, this was hidden by the incompatibility of my iPod/iTunes with iScrobbler as well as the last.fm app. For one blissful month, the iPod sync-ed with the last.fm app. And then I realised just how much I listened to one particular band - almost all day on most days. Travis have been an old fave for blocking out the constant drone of lab equipment as well as relieving the boredom of ELISAs and PCRs. And one mere month of iPod scrobbling revealed almost 1000 plays of their extensive catalogue of songs. Now my secret <3 of Travis is out in the open.

Sadly, the next update of the last.fm app killed the ability of my iPod to register on scrobbles. We're now back on more sensible, varied playlists.

And even more sadly, after many years of faithful service (the first 2 to my mother and subsequent 3 to me), my third generation 15GB iPod's HDD died today.

Looks like it couldn't escape its nickname of the Grand Old White Elephant.