War On Drugs kick off tour with strong Toronto show (Califone opener) 09.15.14

The War On Drugs - Phoenix Concert Theatre (09.15.14)

The presumption is probably safe that when a musical layman hears the name of a band they assume a sort of democracy.  Who of us has been in a band?  How do they operate from the inside?   Do most bands operate similarly or differently?  Oddly enough the former is probably more true than the latter.  Which is to say that most bands are probably more similar than they are different.  Inevitably even the most democratic-seeming of groups has a musical and business leader and invariably they're one in the same.  Some groups are more group groups but the groups on the band this evening were decidedly of the songwriter/ sideman tradition.  Not that any of that would be evident at eye level.  And even saying it is a little uncomfortable and feels like it might take away from the music which it should not.

The fact remains that Califone really means Tim Rutili and a revolving ensemble of musical collaborators.  Just as his musical cohort Eric D. Johnson is a pseudonym for Fruit Bats and their pal Andy Cabic for Vetiver.  You wouldn't think it from the live show but the same could be said of Adam Granduciel and The War On Drugs although that's no big secret.

Califone - Phoenix Concert Theatre 09.15.14

Califone (and later on this tour The Barr Brothers) are inspired choices as each opener accents aspects of a whimsical, cinematic and Americana-based sound all the groups share at times.  To a half full and attentive throng Rutili took his group through the paces of a small sampling of the music he's recorded as Califone over the years.  Set opener Vampiring Again (from 2003's Quicksand/ Cradlesnakes) took us back to the earliest beginnings of Califone which grew out of the Perishable Records family and a handful of musicians including Johnson, his bandmate/ engineer/notable Canadian Graeme Gibson and Rutili's frequent collaborator Jim Becker.  Members of Califone have featured prominently on Fruit Bats various releases such as the forthright Ruminant Band.   The second song out of the gate brought the catalogue more fully up to the present with a song from the same period 2012's Electric Fence from Good Weather Sometimes Follows Bad People.  While Califone is known for their often sweeping and cinematic sound the music is always drapery to frame Rutili's words.  The lyrics for instance to Electric Fence alone deserve to be printed in their entirety and might easily be confused for quite a good prose poem:

Lit a blue tip match off the white in your eye
It's apples and cigarettes on cold water drive
Give your belly to the lions and your throat to all their babies
The power washer screams like a panther
Your rope and scar and rabbit hearts
Jesus drains electric fences to fill you again
Sailor's mouth and falling brail
Don't fall away, don't fall away
You sleep like an angel with sparrows beneath your eyelids
Wash it down in a fountain, lean into the kill
The mayflies all explode when they come to the coil at the driving range under blocks of fake light
A broken feel, electric fence
Don't fall away, don't fall away

The rest of Califone's set, their first with The War On Drugs this tour as Rutili noted, ran through 2013's Stitches almost in its entirety. Califone is known for albums that are often individually thematic and based on a dream (Heron King Blues) or a silent film (Deceleration 1 and 2) a quality reflected in the title Movie Music Kills A Kiss.  This was followed by a really confident number Moses, the title track Stitches, Bells Breaks Arms, Magdalene and Frosted Tips.  Califone albums have also been based on stories (All My Friends Are Funeral Singers) and Rutili et. al. fit in a jubilant rendition of Funeral Singers just before the end of their set.

New York, Califone's hometown of Chicago and The War On Drugs own Philadelphia get the big bands on the weekends.  Due to the subline vaguaries of tour logistics and accounting Toronto tends to get more than its fair share of midweek or in this case Monday night shows.  Which is not to say that work, rain or anything else kept the working stiffs and rock and roll kids away.  Tickets which had sold out instantly were no doubt going for cocaine prices outdoors.  When the band hit the stage the audience had neatly packed in like a very polite tin of sardines.

Opener Burning brought the wash of sound, the debt to Spaceman 3 more evident in the live show then Bruce Springsteen or Dire Straits, that we've come to know as The War On Drugs over the crowd.  Nodding to the back catalogue front man Adam Granduciel took the group through Arms Like Boulders from 2008's Wagonwheel Blues and Comin' Through from 2010's Future Weather EP.  The group's sound is so distinctive on this album that even these songs were painted with its patina and seemed slightly out of place if only because the audience would have likely been quite fine with a straight run through of Lost In The Dream.  Which is what they got moving forward.

By the mid-set mark the obligatory Under the Pressure released the soul valve's deep below. Alternating peals of tears or laughter both came with welcome.  In Reverse and An Ocean In Between The Waves both got epic treatments building momentum, gravity and volume that few bands shy of My Morning Jacket can pull off with any semblance of melody.  Buenos Aires Beach, again from Wagonwheel Blues, then came as a welcome respite from the dionysian vibe that kept churning.   Closing out the set the beautiful Red Eyes and one of- if not the- hallmark song on the album Eyes To The Wind.

Live there is no doubt that The War On Drugs are a phenomenal force to be reckoned with.  Much of the dynamic seems to come out of the interplay between Granduciel on lead guitar and David Hartley on bass whose laid back vibe provides the perfect counterpoint to Granduciel's rock star chicanery.   The same is true of the dynamic between the phenomenal drummer Patrick Berkery and Hartley.  Robbie Bennett on a huge array of keyboards and synths clearly makes much of the sound happen live.  What the four of them can't pull off gets added by another two sidemen on keys/guitar and saxes/synths the sound is as full as one could possibly make it.  For the listener there is a constant exultant feeling that the dam just might burst but knowing that it won't. 

But its Adam that sits alone by a window in his home in a craven posture that suggests the angst, loneliness and paranoia that inform much of the album's lyrics.  Bands even the most bombastic and democratic ones take heavier tolls on some members than others.  In the wake of the success of 2011's Slave Ambient Granduciel struggled to adapt back to everyday life.  In grappling with the demons that came out of that period he had the lyrical core of Lost In The Dream.  Clearly too much of the strength he would need for the next chapter.  Despite the appearance of solidarity he was a man alone, stating: " "This wasn’t a band record. This was a solo record. I knew that. They’ve [War on Drugs' albums] all been solo records."

As your heart reaches up into your throat, and your soul ache takes five (as the entire security detail seemed to do periodically as if to promote a partially decriminalized environment for marijuana) one is not thinking about notion's of agency, collaboration, causation and chance in the songwriting process.  Hopefully one is dancing their blues away, or at least swaying.  Encores Best Night from Slave Ambient and the inevitable Suffering gave the audience one last chance to get their yaya's out.  And they did.

War On Drugs - Phoenix, Toronto setlist (09.15.14)

War On Drugs - Phoenix Concert Theatre, Toronto ON 

The War On Drugs 
w. Califone
Phoenix Concert Theatre
09.15.14
Toronto, ON

Burning
Arms Like Boulders#
Comin' Through*
Under the  Pressure
In Reverse
An Ocean In Between The Waves
Disappearing
Come To The City^
Buenos Aires Beach#
Red Eyes
Lost In The Dream
Eyes To The Wind

E:
Suffering
Best Night^


# Wagonwheel Blues (2008)
* Future Weather EP (2010)
^ Slave Ambient (2011)

Phoenix' Daft Punk connection through Darlin'

Prior to the release of their first album Phoenix was a Parisien garage band composed of vocalist Thomas Mars (and Sophia Coppola's baby papa), bassist Deck d'Arcy and guitarist Chris Mazzalai.   Mazzalai's older brother Laurent Brancowitz joined the band in 1995 after the demise of a short-lived band (inspired at least by the Beach Boys tune) Darlin'.  Brancowitz' bandmates in Darlin' were Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (now known as Daft Punk).

A couple of Darlin' tracks (the eponymous Darlin' and Cindy So Loud) can be found on the Darlin' myspace. As Phoenix the group went on to release a 500 copy single on their own label Ghettoblaster, they were then signed to Paris-based Source records becoming familiar with labelmates Air for whom they acted as backing band on several UK TV appearances.  They were also the backing band for a remix of Air's Kelly Watch The Stars single.  Shortly after this in 2000 Phoenix released their first album United (2000).

Alphabetical (2004) got some minor play and a special commission from Parisien male fashion laureate Hedi Slimane (to do a special mix of Victim Of The Crime) for that year's Dior Homme collection).  The live album taken from the Alphabetical tour's 150 dates was released as Live! Thirty Days Ago (some 30 days after then end of the tour).

It is their last two albums - It's Never Been Like That (2006) and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009) - that have of course drawn the group more fully into the zeitgeist of their age.  By this point drummer Thomas Hedlund was an integral part of the band's sound along with keyboardists Robin Coudert and Jonathan Chavez.

Precocious fans of the group may want to search out obscurities from their early career such as an instrumental single Heatwave that was released on a compilation Source Rocks (also covered by DB Boulevard in 2002 with a vocal under the title Point of View).  Likewise Party Time (released on United ) and a another 7" single called City Lights are highly prized by completists.   Both are very hard to find, the latter City Lights appears on a very rare Air compilation Deck Safari - bearing little similarity to current Phoenix.

But arguably the most obscure Phoenix to at least get your hands on at least a hard copy of is the aforementioned Darlin' tracks (either from the Darlin' EP or the incredibly difficult to obtain Shimmies In Super 8 compilation on Duophone.

Shimmies was released as two 7 inches in April 1993 with tracks by Huggy Bear, Darlin', Colm and Stereolab- the first record was white vinyl the second was green vinyl.   Only 800 copies were run (of which 400 had stickers) all copies were numbered.

Phoenix play Madison Square Garden, Daft Punk joins for encore (10.20.10)

The greatest rock band working in their second language - Phoenix - were joined at the end of their set at the Madison Square Garden by guitarist Laurent Brancowitz's former bandmates (from the Beach Boys inspired group Darlin') Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Maneul de Homem-Christo who are known publicly as Daft Punk.




The mysterious duo emerged during Phoenix' If I Ever Feel Better and proceeded to deliver their own Harder, Faster, Better Stronger and Around the World before completely remixing the band live on the definitive encore of 1901.







Then led by Mars on guitar Phoenix began to play the tonal sequence from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in a call and response with Daft Punk to take the evening to a place even more stellar as they closed out the show with a melded version of 1901.