Purity Ring - Another Eternity (leak and weak)

To quote the Grateful Dead- 'maybe they had too much too fast'.   The production and singing duo of Corin Roddick and Megan James don't seem like the drug reference particularly applies though.  In person they come across more like studious art music nerds with no time for messing about.  Puritanical musical work ethic and all that, pardon the pun.

They may have had too much exposure though.  It seems like a maelstrom of hype since 4AD announced and ultimately released the perfect Shrines on July 24, 2012.  Having toured extensively on their own and with indie titans Grizzly Bear they got a lot of stage time in early in their career.  Conversely, although both hail from Edmonton, their recording was done largely at a distance with Roddick perfecting a beat and then emailing it to James who would add her vocals at a distance.  Its a frequently common form of collaboration, particularly in hip-hop, but in their case they hit kismet sonic gold on every single track.  Live and on record their were not so much singles and low points as different facets of Shrines.  They were just that good.

This is all before Danny Brown somehow got a hold of them.  The combination of Molly and their melifluous beats and mesmerizing live show undoubtedly had something to do with it.  They remade their brilliant Belispeak as Belispeak II.  Later they were asked to produce a beat and be featured on 25 Bucks one of the few strong tracks on Brown's middling album Old.  They seem to have fleshed out a bit of a niche in Hip Hop as they didn't seem to do much in 2014, besides working on Another Eternity, other than produce a beat for Ab-Soul God's Reign for his album These Days...

Not that you'd really hear a strong Hip Hop influence on the album.  In fact whatever Roddick is doing is further back in the mix then one would have anticipated.  Gone are the almost choral effects he charmingly concocted by his custom percussion array resembling a futuristic steel pan set up.  In its place are a mewly melange of current EDM tropes that just sort of drift by without drawing any attention to themselves.  At points it sounds like some ill intended collaboration with a big room EDM DJ like Avicii.  Other moments you almost expect Pitbull to come out for a guest verse.  What is Megan James doing through all this.  Well she's singing a lot that's pretty hard to avoid.  But instead of the treated clipped and more obscure vocal delivery that was a hallmark of Purity Ring's sound she's just doing what quite a lot of women are doing in the very broad field of Electronic Dance Music these days- and not particuarly well.  Kingston (of Blue Sky Black Death)  now going by Ultra88 has accomplished something much more pleasing to the ear incorporating electronics and the female voice on his new release Sirens. James lyrics presumably have meaning and yield to introspection but its unclear because the album - and this is painful to admit because I had the highest of hopes for this group and delighted seeing them up close at NXNE the year of their ignition  - is another eternity to make it through to the end.

What happened?  Undoubtedly this is the album they wanted to make even if they have softened all the quirky edges that endeared their sound.  The overall sense one gets is artists that had too long, too much resources, too much input trying to create an album with crossover appeal.  It may have been that they worked best with little resources, and that working at a distance may have been unique to their creative process.

Another Eternity:

01 heartsigh

02 bodyache

03 push pull

04 repetition

05 stranger than earth

06 begin again

07 dust hymn

08 flood on the floor

09 sea castle

10 stillness in woe

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.

"Classic Zeus" album release secret show setlist (08.02.14)

Zeus 
'Classic Zeus' album release
Alley behind June Records, 08.02.14

Where Is My Love?
Kindergarten
Love/ Pain
Miss My Friends
Bonnie View
One Line Written In
Come Home
Strong Mind
Daemons (Renegades Way)
27 Is The New 17
I Know
Risk
Marching Through Your Head
Heavy On Me
You Could Have A Lover
Are You Gonna Waste My Time

 E:
Anything You Want Dear
Hot Under The Collar

Dave Chappelle Toronto Review (Winter Garden Theatre, 08/22/12)

"I'm Ripped Bitch"

 

Update: I'm not sure how Dave Chappelle (famous for his crack smoking character Tyrone Biggums) got Rob Ford's number but at the time of his surprise performance in Toronto he had two requests for his handlers; to get in a workout (part of his evident health kick) and to meet the mayor Rob Ford.  Now this was well before anyone in Toronto caught any inkling that Ford himself smoked crack, would lie about it and then later admit to it unabashedly making him the constant fodder of American late night comedians for months on end.  Ford recently dropped out of the mayor's race due to Cancer treatment but was re-elected shockingly as a city councillor.

(With a very strong hyper-local opening set by Gilson Lubin, DJ Future The Prince ceded the stage to his employer Drake for a low key 40 minute barely proficient DJ set. Both stayed for the remainder of his set onstage facing the audience.  Dave's material was strong with more formed Obama Ohio material hitting well early on.   Longer themes of fidelity, celebrity, ludicrousy prevailed throughout the poignant set laced with moments of thoughtful joy.  Other material skewed heavily cerebral and analytical and didn't play as well in the Poughkeepsies.  With the two previous nights sets clocking in around 75 and 82 minutes Dave blew the high water mark clocking a full two and a half hours of stage time.  Albeit the last half hour of his time, having blown well past any contractual or audience expectations, Dave decided to take a question and answer 'press conference' from the audience who peppered him with a cavalcade of groan worthy celebrity boot licking, awkward Canadian cultural masturbation, countless questions about 'The Chappelle Show' and the experience of filming it and does he miss it and basically time machine type bullshit that visibly wore both Chappelle and the audience down to a fine little black nub.)

(l to r: Dave Chappelle, Hon. Mayor Rob Ford)

DIIV - NXNE, Lee's Palace, June 15 (review, setlist)



There's a very short list for the 'breakthrough' if you like bands of the 2012 NXNE music festival, they include but are not limited to: The Hundred in the Hands, Purity Ring and undoubtedly DIIV.  In spite of Ghostface Killah, and Raekwon The Chef devastating an already Yonge and Dundas Square to close out the festival with a free performance one could make a handy argument that it was these young lads in DIIV (pronounced Dive) two nights prior that stole many of the hearts and minds of this years attendees. 

 They're perspicacious and preternaturally gifted take on whatever their influences happen to be makes one wonder seriously about the exponential rate of talent growth and craftsmanship. Primary songwriter Zachary Cole Smith (Cole will do), as distinguished from bandmate and former Smith Westerns drummer Colby Hewitt, declared at outset that they'd be playing their forthcoming 2012 release for Captured Tracks in its entirety: Oshin.



Later Cole conceded that despite dropping in a few 'new' songs (Big Joke) the set largely followed the analog flow of their distinctive release.  My listening companion heard the obvious strains of homage and reference to Ian Curtis and Joy Division, but also Echo and the Bunnymen or even the Stranglers.  Though not fully evident on the recorded product, the relatively terse and succinct pop numbers, were stretched out into filetted slivers of sound and dense guitar interplay that belied their tender years.  This listener was reminded fondly of two concerts he'd seen Built To Spill play in the selfsame venue a couple of years back.  The appeal of DIIV seems to lie somewhere between the Christopher-Robins-In-Never-Neverland waifish (and very Ian Curtisian) charm of Z. Cole Smith and the long soloed crunch of influential guitar based bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the latter Built To Spill albums.  They're short, wistful inspired bits of (sometimes maudlin) songwriting brought to life on the backs of a wooly improvising beast.  It may be also that the band prefers the effects, pedals and signal processing sound associated with the 80's but that their pushing magnificent solos inspired by the 90's through vintage setups.

DIIV, Lee's Palace, June 15

(Druun)

Past Lives

Human

Big Joke

Air Conditioning

How Long Have You Known?

Wait

Follow

Sometime

Bambi Slaughter *

Doused

* Nirvana cover

Raekwon & Ghostface Killah NXNE, Toronto, June 17 (review, setlist)

Ghostface Killah and Raekwon - NXNE (Sunday, June 17)

Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, DJ Skratch Bastid
Yonge Dundas Square, June 17 2012

(partial setlist, all songs sung as duet)

Incarcerated Scarfaces (Raekwon original)

Ice Cream (Ghostface Killah original)

Glaciers of Ice (Raekwon original, Ghostface featured)

Winter Warz (Ghostface Killah original)

Da Mystery of Chessboxin' (Wu-Tang Clan)

Surgical Gloves (Raekwon)

R.A.G.U. (Ghostface Killah)

Mighty Healthy (Ghostface Killah)

Verbal Intercourse (Raekwon)

Eye for an Eye (Raekwon)

Apollo Kids (Ghostface Killah)

Broken Safety (Raekwon)
4th Chamber (Genius/ GZA)
new mixtape cut (JD Era)
Mt. Olympus (JD Era)
Protect Ya Neck (Wu-Tang Clan)
Raw (Ol' Dirty Bastard)
Uzi (Pinky Ring) - (Wu-Tang Clan)
CREAM - (Wu-Tang Clan)

Can't It Be All So Simple - (Raekwon)
>>>>

(note: this is a partial setlist - I caught at least 30 musical cues of seperate songs, here's 20 in order that I was able to identify.  More was played after Simple I just had to leave. Anyone with gaps or who heard a different song, sequence or sample please mention on the comments.)

Black Milk @ Revival, Toronto, setlist and review (11.18.10)

After a surprise but perfunctory opening set by Dank (of Frank 'n Dank) with images of Black Milk looping overhead, his band composed of AB, Daru (Jones) and touring DJ 'Billy the Tour Manager' took the stage.

Between AB's keys stage left sat a lone drum pad, behind which was perched the DJ table, on the right was Daru's sparse kit of a kick drum, two snares (set tilted away from him) and a couple of cymbals.  Knowing that AB and Daru are far beyond simple touring musicians and in fact integral to the integrated sampled, electronic, live sound that defines Milk's title worthy Album Of The Year that he is touring behind.

Notably absent from stage (yet still on it oddly) were members of The Will Sessions Band formidably bass player Tim Shellabarger (whose thumb and thump are all over the recording) and master arranger Sam Beaubien (perhaps best known for arranging Mayer Hawthorne's A Strange Arrangement) as well as Milk's handful of Detroit based vocal peers (Elzhi, Royce Da 5'9", the notoriously slept on Danny Brown and Melanie Rutherford).

Reflecting how this is his 'most personal album ever' (the album of the year he had) the man born Curtis Cross set about to recreate with evincing clarity the precise sound crafted on his best album to date.  After a quick medley of tracks spanning Black Milk's surprisingly short career the ensemble rocked in some semblance of order through the bulk of AOTY (leaving out largely those tracks with guest vocalists).  Where his mentor J Dilla (whose passing as much as that of D12's Proof, Slum Village's Baatin, his own aunt and the near fatality in the form of a stroke that hit his business manager and sometimes DJ Hex Murda) was known for the soulful depth of his crates and unerring ability to capture bracing drum sounds, Black Milk has taken the formula a step further by first capturing the samples or sketching out the beat and having in particular Daru add a thick wash and stratified layers over top. 

While all of the AOTY material went over feverishly with Milk almost exclusively playing the role of MC (a role into which he's made a studied and notably confident growth) it was his conducting of the ensemble on the whole that was thrilling to take in.  Wanting undoubtedly to focus on MC'ing (an outsider would never know this man was the producer as well) that little brown box (the Akai MPC 2000) - the sampler which he has used to the most unique effect and on which he builds up his definitive beats on the fly - was sadly absent from the stage.  Instead during a handful of too-brief interludes Milk took to the drumpad extending cuts into longer yet still precise drum jams- including Tronic's Give The Drummer Sum and notably AOTY's Round Of Applause  whose studio rendition includes overheard studio cues - 'keep it going... on the one (let it breathe)... bring it back' -  made into a rallying cry live.  At perhaps the apex of the show's arc AB softly let loose that quad tone sequence that is known as the instrumental Tronic Summer.

Having elapsed most of the Album material to the elation of the packed audience Black Milk was freed up to take audience requests scrolling through his ouevre with the ease of a jazz musician.  Undoubted fan favourites would have to be his run through a handful of his finest singles career wide: Losin' Out (normally with Royce Da 5'9"), the AB imprinted Reppin For U, the supremely fitting Tronic Summer (which despite it's flawlessness Milk immediately outed jokingly as 'some Barbie shit') only to drop the monstrous hook of The Matrix.  This run of material off of Tronic trailed out understably after Milk's opening verse uttering a few lines of Pharaohe Monche's next verse: "Four-finger ring rap sling-slang, Pharoahe the flow's good/ you couldn't hang if you was Ving Rhames in Rosewood".

Making a suprise airing was Don Cornelius (named after the definitive Soul Train host of the same name) the one cut that didn't make it onto Album Of The Year whose hook is lifted undisguised from Lee Fields and the Expressions Love Comes and Goes.   Likewise fan favourite Hell Yeah seemed close to the set closer before Milk insisted on banging out a handful of tracks from Popular Demand taking it right back for his by now frothing fans.

There are few artists that can leave the stage and have their stage band hold the audience in an equal thrall.  That is of course bands that aren't integral to the recorded sound, players of the highest calibre and playing to fans of the deepest magnitude.

Black Milk (w. AB and Daru Jones), Revival, Toronto (11.18.10) 
(partial setlist)

365
Distortion
Welcome (Gotta Go)
Round of Applause (drum jam)
Over Again (AB backing vocals)
Reppin' For U
Try
Tronic Summer
The Matrix (incomplete)
Losin' Out
Give The Drummer Sum (drum jam)
Don Cornelius
Hell Yeah
Shut It Down