Thanks to Sasquatch! Music Festival and other pressing issues, I missed last weeks crop of new releases, headlined by My Morning Jacket and Death Cab For Cutie (and Robert Pollard, and Eddie Vedder on the ukelele, and Seapony, and...). For the past two days, I've been down with a fever, so this week's was in peril too, but I've switched my tea for coffee, propped myself up with some pillows and made a go of it. All because this is a great week for releases. Black Lips, Cults, Fucked Up, Tom Vek, Battles, Arctic Monkeys and Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr headline the week, but it goes deeper than that as well. New releases from The Rosebuds, Frank Turner, Givers, The Postelles, Sondre Lerche, Peter Murphy, Oneida, City and Colour all make it a pretty deep week for ear spins. Have at it.
When word leaked out that Black Lips were working with the Grammy award winning producer Mark Ronson, there was understandable worry that the antics and noise that the Atlanta quartet had become famous for would get lost. Ronson, however, let the band do their thing (almost killing him in the process), leaving his contributions to cleaning up the sound a bit. As a result, the drums are punchier, and the vocals front and center, and with Ronson's classic attention to 'classic' sound details. Arabia Mountain is Black Lips' best album thus far, both artistically, and likely, commercially.
They mystery behind the New York duo Cults has been built up since the gleeful "Go Outside" started making the rounds last year. With it's Shuggie Otis' glockenspiel-like intro and 60s pop sound, it had everyone asking "Who are these people?" Outside of the names Brian O'Blivion (guitar) and Madeline Follin (singer), never bothered to answer, instead laying low after signing on Columbia. Now their self-titled debut answers a few questions, like "will they be a one-hit wonder?" The easy answer there is "No." The advance second single, "Abducted" should've already answered that question, with it's driving chorus and continuation of 60s pop sensibilities. Aside from the unneeded recorded cult leaders interweaved throughout the album, the rest of the album sets up the duo nicely for a career beyond their debut, even if it loses a bit of steam in the second half.
Hardcore Canadians Fucked Up aren't just punk because Damien "Pink Eyes" Abraham screams up a lung in every song. It's also the constant defying of expectations time and time again. Since the release of their critically acclaimed last release, The Chemistry of Common Life, the band has released a series of Chinese Zodiac themed singles, played with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and, more unexpectedly, Nelly Furtado and actress Shenae Grimes. So when it was revealed their latest, David Comes Alive, was a rock opera, it was expected unexpected news. Telling the story of a light bulb factory worker, David, in love with an activist named Veronica (voiced on the album by Cults' Madeline Follin, conveniently enough for our purposes here), who tragically dies pretty early in the action. The story gets convoluted, as most rock opera's do, but there's incredible ambition here, and if it weren't for the rock opera aspect, the headline here would be that Fucked Up have become accessible. The need to display guitar prowess has been reined in, Pink Floydian meanderings cut almost entirely, and songs tightened to the point that you can recognize pop structures at work. Of course, nobody's going to put Pink Eye's screams on middle American radio stations anytime soon, but without his bravado, this album probably wouldn't work (you'd need another distinct voice -- in fact, throw Craig Finn in the mix and you've got a more masculine riff-heavy Hold Steady album).
Back in 2005, Tom Vek seemed to come out of nowhere with his idiosyncratic punk funk debut, We Have Sound. The one-man band then went back to nowhere for nearly six years -- nowhere being a place where he built his own studio, taught himself production techniques, and spent time writing new material. Listening to his long awaited follow up, Leisure Seizure, it's like Vek was locked up in his recording studio for the majority of the time, just trying to get the sounds in his head on recording, as the album is pretty well removed from sounds and trends that have occurred in the six years he's been absent. The difference for Vek is a more polished sound, punchier drums and less tinny guitars. Advance single "A Chore" is the perfect (re)introduction to Vek's sound, with the big ringing drums and disjointed keyboard and guitar interplay, while "Aroused" sounds a bit like Yeasayer roofied Joe Jackson into a guest vocal. But really, Vek sounds like nobody else, so comparisons are just silly. It's great to have him back, and hopefully we won't have to wait until 2017 for another release.
I'm finally getting around to a Bumbershoot recap, and part of my delay is because unlike my adventurous first day, I don't have any stories to tell this time. That's the way it often goes, great adventure/no pictures or lots of pictures/no stories to tell. The wife was back from her trip, but feeling under the weather, so I couldn't make it until about the time Two Gallants went on (above). That means I missed Blitzen Trapper, Mark Pickerel and his Praying Hands and the infamous Monotonix, who's set lasted all of around 13 minutes before being shut down. The garbage can getting tossed around is apparently what did caused the show to be prematurely halted, not the nudity:
The Stooges were famous for shrinking the distance between band and audience, and Monotix just obliterates it.
I learned my lesson from the Two Gallants set that the staging area for photographers at the Broad Street Lawn (Rockstar) Stage is kind of stupid, so I got there early enough for John Vanderslice to be in centerstage up front for some shots. Vanderslice is famously the nicest guy in indie rock, and he had it going on before the set, telling various folks in the audience that he was so pleased to see them and that he'd catch up with them after the set.
Old 97s were on next, and they were playing at possibly the greatest setting to take photos at Bumbershoot, the Mural Ampitheatre. It's set up for perfect lighting in the afternoon to early evening, which is when the Texans went on. Frontman Rhett Miller has a face that cameras love, and he seems well aware of that fact, putting all the poses on display for the three songs we're allowed to shoot. Heck, I'm comfortable enough in my sexuality to say that he's pretty hot. Does that make me gay for Rhett?
After that I had just enough time to get a couple shots of one of my heroes, Del the Funky Homosapien. By the time he got through his first song, I'd almost forgotten the time, such is the power of his smooth delivery.
I had to haul ass to get to the Battles set, but unfortunately, I was too late to get any frontline shots and had to rely on the side stage approach. Aside from Man Man on Saturday, this was the one other band I wanted to see at Bumbershoot, so I took only a few photos and worked my way around the crowd trying to find a place to enjoy the set. It was easliy the largest audience I've ever seen at that stage, and so your typical view from a fan was at a distance. Aside from Monotix, this set was easily the most talked about amongst the folks I spoke with that night.
Tired and wanting to go home, I started the long trek back to my car, stopping to get in a shot of Mike Doughty and a couple photos of Sondre Lerche (above) before heading out into the dark, dark night. It's always a sad journey home leaving the last day of Bumbershoot, not just because the festival's done, but also the knowledge that you just witnessed the end of summer. We have just a few short weeks of leftover sunshine before the imminent arrival of the rain here in Seattle. Not even Monotonix can cut fall's arrival short.
Somewhere towards the end of the third season of Nip/Tuck, the show seemed to go off the rails, careening into the absurd, and losing it's keen sense of humor. Last season it suffered much of the same, but towards the end, the show seemed to find it's heart (and humor). This season, the show got a much needed face lift, with a relocation to Beverly Hills (the heart of "tell me what you don't like about yourself,") and it's a welcome change of scenery from the suddenly crowded Miami (Burn Notice, Dexter and Cane).
One of the benefits of the relocation is the availability of guest stars, and if last night's episode is any indication, it might be walking the line of distraction all season long. Having Christian and Sean consult on a television show provides some plenty of opportunity for self-reflection, and guest star Jennifer Coolidge's surreal acting turn ("my lady cha cha!") seemed like creator Ryan Murphy having some fun at the overwrought drama that the series was accused of in the past couple seasons. It also gives the opportunity to take a different look at some past surgeries, like the Coolidge character's pussy lip surgery re-imagined from the second season (episode 2.06, "Bobbi Broderick").
Musically, it's business as usual, though, with the eclectic mix of hip-hop, indie rock and pop from music supervisor P.J. Bloom. We're given a visual tour of the offices to "The Best is Yet to Come," the docs get dressed for a night out to "Lean Like a Cholo," and a network executive gets his dominatrix wounds healed to Nazareth's "Love Hurts." But my favorite had to be the use of Battles' "Atlas" during the parallel surgeries of Christian's hair plugs and Carly's feather lift surgery. Their album Mirrored is one of the best albums of the year, and it's no small feat to get their somewhat inaccessible sound on primetime television. Kudos for making it work, PJ.
